2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Sexylocher Masterful Movie

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Rainey Dawn Nothing special about this one - it's a typical and rather boring whodunit. The film feels very stagy (like a made for TV movie and not one for the movie theaters) and the acting is lacking and stiff - including Patric Knowles (which I never expected)! Everything happens over a stolen moonstone in a rather large mansion with several people visiting Sir John Verinder's home. The film is pretty predictable for the most part.Well, I acquired this film in a 50-Mysteries Pack so it's not to bad for the pack deal but it's not a movie I'd watch over and over (one time watching is enough) - it's just one that is a part of the 50-pack.3/10

kendavies If you want to see an adaptation of The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins' great mystery story, you will be greatly disappointed by this standard country house whodunit, complete with posh accents to conform to American stereotypes. Collins was the originator of the genre (The Moonstone was the first detective novel in English) and also much better at it than those who followed (Dorothy L. Sayers called it "probably the very finest detective story ever written"). Collins' friend Charles Dickens, for example, though one of the greatest novelists, found it difficult to emulate him (never finishing The Mystery of Edwin Drood). The Moonstone includes elements totally absent from this B movie, including Hinduism, the Indian caste system, narcotics, etc., etc.. The best part of it is the opening with trains spelling out the film company name in a futuristic townscape.

bkoganbing Considering that Monogram Pictures had a rather huge novel according to some of the other reviewers to work with, the fact that they cut it down to a 62 minute programmer, 46 minutes in the version I've seen, they came up with a coherent version of The Moonstone. The problem was that at least here the suspense seems to have been drained from it.David Manners and Phyllis Barry head the cast, he as sweetheart and solicitor and custodian of The Moonstone, she as the recipient of both Manners affections and the jewel. A cast of usual suspects supports them, but if you can't figure out who the culprit might be on this dark and stormy night, you don't even need to have seen too many of them.There is an interesting gimmick in the story involving one of the leads, but I won't go further lest you want to see the film. Still it might have been done better by a major studio.

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...".