Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady

At the request of brother Mycroft Holmes, an aging Sherlock Holmes (Sir Christopher Lee) and companion Dr. Watson (Patrick Macnee) venture to Vienna circa 1910 to investigate and hopefully retrieve a new explosive Doomsday Device before it gets into the wrong hands. While there, Holmes gets reacquainted with one of the great loves of his life, sassy American Opera singer Irene Adler (Morgan Fairchild). Engelbert Humperdinck turns up briefly as a pompous and smug-looking performer, John Bennett plays Sigmund Freud (but looks a lot more like actor Maximillian Schell).

 

Christopher Lee played numerous Arthur Conan Doyle characters in his long career and played Sherlock Holmes himself at least three times on screen. One of those three times was in this 1991 three-hour TV movie event from former Hammer director Peter Sasdy (“Taste the Blood of Dracula”, “Countess Dracula”, “Hands of the Ripper”, “Nothing But the Night”). There’s nothing superlative about this one, it’s got a rather cheap and drab TV-movie look to it, and most of the supporting cast are nondescript. You feel the film could’ve really benefitted from a Donald Pleasence, Tim Curry or Freddie Jones in support to liven things up. Instead we get a guest role by Engelbert Humperdinck for Pete’s sake. It’s a distracting and pointless cameo to say the least. However, Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee make for a fun Holmes and Watson, and the mystery is pretty decent too.

 

My preferred Holmes is Peter Cushing, but Lee is a damn fine Holmes in his own right here and in the other TV movie “Incident at Victoria Falls”. He made for a perfect, arrogant but brilliant younger Holmes in the 1960s German-made “Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace” and here he makes for a perfect aging Holmes too. Here the great detective is sensing his mental brilliance starting to fade a bit with time and that brash youthful arrogance has turned somewhat into a rather humble, gentlemanly elder statesman here. It allows Lee to show a different side of himself and of Holmes – quieter, more reticent, and far less blustery. There’s no drug-taking nor any deerstalker cap here either. Yet, you don’t doubt for a second that this is Sherlock Holmes. I don’t think the Seven Per-Cent Solution or deerstalker cap would’ve really suited a Holmes who had made it to old age anyway, so I wasn’t remotely bothered by their absence (I’ve never liked the drug addiction aspect to the character). If you don’t like the bumbling Nigel Bruce incarnation of Dr. Watson, you might not take very well to Patrick Macnee’s turn as Watson in this and especially “Incident at Victoria Falls”. However, I think the character is generally pretty colourless and so I rather like the more comedic versions like Bruce’s, Macnee’s as well as Colin Blakely in “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”. I think Macnee makes for a very fine, hammy Watson. Bless his heart, Macnee’s not actually in the first half of the film all that much but he sure does try to make his moments count and gets some time to shine in the second half especially. Subtle he ain’t, and I’m all for it, he’s a hoot. It’s not like he’s not intelligent here as well, at least when he’s not taking a nap. If you want a genuinely smart Watson, watch Sir Ben Kingsley in the spoofy “Without a Clue” where Watson was the true master of deduction. Fun fact: Lee and Macnee were old friends, having gone to school together. They were born within months of each other and died within months of each other. It’s no surprise that they work so well together on screen. Of the rest of the cast, it’s really only bitchy American TV soap veteran Morgan Fairchild who really resonates, playing the glamorous Irene Adler. No great actress, the role is nonetheless quite well within her wheelhouse. The plus in casting Fairchild is that she’s able to play good or bad with relative ease, thus her casting keeps you guessing in this one a bit. I’m not sure she and Lee have all that much chemistry, but she has her charms nonetheless. Less charming and frankly rather boring and stiff is an actor named Tom Lahm as annoying American ‘Mr. Elliot’, whose true identity isn’t exactly hard to predict if you have half a brain. It’s a shame because I like how this particular famous character is portrayed as a bit of a bumbling buffoon next to The World’s Greatest Detective. Aside from the lacking supporting cast and TV movie budget (mostly spent on the lovely international locales it seems), the only drawback for me here is I think pitching this at 2-part 3-hour mini-series length was a mistake. This should’ve been 110 minutes at most and a singular feature film. Scripted by Bob Shayne (the terrible TV movie “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”, as well as the much better “Sherlock Holmes: Incident at Victoria Falls”) and H.R.F. Keating (a writer of crime fiction making a rare screenwriting outing), the mystery plot is interesting but at 3 hours, one’s attention does wander rather a bit at times, even with Lee and Macnee being such pleasant company.

 

A better script than Lee had for his first stint as Sherlock Holmes in 1962’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace”, this enjoyable mystery is too long and lacks some star power in the villainy department. Still, Lee and Macnee are a fun Holmes and Watson (Imagine how much fun an entire TV series run with them would’ve been!). No great masterpiece, but still a must for Christopher Lee fans like myself.

 

Rating: B-