The House of Fear

A club of wealthy, solitary men calling themselves the Good Comrades lives together at Drearcliff House, the ancestral estate of their eldest member. Their quiet routine ends when members begin dying violently, one after another, each having received an envelope holding a number of orange pips beforehand. Because the men are heavily insured and have named one another as beneficiaries, the insurance company grows suspicious and asks Sherlock Holmes to look into the deaths, accompanied as always by Dr. John Watson.

The film is a loose adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Five Orange Pips," directed by Roy William Neill, who also produced it, from a screenplay by Roy Chanslor. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce lead the cast as Holmes and Watson, with Aubrey Mather, Paul Cavanagh, Dennis Hoey and Harry Cording in supporting roles. The 69-minute mystery thriller was released by Universal Pictures.

The House of Fear came in the middle of Neill's run of Sherlock Holmes films, following Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and Sherlock Holmes in Washington, and preceding The Woman in Green, Dressed to Kill, Terror by Night and Black Angel. On IMDb it holds a 7.2 rating from around 6,100 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.9 from about 120 votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from 22 reviews places it close to the audience scores.