Dressed To Kill (lost original closing sequence to film; 1946)

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This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its lack of concrete references.



Dress to kill poster.jpeg

Theatrical poster.

Status: Lost

Dressed to Kill (1946) is the final film in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes series, which was sold to television later on and has been seen many times by many different people. However, the version available today is missing the original closing sequence.

Synopsis

The film begins with the auction of three music boxes in London. The buyer of one of these boxes is found and killed by thugs who work for Hilda Courtney, a criminal mastermind who is searching for the plates left behind by her husband, who had stolen them from the London Mint earlier. Now Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are brought in to recover the plates and have to solve the puzzle of the three music boxes, which play a tune called "The Swagman". The trail leads to the house of Dr. Samuel Johnson, where the missing plates are hidden away in a niche on the second floor. The police arrest Hilda and her gang, and in the film as we have it today, Holmes and Watson are last seen going down the stairway leading to the ground floor of the house. As originally seen in theaters, however, the film ended with a closing sequence in which the cast is seen walking down the front steps of Dr. Samuel Johnson's house and into some waiting police cars.

Notes

Unfortunately, the closing sequence described above was deleted from the master of the film by a TV distributor for reasons of length and is likely lost forever as a result.

External Links

References

  • The Sherlock Holmes Centenary Book (book by Allan Eyles), pages 45-46
  • Encyclopedia Sherlockiana (book), pages 50-51 approx.