Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

classicsoncall I generally enjoy watching these Sherlock Holmes films but I can't help feeling that the famous detective was often writing the script of the story instead of solving a crime. How else would he surmise that the recent murder of a retired major might have been caused by the presumed dead Hawkston Creeper, who confines his back breaking technique to specifically the third lumbar vertebrae? For once, Holmes receives a comeuppance when the famed Borgia Pearl is stolen from the Royal Regent Museum during a Holmes demonstration to prove how easy it would be to steal it! Talk about timing, that's another thing. The villain Conover (Miles Mander) had to position himself to eavesdrop on Holmes and the museum curator without anyone seeing him, a tactic very much over-used by B Westerns of the era and a fair share of mystery flicks as well. A lot of this stuff works only if one is willing to suspend disbelief long enough to allow for the circumstance.However the story throws enough other distractions into the mix to make it an entertaining affair, like the business with the broken china and the six Napoleon busts. When the Creeper was finally brought out of the shadows, I had to marvel at the make-up job done on the character until I learned it was the actual disfigured countenance of the actor Rondo Hatton suffering from a form of acromegaly. My immediate impression was that he might have been right at home in a Dick Tracy film with that series' odd assortment of villains but a quick look at Hatton's credits reveal no such role.As always, Holmes solves his case satisfactorily, but this one time I had to wonder how he managed to thwart an attack by The Creeper. Having set up Conover for his own version of spinal tap by his dreaded associate, the authorities arrive to find Holmes safe and sound, so one can only presume he dispatched The Creeper, though there was no off screen gunshot to herald that conclusion. With the Borgia Pearl of Death now in safe hands, the only question left to my mind was why it seemed to effect various shades of gray throughout the story.

Hitchcoc Those Borgias and their cursed pearls. This is about the smuggling, regaining, and losing of a pearl that has a curse on it. Holmes, who at times is so full of himself, sets up a situation where the big marble gets stolen from the museum. He then must get it back. A career criminal, his female associate, and a back breaking goon known as the Oxton Creeper (who appeared in at least one other movie) have the thing and Holmes is on their trail. Now you have the likes of LeStrade, smugly reminding Holmes what an idiot he is (he's been upstaged for so long) and Watson who on two occasions hides the pearl in his mouth (God forbid the process of retrieval had he swallowed it). Since this is based on the story "The Six Napoleons," we know that eventually the pearl has been hidden in the plaster bust of one of six Napoleon statuettes. The "Creeper" has been sent to the homes of the unfortunate purchasers, breaking their backs, and then breaking their china. This is at the bidding of the bad guys. This is one episode where they allow Watson to have a thread of intelligence. He is instrumental in the solving of the crime. I don't know what Nigel Bruce was like in non-Holmes movies, but I have a feeling he was a pretty good actor, given the chance. Once again, Holmes feels the need at the end to make a speech about greed and avarice. When I was a small child, we used to watch Westerns where, at the conclusion, the cowboy hero would tell us to mind our parents, eat our vegetables, and go to church and Sunday school. I am reminded of these guys when I listen to Rathbone's dronings.

AaronCapenBanner Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce return as Sherlock Holmes & Doctor Watson in this fine entry, based on the short story 'The Six Napoleons'. Master criminal Giles Conover robs a museum after Holmes makes an uncharacteristic mistake. Embarrassed, he resolves to retrieve the stolen pearl, but Conover's immense henchman The Creeper(played by Rondo Hatten, who suffered from a disfiguring disease in real life) is smashing sculptures where Conover had hidden it, but was unable to retrieve in time. Evelyn Ankers costars as his accomplice. Another atmospheric and exciting entry with The Creeper being used well, and returning series actress Evelyn Ankers is good in a different role.

ctomvelu1 Very loosely based on "The Six Napoleons," this flick finds Holmes and Watson on the trail of a missing black pearl. Holmes gets it away from the bad guys and then loses it back to the bad guys. The story is a direct filch from Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone," the first English language detective novel. The pearl is cursed and has caused rivers of blood to flow as it changes hands over he centuries. Holmes even says he would rather see it dropped to the bottom of the ocean at one point. The villain (Mander) is dull as dishwater, but his female cohort (Keyes) is another matter. She wears more disguises than Holmes ever dreamed of as she attempts to track down the pearl after her boss loses it. Some of the music was lifted from the score for "The Wolfman," and Keyes just happened to be the love interest in that movie. See if you can spot Holmes' entrance in this one.