The House of Fear (1945)

Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) are sent to Drearcliff manner, situated on a coastal cliff in ever-misty Scotland. There, two member of the “Good Comrades” club have died after receiving an envelop filled with orange pits. The members all live together in an aged house, looked after by housekeeper Mrs. Monteith, and each had taken out an insurance policy naming the surviving members as joint beneficiaries, so it seems likely that one of them is the killer. The bodies have been mutilated according to a curse on the house that those who die will not go to their graves whole.

Whenever I review a film that is primarily seen as a mystery, I feel the need to justify doing so. After all, I don’t review mysteries, but I do review horror. The House of Fear fits into that category, more precisely in the Old Dark House horror category. Pivotally, the setting is an old dark house, with twisting stairs, multiple rooms, large windows, and plenty of ornate objects to cast long shadows. It also has a secret passageway. Then there is a storm, a curse, illegal digging in a graveyard, and a sinister housekeeper who announces who is to die next.

This was a Universal picture, the kings of horror. They’d taken over the franchise from Fox after the first two Holmes Rathbone films, and while their first forays were WWII propaganda spy films—and were the weakest of the series—they eventually found their feet, putting Holmes into several gothic tales. It was an area Universal excelled in. They knew how to set an eerie tone. The literary Holmes stories might be all about logic, but Universal made this one about fog and rain, and as the title says, fear. If their intentions weren’t clear enough, they released it on a double bill with The Mummy’s Curse.

This is my favorite of the 12 Universal films. The mystery is solid, giving viewers enough information to solve it, but making it complicated enough that they probably won’t; it’s claimed to be based on Doyle’s “The Five Orange Pips,” but only in a very general way. The atmosphere is even better, with a nicely creepy vibe through most of it, and a wonderful nightmare-like scene where Watson runs in and out of the house as the storm is raging, frightened that killers are all around him. The sets are beautiful if inexpensive, with the house borrowed from Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943) and the town and graveyard reused from Universal’s Classic Monster films.

Rathbone might not have been at his peek (this was his tenth time in the part and he was tiring of it, though he was very fond of the Universal team and director Roy Neill), but all he needed to do to control a scene was stand there with that profile and speak with his slicing but lyrical voice. It might not be his best performance in the part, but it’s still better than anyone else has managed. The rest of the cast are solid. It has a hole here or there and can’t match the Fox Holmes duo, but for a rainy day film, The House of Fear is perfect.