The Pearl of Death (1944)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fresh and Exciting

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Based on "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle this film brings Rathbone and Bruce back as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Crooks are after a valuable Pearl, it's up to Holmes and Watson to stop the pearl finding it's way into the clutches of the wrong doers. But as Holmes makes an uncharacteristic mistake the upper hand is lost and Holmes and Watson are soon forced to take up the chase. Can they get the pearl before murderous consequences occur? As with the other Rathbone and Bruce films performances here are solid. Dennis Hoey supports well as the bumbling Lestrade, as do Evelyn Ankers and Miles Mander as Naomi Drake and Giles Conover. Shot by Universal and directed by Roy William Neill this is 9th of 14 films with Rathbone and Bruce taking the lead. This is a straight forward Sherlock Holmes story and therefor it's one of the better ones that Universal pumped out, no Nazi's or dinosaurs in sight - although there is the Creeper, but the less said about that the better. It feels more upbeat in pace than others in the series, it feels like reading a comic at times where the hero is trying to keep up and then get ahead of the bad guys. I enjoyed this and like the other films in the series its guaranteed to add to a wonderful lazy Sunday afternoon. A lovely mystery and suspense film with a chase style pace to it. Enjoy.

Heavily based on Conan Doyle's Six Napoleon's, the U overall touch was added making it more to the taste of the forties audiences. The threads of the missing Pearl, random killings and broken China seem almost secondary go the fiendish, back breaking Creeper. Very good use of camera work, they purposely kept shots of the Creeper as a shadowy figure only, until the latter part of the film that is. We get the usual femme fatale in the shape of the beautiful Evelyn Ankers. The darkness of the Creeper is counter balanced by the usual silliness from Watson and LeStrade, and Rathbone's disguises are great fun. All in all I think it's one of the better outings for Rathbone, plenty of fun. 7/10

Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) allows arrogance to get in the way of common-sense, disarming a museum's alarm system to highlight its inadequacies, and giving criminal mastermind Giles Conover (Miles Mander) the ideal opportunity to make off with a legendary pearl in the process. Conover is quickly apprehended, but not before he has had a chance to stash the valuable gem inside a plaster Napolean bust.In order to restore his tarnished reputation, Holmes sets out to locate the missing gem, following a trail of broken bodies and smashed crockery left in the wake of Conover's murderous henchman, a massive brute known as The Hoxton Creeper (Rondo Hatton), who is also looking for the pearl, snapping the back of anyone unlucky enough to have purchased one of the ornaments.I have mixed feelings about The Pearl of Death: as perversely satisfying as it is to see London's greatest sleuth make a complete ass of himself for a change, I find it hard to accept that Holmes's mistake, a result of his pomposity, ultimately results in several innocent people being snapped like a twig by The Creeper; likewise, I struggle with the absurd level of buffoonery displayed by both Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) and Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey)—while admittedly funny, it's extremely hard to swallow that they could really be that stupid.In the end, it is Rondo Hatton's Hoxton Creeper that qualifies this film as essential viewing: born with the disfiguring condition acromegaly, which causes enlarged features, Hatton's ominous physical presence makes him a truly menacing foe, one guaranteed to send a chill down the spine (immediately before snapping it!).

***SPOILERS*** Even though he's barley in the movie and he doesn't show up until halfway through it it's with out a doubt Rondo Hatton as the notorious Hoxton Creeper who's the star of the show. Hatton is so fearsome and threatening that we know about him all throughout the film "Pearl of Death" well before he made his grand appearance in it!It's when jewelry crooks Giles Conover and his pretty assistant Naomi Drake, Evelyn Ankers, had the precious Borgia Pearl stolen from them, after they stoled it first, by an undercover, as a priest, Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone, that they enlisted the services of the Hoxton Creeper to get it back for them. The Creeper was presumed to have been killed, by the local London police and Scotland Yard, in his aborted escaped attempt from Devil's Island where he was supposedly drowned in the Caribbean Sea. Conover gets the Creeper on board with him only after he himself heisted the pearl for a second time from the London Royal Regent Museum and hid it in a bust of Napoleon in a local antique shop. The problem for Conover is that there were six exact Napoleon busts and by the time his assistant, Naomi Drake, got to the store to buy them back they were all sold out!It took a while for Holmes to figure it out but it was the Napoleon busts that were the reason for the deaths of a number of Londoners who were found with their backs broken, the Creeper's way of murdering his victims, and smashed dishes cups and bowels scattered all around their bodies. Realizing that these murders were the work of the Creeper who used the smashed dishes and cups to cover up his real search for the Napoleon busts Holmes soon came to the conclusion that it was Conover who was using him to find the Napoleon bust with the Bogia Pearl hidden, by Conover, in it!***SPOILERS*** One of the better Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone as the famous detective "The Pearl of Death" did in fact have a very contrived and not too believable ending. We never got to see what kind of relationship the Creeper had with the beautiful Naomi Drake in that he goes completely bonkers when he's told, by Holmes, that she's to face the London Gallows for the murder of Doctor Watson, Nigel Bruce. This ridicules and obvious trick by Holmes, in that Dr. Watson was in fact alive and well, had the Creeper turn on his "Master" Giles Conover without as much as a second thought in that Holmes was only pulling his leg! There's also the confrontation between Holmes, with the aid of a handgun, and the Creeper that completely took place off camera! Which made you wounder that if it were actually seen by the audience it would have came across so phony, the indestructible Creeper gunned down by a puny .38 revolver, that those watching it would have had trouble believing it!