calvinnme ... even though I saw the end coming a mile away. I've got the entire series of Basil Rathbone Holmes films on DVD, and I think the films were better being brought into the modern era when they were taken over by Universal, although this particular film has such a Gothic atmosphere it really could be set in either the 19th or 20th centuries.Seven well-off men in rural Scotland who enjoy each other's company have named themselves "the good comrades" and have oddly taken out life insurance policies on themselves, naming all of the others as beneficiaries. However, two of them have been murdered after receiving an envelope containing a number of pips equal to the number of surviving comrades at that instant in time. Sherlock Holmes is recruited to solve the mystery, not by the police, but by the insurance company that doesn't want to pay off seven large policies. Who gets the money if all seven die? That detail is conveniently omitted for the viewers' pleasure.Thus Holmes and Watson are off to the castle in which the Good Comrades meet. The murders continue even while they and the police are actively involved in the investigation, including a near miss on Holmes' life with a large boulder thrown from a cliff along the beach. As usual, Holmes says things that tell you he's hot on the trail of the solution to the mystery, but nothing that would let the viewer in on matters until the final scene when Holmes solves the crimes.Holmes is generous to the police in letting them take credit, and generous to a fault to his friend and colleague Dr. Watson who may know medicine but is usually neither a help nor hindrance to Holmes. However, in this film, one key detail is noticed by Dr. Watson.Of course, you have to wonder, if you know who the intended victims are, why not just round the surviving comrades up in a room with a cadre of policemen and Holmes as watchdogs, but then, that wouldn't be much of a film now would it? Highly recommended for the atmosphere, for Rathbone and Bruce who wear the roles of Holmes and Watson like a perfect fitting glove, and for the sight of the housekeeper at the comrades' meeting place delivering all of the "death envelopes" as though they were routine telegrams and trudging around the castle at night wielding a hatchet when she thinks she hears a noise, like something straight out of a Universal horror film of ten years before.

jonfrum2000 I've just watched the Rathbone/Bruce Hound of the Baskervilles, and I have to say I far prefer this story. It spares us the war propaganda story lines of other films in the series, and in spite of its contemporary setting, its old dark house atmosphere puts us right back in Victorian times. Nigel Bruce and Dennis Hoey play their standard roles, and Rathbone is his masterful self. This is one film in the series without the usual love interest or femme fatale, and does fine without them.I was thinking while watching this movie that I wish the production had been in the hands of the mid-era Charlie Chan crew. The lighting in those films was far superior. The old stone mansion seen here is a fine setting, but some atmospheric lighting would have done wonders for the story.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Things got a bit suspicious to insurance salesman Chambers, Gavin Muir, when two members of the exclusive "Good Comrades Club" were killed with their bodies burned and mutilated beyond recognition. That's when they received mysterious letters containing seven in the case of Ralph King, Richard Alexander, and six in the case of Stanley Reaburn, Cyril Delevanti, orange pits. With King & Reaburn being members of the "Good Comrades Club" each of their insurance policies, being 1000,000 pound sterling, was to be split up among the surviving five club members.Chamers getting his good friend Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone, together with his constant companion Dotcor Watson, Nigel Bruce, to investigate the two mysterious deaths other members of the club began to have the same kind of deadly accidents! With their remains completely obliterated to the point where they were left totally unrecognizable! What at first seem to be obvious in the "Good Comrades Club" members deaths is that one of them is staging their "accidents" so in being the sole survivor of the group he'll collect all the insurance, amounting to 700,000 pound sterling, money!It's the murder of local tobacco shop owner Alex MacGregor, David Clyde, that sets off alarms in Sherlock Holmes' head to who the real killer was. It's not that MagGregor was murdered and didn't die accidentally like the "Good Comrades" but that he wasn't even a member of that exclusive Club! It was that MacGregor saw something, or someone, on the beach one evening that he wasn't supposed to see and that in the end cost him his life. It was in that clue, MacGregor's murder, that Holmes realized what exactly was going on in the strange deaths of the "Good Comrades". That and also Doctor Watson suddenly or on impulse deciding to try smoking MacGregor's left over tobacco that exposed to Holmes not only the reason for the "Good Comrades" deaths but also why they died so horribly!More like a modern horror slasher flick then a 1940's Sherlock Holmes mystery movie "The House of Fear" thankfully didn't show the results of the horrible deaths, which were more like those in the recent "SAW" films, of its victims which would have been far too much for its audience back then in 1945 to watch!

lastliberal The 10th of 12 movies that Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce shared the screen as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.A prime suspect and lots of bizarre deaths indicating something that only Holmes can figure out.Watson is his usual bumbling self providing much hilarity as he stumbles about and chats with owls.The feature was also directed by Roy William Neill, who did several Holmes movies. It was an excellent story told brilliantly at Neill's hands.Mystery, comedy, and cleverness all were hallmarks of these films and make them timeless.