Dressed to Kill (1946) (Force)

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General		Extras
Category	Mystery	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1946
Running Time	71:37
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Roy William Neill
Studio Distributor	Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Basil Rathbone Nigel Bruce Patricia Morison Edmund Breon Frederick Worlock Carl Harbord Patricia Cameron Holmes Herbert Harry Cording Leyland Hodgson Mary Gordon Ian Wolfe
Case	?
RPI	$9.95	Music	Hans J. Salter Jack Brooks William Lava

    This is the 14th and final Sherlock Holmes film starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. This is slightly better than the previous entry in the series, but still shows the effects of budgetary constraints.

    In Dartmoor Prison, we see a criminal making music boxes. The criminal forged Bank of England plates, which have never been found. Three of these music boxes are auctioned off at a local dealer's, and one box is bought by a friend of Dr Watson. When the friend is attacked and a valueless music box similar to the one bought at auction is stolen, he calls on Watson and Holmes for assistance. That night the music box is stolen and Watson's friend murdered, and so Holmes goes to work trying to find the owners of the other two music boxes and the secret they contain.

    Inspector Lestrade does not appear in this film, Dennis Hoey obviously having realised that the series had run its course. Basil Rathbone realised this too, and his leaving the series after this film spelled the end. The villainess is played by Patricia Morison, and she is not bad in a role obviously modelled on Irene Adler, the adversary of Holmes in some earlier entries in this series. Harry Cording appears as a different character in each of the three films released by Force Video, and in this one he gets billing for a rare time in his long career, this time playing the murderous chauffer. I may be the first person ever to mention him in a DVD review. Roy William Neill directs as usual, and there are a couple of unusual angles but not much else.

    Recommended if you like the series and also like poor transfers.

Video

    The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, close to the original 1.37:1.

    The video quality is quite poor. The transfer is not sharp. The print material seems to have been from a print several generations away from the master. The image is quite blurry, though I did find it (barely) watchable.

    The transfer is dark and lacking in detail, though most of this film is shot in reasonable light levels.

    There is a significant amount of low level noise present, which makes the black parts of the image seem to have a pale white sheen. The original print material was in below average condition, with a plethora of artefacts in the form of dirt, specks, scratches and splice marks, and every ten minutes there are two or three large reel change markings.

    The film is presented on a single layered disc with no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The sole audio track is Dolby Digital 1.0, so at least it is reasonably authentic.

    Dialogue is generally easy to hear and understand, but this is in spite of a very high level of hiss throughout that makes listening uncomfortable. Undoubtedly this transfer is from an often projected print, but it is a pity that such a poor audio source was used. There is a big audio glitch at 51:53, undoubtedly a feature of the source material.

    The music score is credited to Hans J. Salter, but I suspect most of the score is from Universal's stock music library. The songs in the film, well, they may be English but they don't sound very idiomatic.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    No extras are provided.

    This film has been restored by UCLA, and the restored version has been released by MPI in Region 1 both as part of a four disc set called The Sherlock Holmes Collection Volume Three and separately. Reviews indicate that the image quality is far superior to any previous release, and this would be the edition of choice. Note that there are three volumes containing all of the Universal Holmes films, and in each set one of the films carries an audio commentary (but not this one).

    Other Region 1 releases can safely be ignored in favour of the MPI release, and Holmes aficionados will want to own all three box sets containing the twelve films.

    This is not the worst of the Universal Holmes films, but it is not the best either.

    The video transfer is quite bad.

    The audio transfer is terrible.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall