Easily one of the best of the great series of 15 short features from 1939 to 1946 with Basil Rathbone, The Scarlett Claw sets up the perfect mystery with a menu of tropes that hit perfectly in the way that director Roy William Neill applies them.  All the right elements are here - a remote area where a woman is killed and rings the bells of the church for help before she dies; public rumors by the locals that ghosts are about; a murderous master of disguise; a killer who rips out the throats of his victims; a midnight chase and shoot-out in a fog-enshrouded marsh.  When the scene shifts to Holmes and Watson attending a seminar on the occult the good doctor references the Hound of the Baskervilles, thus foreshadowing the tone of this particular film.  And it's a good way to start because from the get-go The Scarlett Claw grips the viewer with the mystery of the killings with the only drawback being that this movie is just too short.

Travelling to Quebec Canada Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) attend a convening of minds on the Occult to discover that the leader of the convention Lord William Penrose (Paul Cavanagh) has to leave because his wife has been murdered.  When Holmes and Watson arrive at the murder scene in the village of La Mort Rouge they discover that Lady Penrose has had her throat ripped out by some sort of jagged claw, something that has happened to other victims.  Although Lord Penrose believes the work to be that of an evil spirit and shuns Holmes help, the detective investigates and discovers that a ‘ghost' that stalks the nearby marsh is responsible for the murders.  The town folk resist helping Holmes because they all believe the evil spirit in the marsh may kill them but upon further investigation Holmes deduces that a demented actor is behind the murders and is doing the horrible deeds because he has been wronged by certain people in the village.  Investigating a ramshackle hotel, Holmes and Watson discover that the actor has donned many disguises and they must solve the identity of the killer before he kills again.

Coming in at 74 minutes The Scarlett Claw from 1944 is a non-stop grabber.   The dark scenes with Paul Cavanagh's Lord William Penrose in his mansion as he looks over the body of his dead wife is great at setting up the whole mystery- the suspicious butler and belligerent attitude of Penrose allows the low-angel camera to look up onto Holmes and Watson as they begin their investigation.  Director Roy William Neill and Cinematographer George Robinson work well to establish each scene and location so that the viewer is never in doubt as to the actual physical layout of locations and within that scheme manages to set up chase scenes and secret agendas so that the ending is never telegraphed.  The way that the ‘ghost' of the swamp is realized is masterful in how optical effects are used to show the viewer what Holmes sees when he pursues the killer in the countryside.

There are some well-wrought touches to the film showing a masterful directorial hand setting up great transitions for scenes.  At one point in the story Holmes opens a letter the day after a murder and finds that it's from the victim, Lady Penrose asking Holmes for help because she believes someone is going to kill her.  The plot point is set up perfectly for a great first-act closing line as when Holmes heads to the murder scene saying "... we've accepted a commission from a victim to find her murderer-  For the first time we've been retained by a corpse".  This is the kind of thing that may be a little over the top for Holmes fans but still injects the movie with the needed macabre spirit that will build before the final scene.

Screenwriters Paul Gangelin, Edmund L. Hartmann, and Brenda Weisberg set up a wonderfully complex layered story that is steeped in mystery which is not based on any story from the Arthur Conan Doyle canon.  The writers keep the pace up while keeping an off-balanced sense of humor intact as when Holmes chases a killer into the moors only to come to the rescue of Watson who has followed to protect the detective and winds up neck-deep in quicksand.  It is typical of the character and relationship these two have in that Watson feels he is the smart one while Holmes is so self-involved with intellectual activity that he impulsively puts himself and his colleague in danger.

Rathbone and Bruce are perfect in the leads and this one is sure to please even the purest Conan Doyle aficionado, and it is clear why this series remains to be one of the most popular for the actors as well as for Universal.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older