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.
Review of The Moonstone
