The Woman in Green

The Private Eye film of the week is The Woman in Green  involves Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson. When several young women are murdered in different parts of  London apparently for no reason as robbery or sex is ruled out as motives  but the same forefinger is surgically removed Holmes is contacted by the yard in desperation

This is the third Sherlock Holmes film with Rathbone and Bruce where the adversary proved to be Professor Moriarty who IN each film falls to death but is later proved to have survived.

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In this film Moriarty arranges for Watson to be out on a fake call for help while he visits Holmes to taunt him and gain information on the set up inside the flat. He then hypnotises an ex solder to kill Holmes from an opposite window. Holmes sends Watson across the way to apprehend the potential killer but Watson appears to arrive too late but on returning to their flat he finds that Holmes has used a bust  similar to his frame to give the killer the false idea he has been successful. Later the service man is also killed when he goes to see Holmes to reveal who is behind  the situation,

In what is the only credulity stretch of the film Holmes accompanies the Inspector to a drinking club in the West End when they spot a well known figure, Sir George Fenwick.  entertaining a much younger women dressed green We know that the woman invites Sir George to her home for a nightcap  but not what  happens immediately next. In the following days when Holmes and the Inspector fail to find any leads  Holmes  and Watson note another young women approaching their rsidence with a handbag that Holmes tells Watson must be containing something she is bringing to him because it does not go with fashionable other clothes she is wearing.

This young woman explains that she found her father going out in the middle of the night after having stayed out one night and she then digs what he has buried which she now hands to Holmes and he opens the box to reveal a severed finger. Homes notices that the girl was being followed so he insists on making his way with her immediately to the home of the father, contacting Scotland Yard to  join them. Unfortunately when they  go to talk to the father, they find that he has been murdered evidently to stop him revealing what happened to him.

Clutching in one hand is the pocket matches from the drinking club where Holmes had seen him before Sir George Fenwick with The Woman in Green. Holmes suspects that the woman with him  plays a  significant role and sets out to trap her suspecting that she is lured to get wealthy men to her rooms where they are hypnotised to believe that they are the killers of the women after they find a finger in their possession. They are then blackmailed by the woman and Moriarty and Sir George had withdrawn all the savings from the bank account shortly before his death,

Holmes then befriends the woman in green who takes him back to her flat and appears to hypnotise him and one of her men  uses a knife to cut Holmes to check he her is her under control, after which  she then orders him to write a suicide note,  and go out on the window ledge and jump to his death,

Watson and the police arrive and it is revealed that Holmes had taken a pain killing substance so he could give the impression of being hypnotised, Moriarty who is in  the building escapes from the police and appears to fall to his death as he jumps from the building to another.