The Woman in Green

Young women are being killed in London and a finger has been cut from each body. The police can find no connection; the victims did not know each other and there is no common motive. Sherlock Holmes is called in. He soon sees that this is not a series of murders but a blackmail scheme: someone is making people believe under hypnosis that they have committed a crime, then asking money for silence. The name behind it is his old enemy. Roy William Neill directs. Basil Rathbone plays Holmes, Nigel Bruce plays Watson and Henry Daniell plays Moriarty. The film is one of the links in the Rathbone series and the plot rests on an original screenplay; only details are taken from Conan Doyle. The idea it uses is hypnosis, a subject widely treated in the popular culture of the period. Rathbone said in later years that Henry Daniell played Moriarty better than anyone. Its best section is the scene where Holmes and Moriarty talk face to face; the two speak without stating the threat outright. It is short and direct; the film runs a little over an hour. It was made at the beginning of the postwar period and is among the entries in the series set in modern times. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Holmes adaptations and forties crime films. Who it is not for: the plot is simple, Watson is a caricature, and the solution comes quickly.