kidboots With the success of "Jane Eyre" behind them, Monogram then released "The Moonstone", another film based on a Victorian classic, this time by Wilkie Collins. Supposedly the first modern detective novel, Monogram did very well to condense the huge novel into a brisk and thrilling 62 minutes (it was a longer film originally). Monogram would have done better to keep it as a period film instead of modernizing it.Franklyn Blake (David Manners) has returned to England from India bringing the moonstone - rumoured to have been stolen from an Idol. He arrives at Verinder Manor on a dark and stormy night. Ann, his fiancée, stupidly begs to sleep with it under her pillow instead of putting it in the safe, so of course, in the morning it has been stolen. Ann's father has a heart attack and Ann seems to be in a trance. An old dark house mystery - everyone is a suspect. Carl Von Lucker (Gustav Von Seyffertitz) is disgusted at being asked for more money, Godfrey Ablewhite (Jameson Thomas) is resentful that Ann is engaged and also has gambling loses, Ann's father is being forced to vacate his home because he has no money to continue his experiments and the maid is very interested in the gem, especially when she realises the stone is worth $30,000!!! A serum is administered to Franklyn so he can re-enact his movements of that night. He does take the moonstone, sees a blurry outline of his valet, Yandoo, and asks him to look after the gem but who did he see on the original night!! Obviously the editing was done at the film's finish because it ended so fast!!!John Davidson seemed to be often cast in exotic roles. In this film he was Yandoo, an Indian (in "Death From a Distance" (1935) he played Ahmad Haidru). David Manners was the perfect actor to play opposite some of the most beautiful actresses of the early 30s. He was handsome but non threatening and obviously didn't care enough about his career to last past the mid 30s - "A Woman Rebels" (1936) was his last film. After a sensational debut as the lovestruck shopgirl in "Cynara" (1932), within a few movies Phyllis Barry was reduced to playing "the girl" in such "classics" as "What! No Beer?" (1933), "Long Lost Father" (1934) and "Love Past Thirty" (1934) - she was even way down the cast list of a "sexploitation" film "Damaged Goods"(1937) aka "Are You Fit To Marry?"!!! So her role as Ann Verinder in "The Moonstone" may be among her most prestigious roles. Another case of "whatever happened to...".

GManfred Despite the hackneyed premise and milieu, the stage was set for a pretty interesting murder mystery. It is a 'gloomy-mansion-on-a-dark-and-stormy-night' movie, which can be very absorbing if done right. It had a good collection of characters/suspects and got off to a good start.All of sudden came the scientific-drivel denouement, the deus-ex-machina, which was both cynical and anti-climactic. This was the best the author could do? And why the rush to a conclusion? the story is short enough as is. Good performances all around and the production values were very adequate, considering this was a Poverty Row production.Sorry I can't recommend this one, but I still have a lot of movies left in my DVD collection. On to the next case.

ksf-2 David Manners and Phyllis Barry star in Moonstone, one of the last pictures directed by Reginal Barker. Part of the Reelmedia/Treeline Murder Mystery Collection, the sound and picture quality are pretty rough. IMDb shows original length of 62 minutes, but the Reelmedial version is only 46 minutes... hmmmm... it was already short to begin with... wonder if the missing minutes were cut due to poor quality of the film. It has the usual murder-mystery ingredients - creepy characters, dark and stormy night, lights going out, the man from Scotland yard. The case gets conveniently solved in short order (since this version is so short to begin with) and there are no plots turns or twists. My favorite character is Betteredge, the mouthy old housekeeper, played by Elspeth Dudgeon (born in 1871!) I'd be quite interested to see the 62 minute version sometime.

Hitchcoc The only similarity I see between this and its namesake is the jewel. The rest is a pretty typical drawing room mystery. It has a pretty decent set of eccentric characters, a love interest, a man in a turban (very exotic, right), and a lot of shenanigans. The carelessness with which the stone, worth a fortune, is treated stops me. The female lead is totally unappealing. She is so dumb that I couldn't care less what happens to her. Her fiancé is a big lunk with no real character. There is some atmosphere of the mansion in the rain. The lights go out and there is a bit of a surprise. Overall, however, it lacks much development and ends in a rather far fetched way.