Terror by Night (1946)
Sherlock Holmes is hired to guard a famous diamond, the Star of Rhodesia, aboard an overnight train from London to Edinburgh. When the stone vanishes and a passenger turns up dead, Holmes must unmask the thief hiding among the compartments before the train reaches its final stop.
Confined almost entirely to a single train carriage, Terror by Night wrings an efficient, near real-time mystery out of Universal’s shrinking Holmes budgets, with series regular Dennis Hoey’s Inspector Lestrade along for one of his last rides as comic relief.
Background
Terror by Night is a 1946 Sherlock Holmes film directed by Roy William Neill, with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. It was one of the Holmes films Universal produced in the 1940s with this pair. The plot centres on the Star of Rhodesia, a famous diamond that is hired out for guarding aboard an overnight train from London to Edinburgh. When the stone vanishes and a passenger turns up dead, Holmes must unmask the thief hiding among the compartments before the diamond can be sold on.
What to watch for
Pay attention to the compartment-by-compartment structure of the train, which makes the suspects easy to track and gives the mystery its shape. Rathbone’s Holmes is precise and quick, and Bruce’s Watson supplies the warmth and comic reaction the series depended on. The film builds its tension through the dead passenger and the missing diamond, with Holmes gradually narrowing the list of suspects. Neill keeps the train’s interiors tightly framed, which suits the closing revelation. Notice how the clues are presented to the viewer as the detective sees them, so the solution can be checked against what was shown.
