Sherlock Holmes' reputation is tarnished when he arrogantly turns off a museum's security system to prove a point, inadvertently allowing notorious criminal Giles Conover (Miles Mander) to steal the priceless Borgia pearl. Before he's arrested, Conover manages to hide the pearl in one of six Napoleon busts in a workshop. The busts are sold to different customers and now Holmes and Watson try to find the one with the pearl before Conover or his confederates do.The seventh of Universal's exceptional Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. It's the ninth if you count the first two Fox films. The story is loosely adapted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons," as well as a little of Raymond Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely" thrown in. Rathbone and Bruce are pitch-perfect as usual, with some slight differences to their normal performances. Rathbone's Holmes is more anxious, even irritable, as his back is against the wall. Not quite the cool character he is in most of the films. This time comic relief comes more from Dennis Hoey's Inspector Lastrade than Watson. Hoey's a hoot and one of the best parts of the series. He doesn't get enough credit, I think. The villains are excellent. Miles Mander is a fine foil for Rathbone, lovely Evelyn Ankers is a great villainess, and Rondo Hatton makes his Universal debut as the Creeper. Hatton has become something of a lightning rod for politically correct types these days who feel he was being exploited. This is easily the best of Hatton's films for Universal. The rest of them were low-grade horror flicks that signaled the end of Universal's second horror cycle.Fun from start to finish with several characters donning disguises and good humor mixed with the mystery and adventure. There's even some horror movie atmosphere when the Creeper shows up. A highly entertaining entry in the series; one of the best.

Those Borgias and their cursed pearls. This is about the smuggling, regaining, and losing of a pearl that has a curse on it. Holmes, who at times is so full of himself, sets up a situation where the big marble gets stolen from the museum. He then must get it back. A career criminal, his female associate, and a back breaking goon known as the Oxton Creeper (who appeared in at least one other movie) have the thing and Holmes is on their trail. Now you have the likes of LeStrade, smugly reminding Holmes what an idiot he is (he's been upstaged for so long) and Watson who on two occasions hides the pearl in his mouth (God forbid the process of retrieval had he swallowed it). Since this is based on the story "The Six Napoleons," we know that eventually the pearl has been hidden in the plaster bust of one of six Napoleon statuettes. The "Creeper" has been sent to the homes of the unfortunate purchasers, breaking their backs, and then breaking their china. This is at the bidding of the bad guys. This is one episode where they allow Watson to have a thread of intelligence. He is instrumental in the solving of the crime. I don't know what Nigel Bruce was like in non-Holmes movies, but I have a feeling he was a pretty good actor, given the chance. Once again, Holmes feels the need at the end to make a speech about greed and avarice. When I was a small child, we used to watch Westerns where, at the conclusion, the cowboy hero would tell us to mind our parents, eat our vegetables, and go to church and Sunday school. I am reminded of these guys when I listen to Rathbone's dronings.

Very loosely based on "The Six Napoleons," this flick finds Holmes and Watson on the trail of a missing black pearl. Holmes gets it away from the bad guys and then loses it back to the bad guys. The story is a direct filch from Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone," the first English language detective novel. The pearl is cursed and has caused rivers of blood to flow as it changes hands over he centuries. Holmes even says he would rather see it dropped to the bottom of the ocean at one point. The villain (Mander) is dull as dishwater, but his female cohort (Keyes) is another matter. She wears more disguises than Holmes ever dreamed of as she attempts to track down the pearl after her boss loses it. Some of the music was lifted from the score for "The Wolfman," and Keyes just happened to be the love interest in that movie. See if you can spot Holmes' entrance in this one.

"One of two things has happened. Either the woman he bumped into was an accomplice, in which case she has the pearl, or he managed somehow to conceal it in his flight." The pearl, of course, is the cursed Borgia Pearl, an object of rich men's lust. The "he" is Giles Conover (Miles Mander), a master criminal as cruel as he is clever, as contemptuous of men as he is unmoved by women. The Borgia Pearl has been the object of criminal stratagems since it arrived in London for display in the British Museum. The director of the museum is immensely proud of how he has harnessed electricity to warn of any untoward action involving the museum's objects. But what happens when Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) apparently makes a mistake. And what happens when the electricity doesn't work. It will be Sherlock Holmes, aided by his game but confused partner, Watson (Nigel Bruce), against Giles Conover. Holmes makes his disdain for Conover clear. "I don't like the smell of you -- an underground smell, the sick sweetness of decay. You haven't robbed and killed merely for the game like any ordinary halfway decent thug. No, you're in love with cruelty for it's own sake." Little does Holmes realize that Conover has a creature of his own...a brute whose face is the result of a disorder of the pituitary gland. Watson might call it acromegaly. Most laymen would say it's the Easter Island Statue Syndrome. It's not long before Holmes must deal not only with Conover, but also with this creature...the Hoxton Creeper (Rondo Hatton). "A monster, Watson," Holmes says, "with the chest of a buffalo and the arms of a gorilla. His particular method of murder is back breaking. And it's always the same...the third lumbar vertebrae." "How horrible," says Watson. Does Sherlock Holmes best the Creeper? Does he recover the Borgia Pearl? Does Conover taste the bitter brew of utter defeat? You'll get no spoilers from me. Some think macaroni and cheese is the perfect comfort for what ails you. I think it's Rathbone and Bruce. People can argue about which actor has been the best Sherlock Holmes, but there is something about Rathbone's style, earnestness, profile and line delivery that makes me sit back and smile every time I watch him play The Great Detective. All that Victorian gaslight, fog and cobblestones help, too. With some strange alchemy, the Holmes movies with Rathbone have turned into an elixir of kitsch, style, remembrance of things past, satisfaction and noble causes. Mac and cheese doesn't come close.