Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes in "Dressed To Kill" (1946)
46John Davidson (Cyril Delavanti), a convicted thief in Dartmoor prison, embeds code revealing the hidden location of extremely valuable stolen Bank of England currency printing plates three music boxes to be sold at auction. At the auction each is purchased by a different buyer.
Julian 'Stinky' Emery (Edmund Breon), a music box collector and friend of Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce), tells Watson and Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) of an attempted burglary in his house the previous night of a plain cheap box (similar to the one he bought at auction) while leaving other much more valuable ones. Holmes and Watson ask to see and are shown Emery's collection. After they leave, Emery welcomes a female acquaintance, Mrs. Hilda Courtney (Patricia Morison), who tries unsuccessfully to buy the auctioned box. When Emery declines, a male friend of Courtney's murders Emery. Holmes now becomes curious, and learns to whom else the boxes were auctioned off.
Holmes and Watson arrive at the house of the person who bought the second one, just as a strange maid (Courtney in disguise) is on her way "to go shopping". They later realize it was not a maid. She locked a child in a closet in order to steal the box from the child.
Holmes is able to buy the third box, and upon examination discovers that its variant musical notes' numbers correlate to letters of the alphabet. Scotland Yard fills him in on the stolen bank plates to which the music boxes connect, but all three are needed to decipher the message.
Back at home, their flat is found ransacked, and a cigarette with a distinct type of tobacco is the sole clue. Holmes tracks down the woman who bought the tobacco, Courtney.
While confronting her, Holmes is ambushed by her accomplices, handcuffed, taken to a warehouse, hung by a rafter, and left with poison gas filling the room. While Holmes is narrowly escaping death, Courtney steals the box from Watson.
Holmes manages to make it back in one piece and, while conversing with him, Watson offhandedly mentions a quote from Dr. Samuel Johnson. Thinking about this quote, Holmes makes a connection as to where the stolen plates may be hidden.
Having stolen all the boxes and deciphered their message, Courtney and gang join a tour group at Dr. Samuel Johnson's house, now a museum, where they slip away and find the plates hidden within a bookshelf. Courtney is stealing the plates when Holmes ambushes the group. Scotland Yard officers arrest them, and the plates are returned to the bank.
A 1946 American mystery film (a/k/a "Prelude to Murder" (working title) and "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Code" in the United Kingdom) produced & directed by Roy William Neill, screenplay by Leonard Lee, adapted by Frank Gruber from a story Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, cinematography by Maury Gertsman, starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Patricia Morison, Edmund Breon, Frederick Worlock, Carl Harbord, Patricia Cameron, Holmes Herbert, Harry Cording, Leyland Hodgson, Mary Gordon, Ian Wolfe, and Anita Sharp-Bolster. Released by Universal Pictures.
Five months after the film's release, producer-director Roy William Neill died of a heart attack.
The rabbit in a cabbage was made by Roullet & Decamps, a French toy manufacturing company operating in the 19th and 20th centuries, which specialized in automata.
This has an original story, but combines elements of the short stories "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" and "A Scandal in Bohemia." The plot bears some similarities with Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Six Napoleons", in which a valuable article is hidden somewhere in London.
Mention is made by Watson of two stories from the original canon; "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Solitary Cyclist."
The last of 14 films released from 1939-46 based on Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Rathbone was reportedly tired of playing the character. However, he would play Holmes on the stage, radio and television at various times the rest of his career.
Last of four titles in Basil Rathbone's Holmes films to feature Ian Wolfe in a supporting role.
A quotation is attributed to a Dr. Samuel Johnson which is the key in finally solving the the mystery. Dr. Samuel Johnson was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
Irene Adler, mentioned by Dr. Watson, was a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A former opera singer and actress, she was featured in the short story "A Scandal in Bohemia" to which Watson referred. But she was never incorporated into any of the plots of the films in the series.
A solid entry in the classic Rathbone/Bruce series. While not the best, the setup is good, and it's fun to watch. As usual, Nigel Bruce's "Dr. Watson" provides the story with a few comical moments. A fine, if unspectacular end of a definitive era.