Frederick Worlock

Dartmoor Prison where a prisoner is making music boxes, another prisoner approaches him making a proposition to tell what he knows, distrusting the fellow, a comment is made where the man will take his chances, having less than two and a half years before his release. There is no telling who might be on the inside working for Scotland Yard. John Davidson (Cyril Delavanti), a convicted thief in Dartmoor prison embeds code revealing the hidden location of extremely valuable stolen Bank of England currency printing plates in the melody notes of three music boxes that he crafts to be sold at auction. Each box plays a subtly different version of "The Swagman". At the auction each is purchased by a different buyer. Julian Emery (Edmund Breon), William Kilgour (Harry Allen) and a woman who runs a small curio shop and comes often to the auction house to pick up Knick Knacks. After the auction is over, a man Colonel Cavanaugh (Frederick Worlock) comes, says he was delayed and pays 5 pounds just to get the info on the buyers of the musical boxes. Colonel works for Hilda Courtney (Patricia Morison). Dr. Watson's (Nigel Bruce) friend Julian Emery, a music box collector, pays him and Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) a visit and tells them of an attempted burglary in his house the previous night of a plain cheap box (similar to the one he bought at auction) while leaving other much more valuable ones. Holmes and Watson ask to see and are shown Emery's collection. Emery comments that he has a box in his collection, which he bought just the day before, which resembles the one that was stolen. After they leave, Emery welcomes a female acquaintance, Hilda Courtney, who tries unsuccessfully to buy the auctioned box. when he declines, a male friend of Courtney's Hamid (Harry Cording) who has sneaked in, murders Emery. Courtney admonishes him for entering, killing Julian, and tells him to get out. They both leave with the box in her possession. The chauffeur is named Hamid, working with the Colonel and Mrs. Courtney. The three of them are in the same vehicle as they drive off, Hilda telling the Colonel of the murder. Inspector Hopkins (Carl Harbord) is assigned to investigate Emery's murder, and he promptly calls Holmes. Holmes finds the music box missing from Emery's collection. At this murder Holmes becomes even more curious and learns to whom else the boxes were auctioned off from auctioneer Ebenezer Crabtree (Holmes Herbert). Crabtree also informs Holmes that the boxes came from Dartmoor Prison and that a man came an hour after the auction wanting the boxes, and that Crabtree gave the man the buyer's addresses. Holmes and Watson arrive at the house of the person who bought the second one, just as a strange maid (Courtney in disguise) is on her way "to go shopping". They later realize it was not a maid and instead is revealed to be Hilda in disguise. She locked a child in a closet in order to steal the box from the child. Holmes is able to buy the third box. Courtney and Hamid track the woman who runs the curio shop and find that Holmes reached to her earlier and purchased the 3rd musical box from her. Upon examination, Holmes discovers that its variant musical notes' numbers correlate to letters of the alphabet. Holmes also finds that the 3 musical boxes were made by the same man in Dartmoor prison, John Davidson, who was connected with the theft of the Bank of England currency printing plates. Scotland Yard fills him in on the stolen bank plates. The plates were stolen 2 years ago. Davidson hid the plates (for printing the 5-pound notes) before he was arrested. any leak of the plates being stolen would have resulted in devaluation of the pound, since public confidence in the currency would be shaken. Davidson never revealed the location of the plates. Holmes theorizes that the plates were not hidden properly, and hence Davidson wants his comrades to take possession of them before he is released 2 years hence. This is where the music boxes connect, but all three are needed to decode the message. Holmes deduces the tune of the boxes is the clue to the location of the plates, but exactly how to extract that information he thinks he will get closer learning more about the tune itself. He goes to an actor's pub where he finds Joe Cisto, to help him identify the song. Joe helps, now Holmes must decipher the variations of the song from the three boxes, one of which he has. Through his part of the message Holmes knows that the plates are in the possession of a Doctor whose first or last initial is "S". So, he instructs Scotland yard to question the 10,000 or so doctors in London who match this description. Back at home, the flat is found ransacked, and a cigarette with a distinct type of tobacco is the sole clue. Holmes tracks down the woman who bought the tobacco (it is a pure Egyptian blend and only 3 people in London buy it), Courtney. While confronting her, Holmes is ambushed by her accomplices, handcuffed, taken to a warehouse, hung by a rafter, and left with poison gas filling the room. While Holmes is narrowly escaping death as he had stolen the cuff keys from Colonel Cavanaugh during the transfer to the warehouse, Courtney steals the box from Watson. Watson is visited by Hilda Courtney on the rouse she is looking for Holmes's help, while she distracts Watson with a smoke bomb, she steals the box Watson inadvertently shows her by moving the biscuit jar before he went for the fire extinguisher. Holmes manages to make it back in one piece and while conversing, Watson offhandedly mentions a quote from Dr. Samuel Johnson. Thinking about this quote, Holmes makes a connection as to where the stolen plates may be hidden. Having stolen all the boxes and deciphered their message, Courtney and gang have joined a tour group at Dr. Samuel Johnson's house, now a museum, where they slipped away and found the plates hidden within a bookshelf. Courtney is stealing the plates when Holmes ambushes the group. Scotland Yard officers arrest them, and the plates are returned to the Bank.

