House On Haunted Hill (1958)

Starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig
Directed by William Castle
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

Five strangers are invited by a millionaire to spend the night locked in a haunted house for a cash reward, and on accepting, are soon given reason to fear for their lives.

Probably William Castle's best remembered horror film, the picture has endured thanks to the lure of Price in one of his most iconic roles, as well as the wide audience that has had access to the film since it fell into the public domain.  Although some more subtlety and suspense would have probably served the picture better, and the camerawork is somewhat flatly photographed, it is well staged on its limited sets, and Castle's shock scenes still carry a bit of a jolt.  There's no big names in the cast besides Price, but they play their parts well in sustaining the mystery at the heart of the film, and Ohmart, playing Price's venomous spouse, is very memorable.  Price himself is a delight to watch, charming and distinguished in one scene, and snide and hateful in another, leaving the audience to guess if there is a malevolence beneath his skin, or if that's just another of the screenplay's deceptions.

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Ida Lupino, Alan Marshal, George Zucco
Directed by Alfred Werker
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

Professor Moriarty, the arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, concocts a scheme to occupy Holmes' mind while he prepares a master crime that will cement his villainous reputation.

Rathbone and Bruce's second pairing as Holmes and Watson is one of their best films together, and looks great, with terrific production values, lush cinematography, and a tremendous villain portrayed by George Zucco, who's criminally robbed of higher billing in the credits.  It's a shame that this was the last of their films produced by 20th Century Fox, and in the characters' proper setting of Victorian London.  Although they made several enjoyable adventures for Universal Pictures' B-unit, they never again had the budget they have in this picture, which recaptures the look and feel of fog-drenched London exquisitely.  It's a shame that Rathbone and Zucco don't have more dialogue together in the picture because their interplay is wonderful, and Zucco's sinister voice is so well-suited to the character.  Composer Cyril Mockridge's funeral dirge which accompanies Moriarty before being revealed as a key plot point, adds the proper notes of menace to the mystery.