When a priceless jewel, the Borgia Pearl, is stolen from a London museum, Sherlock Holmes is on the case. The theft seems somehow related to a series of grisly murders in which the victims had their backs broken and are surrounded by smashed crockery ...
This is one of the best of the great Rathbone-Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies, taken from Arthur Conan Doyle's brilliant story The Six Napoleons. The plot races along, filled with suspense, intrigue, shocks and humour, cracking machine-gun dialogue and a myriad of clever bits of business (multiple disguises in both the heroes and the villains, a knife hidden in a book, an enormous jigsaw puzzle of broken porcelain, a shadowy fiend). The entire cast are sensational; Rathbone never finer, Bruce a perfect foil, the gorgeous and criminally underrated Ankers a blinding femme fatale in a plethora of guises (society lady, dishwasher, match-girl, shop assistant) and the remarkable Hatton (who suffered the cruel glandular condition of acromegaly) as the unforgettably monstrous Hoxton Creeper. Brilliantly directed with spartan style by Neill, this is a terrific old black-and-white mystery caper, not to be missed.
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