An off-screen narrator tells of the deadly curse carried by the fabulous "Star of Rhodesia" diamond. In London, Vivian Vedder (Renee Godfrey) verifies that a carpenter has completed a coffin for her recently deceased mother's body, which she is transporting to Scotland by train. She'll be taking it on the 7 PM train to Edinburgh. She boards the train that evening, as do Lady Margaret Carstairs (Mary Forbes), who owns and is transporting the famous Star of Rhodesia diamond. Star of Rhodesia, which she has owned for many years, was the object of an attempted theft when Lady Margaret wore it at a royal function. Holmes is certain the thieves will try again. Also travelling on the train are Lady Margaret's son, Roland, Sherlock Holmes, whom Roland has hired to protect the diamond, Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey), who is also worried about the diamond's safety and Dr. Watson and Watson's friend Major Duncan-Bleek (Alan Mowbray). Holmes briefly examines the diamond. Carstairs brings Holmes to his compartment, where his mother is skeptical about the aid of a "policeman", but she lets Holmes examine the Star. While Holmes, Watson, Duncan-Bleek, and Lady Margaret are in the dining car, Carstairs falls onto the floor of his compartment. Lestrade hears the thud, but finds the door to the Carstairs compartment locked. Holmes arrives and has the attendant (Billy Bevan) open it. They find Carstairs dead and the box that had contained the Star empty. The body shows no wounds aside from a tiny spot of blood, but Holmes declares it's murder, since a thief arriving right after Carstairs died of natural causes is too improbable. Lestrade, Holmes, and Watson learn nothing conclusive in questioning the other passengers. Watson gets nowhere at all in his attempt with cranky William Kilbane (Frederick Worlock), a professor of mathematics. However, when he questions Alfred Shallcross (Gerald Hamer), he gets an immediate confession. At one point during the investigation, Watson believes an elderly couple is guilty of the crime but the only crime that they have committed is stealing a teapot from a hotel. While searching the train, Holmes is pushed out of the train, nearly to his death, but climbs back into the day coach and discovers a secret compartment in the coffin carrying Miss Vedder's mother. It has the remains of an elderly woman in the top part, but also a false bottom that could have hidden the murderer. He suspects that one of the people on the train is the notorious jewel thief Colonel Sebastian Moran. Upon further questioning, Miss Vedder admits that a man paid her to transport the coffin. Holmes asks if her employer was Duncan-Bleek, but she says she never saw him before. Watson is shocked that Holmes would subject his old friend to that kind of suspicion. As Watson and Duncan-Bleek join the group, Holmes reveals that he swapped the diamond with an imitation while examining it. Lestrade ostensibly takes possession of the real diamond. In the luggage compartment, Holmes and Watson find a train guard murdered with a poisoned dart. He also has a tiny spot of blood, but this time they find the tiny gelatin dart that delivered poison. Unlike the case of Carstairs, there hadn't been enough time for it to dissolve in the wound. Meanwhile, a street criminal named Sands (Skelton Knaggs) incapacitates the conductor. Sands was hidden inside the coffin, and is in cahoots with Duncan-Bleek, who is, in fact, Colonel Moran. He reports how he dealt with the guard and the attendant, and turns the diamond he stole over to the Major, who knows it's the fake planted by Holmes. Sands and Moran go to Lestrade's room, where Sands knocks Lestrade unconscious and steals the diamond from him. But Moran double-crosses Sands, shooting him dead with the same dart gun he used to kill Roland and the guard. The train makes an unexpected stop to pick up several Scottish policemen, led allegedly by Inspector McDonald. MacDonald, claiming jurisdiction because he's from the Edinburgh police, has them all move to the dining room to conduct his investigation. Holmes informs McDonald that Duncan-Bleek is really Moran, and McDonald arrests Moran and finds the diamond in his vest, but Moran seizes a policeman's gun and pulls the emergency cord to stop the train. During a scuffle in which the lights are turned off, Holmes subdues and handcuffs