Not a bad movie, a little derivative of Wilkie Collins's 'The Moonstone', with its tale of Indian jewels taken from an idol, and pursued by sinister Hindu priests out to recover them.
As other reviewers have pointed out, so much of it takes place in the dark, it's difficult to clearly see what is going on. There are multiple secret passages and sliding panels leading to an underground crypt containing (I suppose) the treasure. Despite 3 separate forays through the bookcase, behind the wall and down the steps into this hidden lair, there is never a payoff. The trail always ends at a massive iron chest that nobody can move or open. We assume the Indian jewels are inside, but we never actually see them.
This makes the jewels the most McGuffiny of McGuffins - they're the object of everyone's search, the motive for all the activity in the movie, but they matter so little the movie ends before anyone actually finds them! Until the very end, I thought the movie was going to pull a switch and have the chest turn out to be empty, the jewels having been stolen long ago, but it just ends with all the bad guys dead and the young lovers reunited.
As other reviewers have pointed out, so much of it takes place in the dark, it's difficult to clearly see what is going on. There are multiple secret passages and sliding panels leading to an underground crypt containing (I suppose) the treasure. Despite 3 separate forays through the bookcase, behind the wall and down the steps into this hidden lair, there is never a payoff. The trail always ends at a massive iron chest that nobody can move or open. We assume the Indian jewels are inside, but we never actually see them.
This makes the jewels the most McGuffiny of McGuffins - they're the object of everyone's search, the motive for all the activity in the movie, but they matter so little the movie ends before anyone actually finds them! Until the very end, I thought the movie was going to pull a switch and have the chest turn out to be empty, the jewels having been stolen long ago, but it just ends with all the bad guys dead and the young lovers reunited.