***SPOLIERS*** Lackluster Sherlock Homles mystery that has Sherlock not only showing the audience how good he is in going undercover-in disguise-but also for what seems like the first and last time in his career, as a brainy and elementary thinking sleuth, uses a firearm in gunning down and killing one the bad guys.
The movie "A Study in Scarlet" seems to be a precursor to the 1939 Agatha Christie murder mystery "Ten Little Indians" written some six years after the film was released in 1933 which is about the only reason for viewing it. The movie itself doesn't really hold its audience's attention with a number of unsavory characters lead by shyster London lawyer Thaddeus Merrydew, Alan Didehart. It's Merrydew & Co. who were all involved in smuggling a cache of jewels out of Pre-Communist China, circa the late 1920's, and are now dropping dead like flies on the streets of London because of it.
After a Mr. Murphy was found dead on a London bound train his wife Mrs. Annabelle Murphy, Doris Llyod, hired detective Sherlock Holmes, Reginald Owen, to see if her husband in fact was murdered not that he committed suicide like the London Police reported. Holmes soon discovers, through a number of cryptic messages in the local newspapers, that there's this group of people involved in an illegal jewelry smuggling operation that started back in China some eight years ago. The ringleader of this gang of Jewel thieves is top London criminal lawyer Thaddeus Merrydew who represents them. There's also the totally innocent Elleen Forrester, June Clyde, who's only connection with the Jewel or diamond smugglers is that her late father Col. Frrester, a member of the smuggling ring, left her his share of the profits, some 200,000 in Pound Sterling, in his will.
As the members of this jewel smuggling ring, called the "Scarlet Ring", start to be killed off it soon becomes apparent that Merrydew is somehow responsible for their deaths with the help one of the rings members! But the question is which one since almost all of the jewel smugglers end up dead by the time the movie is over. It's then that Merrydew and his partner, or partners, in crime screw up in them foolishly thinking that they pulled the wool over the great Sherlock Holmes eyes. Old Sherlock, we learn, had Merrydew and Co. pegged right from the start in not only deciphering the killer's secret coded messages in the newspapers but also, I kid you not, in Holmes uncovering his very unusual shoe size that the killer left at the scene of one of his murders!
***SPOILERS***Slow moving and hard to follow Sherlock Holmes film with only the appearance of the femme fatal in the movie Mrs Pyke, Anna May Wong, adding some hot Chinese mustard in it to spice the movie up a few notches. There's also the mysterious and what looks like opium pipe smoking Ah Yet, Tetsu Komai, as both Mrs. Pyke's and lawyers Merrydew's hit-man. Always puffing on his pipe and looking stoned out of his head you wondered why the two master criminals, Mrs. Pyke & Thaddeus Marrydew, would have anything to do with a strung-out weirdo like Ah Yet in the first place? Unless they were as strung out and smashed as he was by taking turns shearing his pipe!
The movie "A Study in Scarlet" seems to be a precursor to the 1939 Agatha Christie murder mystery "Ten Little Indians" written some six years after the film was released in 1933 which is about the only reason for viewing it. The movie itself doesn't really hold its audience's attention with a number of unsavory characters lead by shyster London lawyer Thaddeus Merrydew, Alan Didehart. It's Merrydew & Co. who were all involved in smuggling a cache of jewels out of Pre-Communist China, circa the late 1920's, and are now dropping dead like flies on the streets of London because of it.
After a Mr. Murphy was found dead on a London bound train his wife Mrs. Annabelle Murphy, Doris Llyod, hired detective Sherlock Holmes, Reginald Owen, to see if her husband in fact was murdered not that he committed suicide like the London Police reported. Holmes soon discovers, through a number of cryptic messages in the local newspapers, that there's this group of people involved in an illegal jewelry smuggling operation that started back in China some eight years ago. The ringleader of this gang of Jewel thieves is top London criminal lawyer Thaddeus Merrydew who represents them. There's also the totally innocent Elleen Forrester, June Clyde, who's only connection with the Jewel or diamond smugglers is that her late father Col. Frrester, a member of the smuggling ring, left her his share of the profits, some 200,000 in Pound Sterling, in his will.
As the members of this jewel smuggling ring, called the "Scarlet Ring", start to be killed off it soon becomes apparent that Merrydew is somehow responsible for their deaths with the help one of the rings members! But the question is which one since almost all of the jewel smugglers end up dead by the time the movie is over. It's then that Merrydew and his partner, or partners, in crime screw up in them foolishly thinking that they pulled the wool over the great Sherlock Holmes eyes. Old Sherlock, we learn, had Merrydew and Co. pegged right from the start in not only deciphering the killer's secret coded messages in the newspapers but also, I kid you not, in Holmes uncovering his very unusual shoe size that the killer left at the scene of one of his murders!
***SPOILERS***Slow moving and hard to follow Sherlock Holmes film with only the appearance of the femme fatal in the movie Mrs Pyke, Anna May Wong, adding some hot Chinese mustard in it to spice the movie up a few notches. There's also the mysterious and what looks like opium pipe smoking Ah Yet, Tetsu Komai, as both Mrs. Pyke's and lawyers Merrydew's hit-man. Always puffing on his pipe and looking stoned out of his head you wondered why the two master criminals, Mrs. Pyke & Thaddeus Marrydew, would have anything to do with a strung-out weirdo like Ah Yet in the first place? Unless they were as strung out and smashed as he was by taking turns shearing his pipe!