Moran, then secretly hides him under a table. MacDonald takes the prisoner off the train, which starts off for Edinburgh. Holmes points out to Watson that Moran lies unconscious on the floor. As he revives, he's startled not to find himself in the company of MacDonald, who was actually his accomplice. However, Holmes realized that (mainly because he knew the real MacDonald), and the man the fake police took off the train was Lestrade. Meanwhile, Lestrade has untangled himself, pulled a gun on his supposed captors, and arrested them. Moran wants to take solace in the fact that Holmes doesn't have the Star, but of course the detective has pulled yet another switch, and reveals the real diamond.

A young heiress finds evidence suggesting that at night she acts under the influence of a family curse and has begun committing ghastly murders in a nearby park. Several murders have been committed in a London park and the victims have been savagely clawed about the throat. The police believe that a woman is a killer, and perhaps she is a (she) werewolf. Heiress Phyllis Allenby, fears she is the criminal, based on the family legend of the "Allenby Curse" which was the belief that members of the family at times assumed the form of a wolf. Her aunt's constant reminders to her of the "Allenby Curse" only serves to keep her niece's fears alive. —Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net> In the turn of the century in London, the aristocratic lawyer Barry Lanfield proposes to marry the heiress Phyllis Allenby and she accepts. Phyllis lives in the family manor with her "aunt" Martha Winthrop, her pseudo-niece Carol Winthrop and the housemaid Hannah. Out of the blue, dreadful murders happen in a nearby park and Detective Latham believes that they are victims of a werewolf or a she-wolf, but his superior Inspector Pierce says that they are victims of an animal. Meanwhile, Phyllis finds blood on her hands, and her shoes and clothing dirty and she believes that she may be killing people under the influence of a family curse. Who might be the serial-killer? —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

When several women are murdered and their forefingers severed, Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Watson (Nigel Bruce) are called into action, but Holmes is baffled by the crimes at the start. Four women murdered in various parts of London, each woman from a different walk of life in a different area of the city and each with the right fore finger surgically removed. Holmes examines the body of the fourth victim in the morgue with Inspector Gregson. Holmes notes the only clue so far is the manner in which the fingers were surgically removed, meticulous and cleanly. They retire to Pembroke House for a drink. At the bar of Pembroke House discussing the murders with Gregson, Sir George Fenwick and Sherlock Holmes acknowledge one another, each with a nod. Holmes notices the woman with Sir George, a beautiful blond woman, as they leave the establishment, headed for her house, for a nightcap. The woman is named Lydia, her servant is Crandon. Widower Sir George Fenwick (Paul Cavanagh), after a romantic night alone with his girlfriend Lydia Marlowe (Hillary Brooke), is hypnotized into believing that he is responsible for the crimes. George leaves the hotel, goes straight to Lydia's, there were ten hours he cannot account, there he encounters a man describing his moves the prior night, putting something in his pocket, Sir George sits on a couch dumbfounded at the man's precise accounting of his moves the prior evening. The man is Moriarity. He is certain that he is guilty after he awakes from a stupor and finds a woman's forefinger in his pocket. His daughter Maude (Eve Amber) comes to Holmes and Watson without realizing that Moriarty's henchman is following her. She tells Holmes and Watson that she found her father burying a forefinger under a pile of soil. She has dug up the forefinger and shows it to them. Fenwick is then found dead, obviously murdered by someone to keep him from talking. Holmes theorizes that Moriarty (Henry Daniell), who was supposed to have been hanged in Montevideo, is alive and responsible for the crimes. Holmes sees George's right hand clenched, indicating he wanted to inform others of the item in his hand, a matchbook from Pembroke House. Holmes is certain Sir George wanted to