The Masks of Death is a Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

 film directed by Roy Ward Baker

Roy Ward Baker

Roy Ward Baker , born Roy Horace Baker, was an English film director, credited as Roy Baker for much of his career. His best known film is A Night to Remember which won a Golden Globe for Best English-Language Foreign Film in 1959...

 and starring Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing

Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE was an English actor, known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the handsome but sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, amongst many other roles, often appearing opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally...

 as the sleuth and John Mills

John Mills

Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...

 as Doctor Watson.

Synopsis

The story takes place in 1913. Sherlock Holmes, in virtual retirement, is persuaded to take on a baffling case by Alec MacDonald of Scotland Yard. Three corpses have been found in London's East End - with no visible cause of death. But, judging by the expressions on their faces, they died in conditions of unspeakable terror.

Holmes, accompanied by Doctor Watson, begins his investigation, but before he can make any real progress he is visited by the Home Secretary and a German Diplomat, Graf Udo Von Felseck. They tell him how a German envoy, on a secret mission to Britain, has disappeared from Von Felseck's house in Buckinghamshire. Unless Holmes can track him down, war between the two countries will become imminent.

Are the cases related and is his client being truthful?

Trivia

• This is Cushing's final portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. He previously took over from Douglas Wilmer in the BBC television series in the late 1960s. And Cushing had also donned Holmes' deerstalker in Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles
  The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959 film)
  The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 1959 British detective film produced by Hammer Films and directed by Terence Fisher.The film is the first adaptation from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel of the same name to be filmed in colour and stars Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes, Sir Christopher Lee as...
  
  (1959)