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Review
"I don't like your work, Conover. I've seen quite
a bit of it both here in London and elsewhere on the continent. I don't
like the smell of you either, that underground smell, the sick sweetness
of decay. You haven't robbed and killed merely for gain like any ordinary
halfway decent thug. No, you're in love with cruelty for its own sake.
And the world will be much better off without you"
Despite a rather simplistic plot - based
more faithfully than most of the Universal series on Conan Doyle -
The Pearl of Death is one of the best of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock
Holmes series, superbly directed by Universal veteran R. William Neill.
It may not be as concisely engineered and as moodily lit as the previous
entry, Neill's extraordinary The Scarlet Claw [1944] but it remains an effective
enough piece nonetheless.
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The straightforward plot
is, in many ways reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes in Washington [1943],
but the film is none the worse for following such a linear route.
Neill puts his experience on Universal's horror movies [he'd previously
directed The Black Room [1935], Dr Syn [1937] and Frankenstein Meets
the Wolf Man [1943]] to excellent use, particularly in the scenes
involving the Creeper, who we only ever see as an indistinct figure
lurking in the shadows. Though the relationship between the Creeper
and Naomi is perhaps the weakest and least well defined aspect of
the script [it was invented by Bertram Millhouser and does not appear
in Conan Doyle's original story, The Six Napoleons], Hatton's wordless,
shuffling performance is genuinely disturbing and he was to put it
to good use playing similar roles in a number of B horror movies
over the next few years. |
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There are many excellent moments in The Pearl of Death that rate
as among the most memorable in the series - Conover's duping of Watson
when he calls on 221b Baker Street in disguise and his vicious 'gift'
of a booby-trapped book, a trap which Holmes escapes thanks to his
intimate knowledge of tobacco ash; the discovery of the catatonic
housekeeper at the scene of the first murder; and Holmes' climactic
confrontation with Conover. Then too there are the fine performances,
Mander in particular being outstanding in his sadly few appearances
as the appalling Giles Conover.
In retrospect, The Pearl of Death can be seen as the last gasp
of genuine creativity for the series before it descended into a mediocrity
born of undue haste - Universal were turning the Sherlock Holmes
films out at a tremendous rate [there had already been two other
films in 1944 and there were to be a further three the following
year] and the pace was beginning to take its toll on the quality.
The Pearl of Death may have its faults but it certainly eclipses
the routine thrillers that were to follow.
KEVIN LYONS
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