"Grim mystery to hold you breathless!"
Sherlock Holmes investigates a series of so-called "pajama suicides". He knows the female villain behind them is as cunning as Moriarty and as venomous as a spider. Based on "The Sign of Four" and the short stories "The Dying Detective", "The Final Problem", "The Speckled Band" and "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot".
Basil Rathbone
Sherlock Holmes
Nigel Bruce
Dr. John H. Watson
Gale Sondergaard
Adrea Spedding
Dennis Hoey
Insp. Lestrade
Vernon Downing
Norman Locke
Alec Craig
Radlik
Arthur Hohl
Adam Gilflower
Mary Gordon
Mrs. Hudson
Teddy Infuhr
Larry (uncredited)
Sherlock Holmes investigates a series of so-called "pajama suicides". He knows the female villain behind them is as cunning as Moriarty and as venomous as a spider. Based on "The Sign of Four" and the short stories "The Dying Detective", "The Final Problem", "The Speckled Band" and "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot".
The Good Comrades are a collection of varied gentlemen who crave one thing - solitude. They reside at Drearcliff House, ancestral home of their eldest member. All seems serene and convivial until one by one the members begin to perish in the most grisly of manners. Foul play is suspected by the Good Comrades' insurance agent, who turns to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson for guidance.
When a woman is found dead with her throat torn out, the local villagers blame a supernatural monster. But Sherlock Holmes, who gets drawn into the case from nearby Quebec, suspects a human murderer.
Holmes and Watson board a passenger train bound from London to Edinburgh, to guard the Star of Rhodesia, an enormous diamond worth a fortune belonging to an elderly woman of wealth; but within the first hour of the trip, the woman's son is murdered and the diamond stolen and any of the passengers in their car could be the killer thief.
During WWII several murders occur at a convalescent home where Dr. Watson has volunteered his services. He summons Holmes for help and the master detective proceeds to solve the crime from a long list of suspects including the owners of the home, the staff and the patients recovering there.
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
Gamblers who "took" an out-of-town sucker in a crooked poker game feel shadowy vengeance closing in on them.
Jane Marple solves the mystery when a local woman is poisoned and a visiting movie star seems to have been the intended victim.
When Watson reads from the newspaper there have been two similar murders near Whitechapel in a few days, Sherlock Holmes' sharp deductive is immediately stimulated to start its merciless method of elimination after observation of every apparently meaningless detail. He guesses right the victims must be street whores, and doesn't need long to work his way trough a pawn shop, an aristocratic family's stately home, a hospital and of course the potential suspects and (even unknowing) witnesses who are the cast of the gradually unraveled story of the murderer and his motive.
