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Thursday, May 9, 2019

Sherlock Holmes In Washington (1943)

Starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Marjorie Lord, Henry Daniell, George Zucco
Directed by Roy William Neill
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

Holmes and Watson are sent to Washington D.C. when a courier carrying a valuable document is kidnapped, and it's up to them to track down the kidnappers and find the document before they do.

This was the last of the Universal Holmes films to feature wartime propaganda in any real sense, although most of it is confined to Holmes' admiration of American national monuments, as the story focuses on the search for a McGuffin, which cleverly passes unknown from one person to another again and again, followed amusingly by the camera of Lester White.  It also affords us a chance to see Rathbone and Zucco, as Holmes' primary nemesis, verbally spar once more after Zucco's turn as Moriarty in The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes.  Zucco would have been a welcome presence in several more outings involving the great detective, but sadly this was his last appearance in the series.  Overall, the story's a little slight, but the film's still an entertaining time passer.  

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