Review of The Pearl of Death (1944) by Anna N — 23 Oct 2007

There's not a hell of a lot of mystery or suspense in this Holmes movie, I'm sorry to say. The sets, the characters and the plot are all so generic and ordinary that nothing really stands out.

It begins with Holmes successfully recovering a priceless stolen pearl (wow, what an amazing macguffin) from a bunch of thieves and returning it to it's rightful owner. But, in a moment of arrogance, he disables the alarm at the museum when he points out the security faults and the pearl is stolen again by some arch-villain who fails to impress and probably wouldn't even say boo to a goose in real life.

The usual questions and snooping around follow with Lestrade acting like a moron and Watson bumbling around in the background. I'm grateful that this one doesn't have any silly WWII sentiment in it but, once again, it is clearly filmed on Universal's medieval Europe set which looks and feels absolutely nothing like London. Did you know that I have, so far, not seen Big Ben in any one one of these Rathbone/Bruce movies. Even some stock footage spliced in there would make it just the tiniest bit more authentic.

And what's the fascination with Pearls anyway? It's just a marble made by an oyster.