What a waste of my time!!!

Let's be realistic.

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Lord love a duck and strike me up a gum tree! This is the quintessential Sherlock Holmes maguffin filled red herring film, or red herring filled maguffin story depending on your point of view. Not only is Holmes NOT solving a murder mystery, he's actually proving that none took place! Except for poor old MacGregor (David Clyde); his lobster pot was in the wrong place at the wrong time.You know, Holmes (Basil Rathbone) really needs to do something about Watson (Nigel Bruce). How about that scene when Watson is bumbling about the Drearcliff Mansion thinking there's only two victims to go, and he just starts shooting wildly in the dark. Boy, he could have hurt somebody that way.However I liked the set up for this story going in. The whole business with the orange pips was a nifty distraction though it would have made more sense if each delivery of the sealed envelope included one LESS pip than remaining members of The Good Comrades Club. That would have been more foreboding. I also got a kick out of Merrivale's (Paul Cavanagh) choice of reading material, books with titles like 'Murder as Fine Art' and 'Murder in the Fog'. Apparently they didn't make a suitable impression on Holmes since he never mentioned it.Well the resolution of the story had a novel touch and was creatively well done. Only thing is, you have to overlook the idea that each supposed 'Good Comrade' victim was replaced by an already dead citizen of the nearby village of Inverneal. You had to wonder why no one was investigating the sudden deaths of people a stone's throw away.

Although beginning suspiciously like a rework of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None," the eighth entry in Universal's Sherlock Holmes series, "The House of Fear," accumulates clue after clue that lead to a solution only a few sharp viewers will guess before Holmes himself does. Seven wealthy retired gentlemen with no close relatives gather at a remote seaside manor house in Scotland. An envelope addressed to one of the men arrives mysteriously with seven orange pips inside, and the recipient is later found murdered. The victim's insurance policy names the other six men as beneficiaries, and an agent from the insurance company enlists the aid of Sherlock Holmes to investigate the death. Produced and directed by a veteran of the Holmes series, Roy William Neill, from a screenplay that Roy Chanslor adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Five Orange Pips," the engrossing film ranks among the best of the Universal series. The script offers Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson amusing opportunities to verbally spar with Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade and to shine in several solo scenes, in one of which he identifies a critical clue that leads to Holmes solving the mystery. Basil Rathbone inhabits the Holmes persona with perfection, perhaps to his own disenchantment at being stereotyped as the character. Paul Cavanaugh, who played Lord Penrose in "The Scarlet Claw, returns as Doctor Merrivale, a member of the men's group. Among the supporting players, Aubrey Mather stands out as Bruce Alistair, another of the original seven gentlemen, and Sally Shepherd is the memorably humorless housekeeper, Mrs. Monteith, who delivers the envelopes that contain the orange pips. Virgil Miller, who lensed "The Pearl of Death," provided the evocative black and white photography that utilizes dramatic shadows and occasionally askew angles to enhance the mystery that enshrouds the sinister Scottish manor.What initially seems overly familiar Agatha Christie territory soon evolves into a deeper mystery that fully engages Holmes's intellect to unravel. From Rathbone and Bruce to the group of seven, the housekeeper, a tobacco merchant, and a group of seamen, the performers are all in fine form; the script is excellent, the direction taut, the photography atmospheric, and "The House of Fear" stands tall among the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes films.

"Murder," says Sherlock Holmes to his friend, Dr. John Watson, "is an insidious thing. Once a man has dipped his fingers in blood, sooner or later he'll feel the urge to kill again." "Good gracious me," says Watson. High on the lip of a Scottish cliff overlooking the crashing sea sits Drearcliffe, a grim stone mansion where, says the legend, no man ever goes whole to his grave. Seven more or less elderly men live there, the members of the Good Comrades Club. The host and fellow member, the owner of Drearcliffe and a most cordial, even innocent and trusting man, is Bruce Alistair. He was quite enthusiastic when someone, he can't remember who he tells Sherlock Holmes, suggested each member of the club take out an insurance policy with all the other members listed as beneficiaries. The last man alive, of course, will be very wealthy. When one of the seven men, sitting at dinner, receives an envelope with seven orange seeds, no one thinks twice. Hours later the man is murdered, done to a crisp in a horrible automobile crash. The next night, another member of the club receives another envelope, this time with six seeds. He's found later at the base of the cliff, so mangled that only his cuff links can identify him. At this point, the insurance company calls in Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone). Soon, he and Watson (Nigel Bruce) are in Scotland and have secured invitations to stay at Drearcliffe. As gruesome death stalks the ancient house, there will be only two members of the Good Comrades Club left alive. One is the perpetually agreeable Bruce Alistair. The other is a man Holmes had encountered years earlier, a famous surgeon who was acquitted of the brutal murder of his young bride. Despite boulders rumbling down the cliff ("Great Scott, Holmes, that was meant for us!"), a suit of armor that trembles, a moldering passageway, the entrance to which is hidden in a great, flaming fireplace, and death that is accompanied by hideous mutilation, Sherlock Holmes is not to be deterred. The secret of the deaths of the Comrades Club will amaze us, but not Holmes, at it's ruthless logic and subtle scheme. The House of Fear runs slightly more than an hour. It sets a brisk pace that doesn't falter and turns out to be one of the better Rathbone/Bruce entries in the series. The mystery is just clever enough that I doubt too many will figure out what's up until most of the movie is over. Rathbone does his usual serious portrayal of Holmes. Bruce does his usual imitation of a buffoon.

Don't know if anyone else spotted it, but at one point when Holmes tells Watson, come on lets have a ???? the subtitles say pint when its obviously PIPE. Otherwise its standard stuff.In fact I would rate it a little undersome of the other better known films.The best is clearly Scarlet Claw.One thing, a character actor that somemay not have picked up on is the EgnlishCyril Delavanti. He is the second victim.