The Pearl of Death **** (1944, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Dennis Hoey, Evelyn Ankers, Miles Mander, Ian Wolfe, Mary Gordon, Rondo Hatton) – Classic Movie Review 992

The 1944 mystery thriller film The Pearl of Death is the seventh in Universal Pictures’ Sherlock Holmes series of 12 films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, and one of the most potent and satisfying. Rondo Hatton plays the Hoxton Creeper killer. 

Director Roy William Neill’s 1944 mystery thriller film The Pearl of Death is the seventh in the Universal Pictures studio’s Sherlock Holmes series of 12 films starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson, and one of the most potent and satisfying of them all. The story is loosely based on Conan Doyle’s short story The Adventure of the Six Napoleons but makes some careful additions, giving exotic roles to Evelyn Ankers as Naomi Drake, an accomplice of the villain, master criminal Giles Conover (Miles Mander), and Rondo Hatton as a brutal killer, The Hoxton Creeper.

Basil Rathbone’s Holmes and Nigel Bruce’s Dr Watson are troubled by The Hoxton Creeper (Rondo Hatton) – a malevolent adversary with ‘the chest of a buffalo and the arms of a gorilla’. Despite that, audiences liked him so much he got his own short series.

Hatton played a different Creeper character in two follow-ups unrelated to this film, House of Horrors and The Brute Man, both completed in 1945, but released after Hatton’s death at 51 on February 2, 1946 of fatal heart attack resulting from his acromegalic condition. Acromegaly results in excess growth of certain parts of the human body, and is caused by excess growth hormone. It distorted the shape of Hatton’s head, face and extremities, and he eventually became severely disfigured by the on-going disease.

Director Neill judges the mystery, mood, tension, atmosphere and pace very effectively in this fine version of the 1904 short story The Adventure of the Six Napoleons by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. One of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons is one of 13 stories collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes, first published in Collier’s in the US on 30 April 1904 and in The Strand Magazine in the UK in May 1904.

In Bertram Millhauser’s screenplay, the famous valuable Borgia Pearl, with a sinister reputation for causing misfortune to its owner, is stolen from the Royal Regent Museum by the master criminal Giles Conover (Miles Mander). When apprehended, the pearl is not found on him.

Holmes is on the case and learns of a series of brutal murders that seem to have been committed by The Hoxton Creeper (Rondo Hatton), known to be Conover’s right-hand man. Unusually, and refreshingly, there are no Nazis or Nazi sympathisers as villains this time, which afflicted the series.

Dennis Hoey plays Inspector Lestrade and Mary Gordon is Mrs Hudson, as usual.

A US War Bonds advert tagged on to the end of the film reads: ‘You’re not giving – just lending – when you buy war savings stamps and bonds –on sale here.’

Holmes tells Watson that if he’s wrong about the pearl’s hiding place ‘I shall retire to Sussex and keep bees’. In Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories, that’s exactly what he does when he retires.

It runs just 69 minutes.

It premiered on August 1, 1944 in the US.

The Pearl of Death is preceded by The Scarlet Claw (1944) and followed by The House of Fear (1945).

There are two other Rathbone–Bruce Holmes films – The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) – both made by 20th Century Fox, bringing their total to 14 films. So it is the ninth of 14 Holmes films Rathbone and Bruce made,

Rondo Hatton as The Creeper.

The cast are Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, Nigel Bruce as Dr John H Watson, Evelyn Ankers as Naomi Drake, Dennis Hoey as Inspector Lestrade, Miles Mander as Giles Conover, Ian Wolfe as Amos Hodder, Charles Francis as Digby, Holmes Herbert as James Goodram, Richard Nugent as Bates, Mary Gordon as Mrs Hudson, Rondo Hatton as The Creeper, Wilson Benge as Second Ship’s Steward, Billy Bevan as Constable, Harry Cording as George Gelder, Al Ferguson as Security Guard, Colin Kenny as Security Guard, Connie Leon as Ellen Carey, John Merkyl as Doctor Julien Boncourt, Leyland Hodgson as Customs Officer, Lillian Bronson as Harker’s Housekeeper, Harold De Becker as Boss, Leslie Denison as Police Sergeant Murdock, J.W. Austin as Police Sergeant Bleeker, Arthur Mulliner as Thomas Sandeford, Arthur Stenning as First Ship’s Steward, Eric Wilton as Conover’s Chauffeur, Charles Knight as Bearded Man, and Audrey Manners as Body of Teacher.

The Rathbone–Bruce series consists of: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942), Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943), Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943), The Spider Woman (1943), The Scarlet Claw (1944), The Pearl of Death (1944), The House of Fear (1945), The Woman in Green (1945), Pursuit to Algiers (1945), Terror by Night (1946), and Dressed to Kill (1946).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 992 derekwinnert.com