alert someone of the person or persons seeing him at Pembroke House the prior evening. Holmes receives a notice from Sir George's bank of the closure of an account of 10,000 pounds indicating a blackmail payoff. Sir George emptied his bank account before he was killed and was likely to pay blackmail to some individual. He was shot before he could divulge the plot around the murders, the method of the criminals, and those involved in the crime. Watson is then called to help a woman who fell over while feeding her pet bird. He leaves, and minutes later, Moriarty appears and explains that he faked the phone call so he could talk to Holmes. He then leans one of the chairs back, obviously signaling someone. Holmes sees an open window in an empty house. When Moriarty leaves, Watson arrives. Holmes explains what Moriarty did, notices that a window shade that was shut in the empty house is now open and tells Watson to investigate. Inside the empty house Watson, looking through the window, believes that he sees a sniper shoot Holmes in his apartment. Holmes then appears at the house and explains that he put a bust of Julius Caesar there because of the bust's resemblance to his own face. Holmes realized that as soon as he sat there, Moriarty would have him killed. The two discover a hypnotized discharged army officer shot at the decoy. Seeing the ex-officer in the state he was after the attempted killing, and have him state emphatically "she" ordered him to shoot, Holmes now knows it was hypnotism behind the finger murders. Inspector Gregson (Matthew Boulton) takes the sniper, a hypnotized ex-soldier, away, but the sniper is later killed on Holmes's doorstep. Holmes now realizes that Moriarty's plan involves: 1) killing women and cutting off their forefingers, 2) making rich, single men believe they have committed the crime, 3) using this fake information to blackmail them, and 4) counting on the victims being too terrified to expose the scheme. Holmes explains how the scheme works where the severed finger is placed on the person to be blackmailed, waking the person is told of things occurring to him while he was under hypnosis, and not knowing he was under hypnosis, pays the blackmailer. The person blackmailed thinks he may have committed the actual crime during some actual lapse in sanity. With hypnosis behind these crimes, Holmes and Watson are anxious to pursue Holmes suspicions which lead to the hypnotist, and inevitably, to the criminals. Moriarity enters Lydia's house, encounters the doctor performing the finger removals, goes to Lydia, informing her Holmes and Watson have just left for Mesmer Club, the hypnotists meeting place, for a demonstration. He insists Holmes' insatiable curiosity will get him to follow Lydia back to her house for his final meeting. Dr. Watson is subject to hypnosis at the direction the host Onslow, who proceeds to prove to the audience hypnotism works. As Watson returns to his chair, newly educated on the subject, Lydia enters Mesmer Club, and sees the hypnotist performance and Holmes sees her. They agree Dr. Onslow's demonstration was not a serious display where she accepts Holmes' invitation for a drink at Pembroke House. He discusses a case he is working on that has him baffled. Holmes befriends Lydia (Hillary Brooke), whom he had seen with Sir George at a restaurant, suspecting that is she in cahoots with Moriarty. She takes him to her house, where he is apparently hypnotized. Moriarty enters and has one of his men cut Holmes with a knife to verify that he is hypnotized. He then tells Holmes to write a suicide note (which he does), walk out of Lydia's apartment onto the ledge, and jump to his death. Watson and the police then appear and grab the criminals. Holmes then reveals he was never really hypnotized, but secretly ingested a drug to make him appear as if he had been hypnotized and also insensitive to pain. Moriarty then escapes from the hold of a policeman and jumps from the top of Lydia's house to another building. However, he hangs onto a pipe which becomes loose from the building, causing him to fall to his death. This is the third Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film in which Moriarty dies. In all three films, he falls to his death. He is always presumed dead until he turns up in the next film.

The Lone Wolf undercover to foil the Nazis stealing the plans!

