THE SCARLET CLAW: Holmes and Watson interrupt the private memorial service of Lord Penrose (Paul Cavanagh) for his wife, as butler Ian Wolfe looms.
Holmes’ many disguises) to so- phisticated suspense (as Holmes and Spedding admit to seeing through each others’ disguises in a parade of deliciously veiled dia- logue), and finally to near disaster for the great detective and his Boswell.
THE SPIDER WOMAN is un- even-looking, with softish main titles, some scenes that look dark- ish or overly grainy, and a couple of areas where the results are flaw- less. The Ordway sequence is of particularly fine quality, so much so that the pygmy skeleton found in a closet can be easily pegged as a Halloween cardboard cutout. The sound quality is reasonably crisp, which makes the preponder- ance of error in the subtitles a great mystery in itself. “Waistcoats” be- come “weskits,” “addle-headed- ness” becomes “eggleheadness,” several of Watson’s mutterings and Holmes’ brisker recitals are skipped
over as “[unintelligible],” and Holmes assures someone of his colleague, “I assure you, Dr. Watson, is the very cell of discre- tion”—which deals insult to injury with inept punctuation.
Often praised as the best of the series is THE SCARLET CLAW, Universal’s bid to claim THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES as its own with a stylish retread. After challenging the occult beliefs of Lord Penrose (Paul Cavanagh) at a psychic convention, Holmes and Watson receive a letter from Lady Penrose, beseeching them to come to the French Canadian vil- lage of La Morte Rouge to investi- gate a supernatural presence haunting their marshes and killing their sheep. The detectives arrive to discover that Lady Penrose has been found dead inside the village church, her throat slashed, her dying tugs of the bell-rope
unheeded by the locals, for whom the sound is a familiar presenti- ment of doom. Determined to prove that the murders have a ra- tional explanation, Holmes and Watson take rooms at the inn of Emil Journet (Arthur Hohl), where Watson is instructed to remain in- conspicuous in the tavern while Holmes ventures out on the marshes, barely surviving an at- tack by a fluorescent phantom. In time, Holmes establishes that the perpetrator of the crimes is very human but also mercurial: Alastair Ramson, a stage actor renowned for his mastery of disguise. Is Ramson posing as the innkeeper (who is found in possession of a garden rake)? the wheelchair-bound Judge Brisson (Miles Mander), whom Holmes discovers standing on his own two feet? the innkeeper’s daughter (Kay Harding)? or perhaps the judge’s housekeeper (Victoria Horne)? In a French Canadian
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