Surely the most famous incarnation of Sherlock Holmes by a screen actor is that of Basil Rathbone, who played the detective in fourteen Hollywood films from 1939 to 1946. While Rathbone’s Holmes has been universally praised, the accompanying Dr. Watson has proved more controversial. Nigel Bruce’s Watson has been dismissed as a bumbler, light years from the stalwart army veteran imagined by Conan Doyle. Yet, as a comic foil, Bruce does quite well. In fact, Bruce’s success in the role may have rehabilitated Watson for the screen; the character is absent from a number of previous cinematic Holmes adaptations. After two films for Fox in 1939, Rathbone and Bruce revived their characterizations for a series of films at Universal released between 1942 and 1946, almost all directed by Roy William Neill. Tonight’s program offers two of the most highly regarded films from this series. The Scarlet Claw finds Holmes and Watson in Canada investigating a grisly murder in a film that resembles Universal’s classic horror films from the 1930s. The House of Fear is considered the most convincing mystery of the series, with its plot that echoes echoing Agatha Christie’s seminal And Then There Were None (1939).