In London, in 1887, prominent physician Henry Jekyll incurs the ire of his older colleagues because of his experiments and views on the possibility of separating the good and evil aspects of man's nature. Hanry is deeply in love with Beatrix Emery, the daughter of Sir Charles Emery, who likes Henry, but is concerned over his radical ideas and open display of affection for Bea. Henry throws himself into his work and has enough success experimenting with rabbits and guinea pigs to make him confident that the serun he has developed will work for humans. Hoping to try the serum out on Sam Higgins, a man who went mad after being in a gas works explosion, Henry rushes to the hospital but discovers that Higgins has just died. Henry then decides to take the serum himself and is briefly transformed, in both thought and countenance, into an evil alter ego. After taking an antidote to turn himself back to normal, Henry tells his butler, Poole, that strange voice he heard was a "Mr. Hyde". Just then, Sir Charles, accompanied by Bea, comes for a visit and announces that he will be taking Bea to the Continent to give Henry time to consider his position. Despite his loneliness during Bea's absence, Henry refrains from further experimentation until he gets a letter from Bea explaining that their trip is being extended because of Sir Charles' health. After taking another dose of the serum, Henry again turns into Hyde and goes to a music hall, where hees a baramid Ivy Peterson, an beautiful, sensual young woman whom he rescued from an attacker some weeks before. When summoned to Hyde's table, Ivy does not recognize him as Henry, but becomes frightened and screams, causing a brawl to erupt among the customers. Hyde later secretly asks the proprietor to fire Ivy and, despite her reluctance, insists on taking her home in a carriage, where he forces himself on her. Some time later, Bea is concerned that Henry has not written to her in weeks, but hides her worries from her father, who decides that she and Henry may marry, after all. Meanwhile, Ivy, who has been set up in a flat by Hyde, lives in constant fear of him. Her friend Marcia is shocked when she accidentally sees welts on Ivy's back, and when Hyde suddenly comes to the flat, he behaves particularly cruelly toward Ivy. Soon Henry learns that Bea has just returned and determines never to take the serum again. He then sends an anonymous gift of fifty pounds to Ivy and melts down the key to the street entrance of his laboratory, which "Hyde" has been using. That afternoon, Henry meets Bea at a museum and is overjoyed that Sir Charles now agrees to their imminent marriage. When Henry returns home, Ivy is waiting in his patient's room because Marcia and her boyfriend had recommended him. Ivy recognizes Henry as the man who was once kind to her, but momentarily has an uneasy feeling about him. When she shows him her scars and he realizes what Hyde has done to her, Henry is ashamed and soothingly promises her that she will never see Hyde again. That night, as Henry happily strolls across the park toward Bea's house, he suddenly turns into Hyde, without having taken the serum. He then goes to Ivy's flat and finds her celebrating her freedom from him. He repeats words that she had spoken to Henry, she becomes hysterical with fright and screams, but he strangles her to death before the neighbors can summon the police. He then rushes to the outher door of the laboratory but realizes that the key was destroyed. Poole will not admit him through the front door, so, in desperation Hyde goes to Dr. John Lanyon, Henry's good friend. After demanding the medications that work as an antidote, Hyde transforms back into Henry, to John's shock and horror. Henry reveals everything to John, then goes to Bea to break their engagement. She refueses to accept that they cannot be married, and he leaves, then returns as Hyde. She faints, but her initial scream has roused Sir Charles, whom Hyde then beats to death with his walking stick. Now desperate, Hyde pushes past Poole at Henry's front door and goes to the laboratory to take more antidote. As Sir Charles's body is examined by the police, John sees Henry's cane and realizes what must have happened. He then takes the police to Henry's house where they break down the door of the laboratory just after Hyde has taken the antidote and turned back into Henry. Henry says that Hyde was there but left, but in his anxiety under John accusations that he, indeed, is Sir Charles's murderer, Henry quickly transforms back into Hyde. While attempting to fight off the police and flee, he is mortally wounded, and as he dies, his demeanor changes back into Henry.

Convicts escaping from Devil's Island come under the influence of a strange Christ-like figure. Verne (Clark Gable) wants nothing more than to escape from a penal colony located off the northern coast of South America. He tries to involve Julie (Joan Crawford), a saloon girl, in his plans but she turns him in to the authorities. On Verne's next try, he piggybacks on the escape of six other convicts and runs into Julie again in the process. One of the convicts is a spiritual figure (Ian Hunter) who seems to know what will happen before anyone else. The group attempts to travel through the jungle, board a boat, and make it to the mainland. —JeanneArmintrout@juno.com