The Pearl Of Death

Rondo Macabre

The Pearl Of Death
USA 1944 Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

The Pearl Of Death is the ninth of the series of Sherlock Holmes films put out by 20th Century Fox and then Universal. This one toplines Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson again but, unlike the last film in the series, The Scarlet Claw (reviewed by me here), we have the return of both Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson and Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade. It’s based on Arthur Conan Doyles story The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons.

The plot of this one involves Giles Conover (played brilliantly by Miles Mander), a master criminal who is after an enormous pearl with a bloody history. Holmes, in the guise of a clergyman... after Conover’s accomplice Naomi Drake (played by Universal monster scream queen Evelyn Ankers) steals the pearl from a secure location on a cruise ship... uses his disguise to have her relinquish the pearl, hidden in a camera, so it can get through customs and, due to Holmes ingenuity, she doesn’t realise her mistake until they’ve parted ways and Holmes, Watson and Lestrade deliver the pearl to the ‘Royal Regent Museum’ (no such museum in London, I can assure you), waiting for the precious pearl. And this is where it gets interesting because Holmes doesn’t trust the electronic eye security in the museum... so, in a twist to the way these tales are usually set up, Holmes disables the system momentarily to prove a point but, in that moment, Conover steals the pearl and hides it before the police can catch up with him. So Holmes has inadvertently allowed the pearl to be stolen... which doesn’t do his reputation much good.

After Conover is released on the grounds that there’s no evidence, people are found with their backs broken at various locations, midst a pile of smashed china (smashed to hide the one thing which is being smashed during the murders, to muddy up the scene of the crime). Holmes... after surviving a couple of attempts on his life, including a wonderful death trap of a ‘jack-in-a-box’ knife in a book which is thrown up into the ceiling because Holmes is suspicious of it... deduces that, when Conover was running from the police, he hid the pearl inside one of six wet busts of Napoleon. It’s up to Holmes, Watson and Lestrade to try and find the pearl before Conover’s sinister, back breaking heavy The Hoxton Creeper, of whom I shall say more in a little while, can finish their murderous spree and make off with the stone. I have to say though, it’s unintentionally hilarious when, after surviving the dagger in a box gag, Watson proclaims the obvious with his, “Great Scott. That was meant for you!”

And it’s another wonderfully entertaining slice of a movie, of course. The cast is perfect and Rathbone plays Holmes with a certain amount of anger since he’s the one who, after recovering the pearl at the start, allowed it to be stolen again. His temper is very thin in this one, especially in dealing with Lestrade’s usual fat-headed deductions. There’s some lovely, comical support from Watson in this one too, including a nice scene where he’s sticking a newspaper article in his scrapbook and loses said article. “What would Holmes do?”, he says, and reconstructs his movements with the paste and tea cup until he relocates the cutting, stuck to the underside of his sleeve (where the audience can see it all along).

Also, producer/director Roy William Neill seems to be thinking more about his shot compositions here. There’s a column suddenly grown now in 221B Baker Street, used to separate the actors within via the vertical split on screen and, similarly, he has a bizarre arch put into the middle of a room at the museum so he can use it the same way. These visual devices aren’t wasted, however... he uses them to full advantage visually.

And then of course, there’s The Creeper, played by the iconic actor Rondo Hatton. Hatton was exposed to poison gas during his service in the First World War and, as a result of that (it’s believed), went on to develop a rare disease called acromegaly, which does something to the bones of the face and warped his into the sinister visage he’s known for. He was a tall guy and this, when combined with his unusual features, made him perfect casting for heavies in Hollywoodland. This film, made when he was fifty, kinda catapulted him to success but... too late. Just as Gail Sondergaard, the villainess from the Sherlock Holmes film The Spider Woman (reviewed here) had made another film playing a ‘spider woman’ to trade in on the name (if not the character), so Rondo Hatton made a further two films as a different back breaking menace called ‘The Creeper’ the year after this. Alas, before they were both posthumously released in early 1946, Hatton had died of a heart attack due to his acromegaly.

He would, of course, leave a lasting legacy and he has been referenced in many things over the years such as a villain made to look like him in the movie version of The Rocketeer and even Judge Dredd disguised himself as his likeness in one of the early issues of 2000AD, if memory serves. And, of course, there are the annual Rondo Awards, made to celebrate the best in classic horror research, creativity and film preservation... which were named after the actor and which actually are miniature likenesses of him. So, he died young but was definitely, in his own small way, an influential presence on the pop culture scene. And if you want to know more ‘shady facts’ about acromegaly, take a look at the giant spider movie Tarantula sometime (review coming soon).

And that’s me done with The Pearl Of Death. Another great entry in what is surely one of the best film series of all time. It’s also a film where Holmes is forced to kill someone at the end of the picture (I won’t say who) which is a regrettable outcome. I must make a point to try and track down those Creeper movies at some point though. If they have survived the years, that is.*

*Since time of writing, Eureka Masters Of Cinema have released one of them last year as part of a box set.