DRESSED TO KILL (1946)

DRESSED TO KILL (1946). Director: Roy William Neill. 

This was the last of 12 "modern-day" Sherlock Holmes films done by Universal, and the 14th and final film in which Basil Rathbone starred as the great sleuth. It's an entertaining mystery in which Holmes matches wits with another female foe, Hilda Courtney (Patricia Morison). The plot has to do with a tune played on music boxes made by the inmates of a prison, and the secret held by the boxes and the tune. Morison isn't bad, although she can't compare to Gale Sondergaard in The Spider Woman. Edmond Breon is great as Dr. Watson's old friend Julian "Stinky" Emery -- what a likable performer! Ian Wolfe, who plays the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, later was the old blind man Burton White in the 1960 Lost World. 

Verdict: His Last Bow. Fast-paced and quite entertaining. ***.