review for Dressed to Kill on AllMovie

The final entry in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes series Dressed to Kill is not one of the best entries, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. An air of déjà vu hangs over Dressed as if we've all seen this before -- which we certainly have. That's a danger with any long-running series, and here it seems as if the writers and director Roy William Neill were simply connecting the dots and coloring by numbers rather than trying to create something special and sparkling. This is especially true with the cavalier manner Holmes displays in regard to the safety of the music box in his possession and in the way in which the detective is so easily tricked; either of these machinations could have been exploited as an opportunity to comment upon the character's egotism, but this opportunity was missed. At least the cast is not to blame, with Rathbone and Bruce turning in their customarily winning performances and a delicious wicked turn from Patricia Morison helping to enliven things. They help make up for most of the film's shortcomings.