by Marvin Kaye
And such concerns have a basis in cold, hard fact. Just a month after filmgoers had the privilege of watching Robert Downey, Jr. engage in more fights in about two hours than Basil Rathbone did in fourteen movies, a DVD entitled simply “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes” made its debut. That attempt to ride Downey’s somewhat ratty coattails, from the appropriately-named American production company The Asylum (the creative forces behind Almighty Thor), has several dubious distinctions. It is the first — and hopefully the last — Sherlockian knock-buster, a low-budget derivative, joining the undistinguished ranks of Snakes on a Train, The Da Vinci Treasure, and Transmorphers. It is also the Holmes film most likely to be used in a dictionary as an exemplar of the phrase, the less said, the better, or for a future incarnation of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Suffice it to say that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes makes the controversial Ritchie film look like the earliest masterful (pun unintended) Jeremy Brett/David Burke adaptations of the Canon. The screenwriters, Asylum veterans Paul Bales and Stephen Fiske, weren’t up to the Herculean challenge of making their far-fetched storyline work. Instead, their screenplay only demonstrated that while successfully pitting the master logician against dinosaurs rampaging through the East End and ship-sinking sea monsters may not be literally impossible, it is certainly improbable.
Thus it was that in the spring of the year 2011 some part of the Sherlockian world was (mildly) interested, and some profoundly dismayed, by word of the impending release of another direct-to-DVD independent film, this time from Canada. That news was much less welcome to many than rumors about the timing and contents of Season Two of Sherlock.
But Sherlock Holmes and the Shadow Watchers, from the mind and pen of actor/singer/songwriter Anthony D.P. Mann, and authorized by the Conan Doyle Estate, turns out to be a pleasant surprise that warrants repeat viewing. It treats the source material with respect and affection, an achievement which is all the more impressive given its miniscule budget, a mere $3,500. To put that figure in perspective, that sum equates to a little less than 3 seconds of Robert Downey’s salary on his Holmes film. (He was reported to have been paid $9 million for a two-hour film, or $75,000/minute, or $1,250/second.) And unlike the Ritchie/Lionel Wigram interpretation of the character, Mann’s Holmes emphasizes deduction rather than action.
Credit for all this largely lies with Mann, who not only wrote the original screenplay, but also directed, coproduced, and stars as the lead himself. Born in Manchester, and raised in Montreal, Mann first encountered the Canon while in high school, and became a devotee after reading The Sign of the Four. His admiration of Peter Cushing’s depiction led him to obtain one of that actor’s pipes. He first played the part when he was seventeen in a university radio production. Mann himself pans his best-known Holmes portrayal before the current film, referring to a 2005 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles as “Plan 9 From Devonshire,” which attempted to shoehorn the action into much too short a running time. For the actor, Sherlock Holmes and the Shadow Watchers is a chance for redemption, and the first in a planned series of original films.
“Shadow Watchers” opens with a familiar scene as a woman, apparently under the influence, staggers through the mean London streets and desolate back alleys of 1890 late at night. A shift in perspective, and background music signals the arrival of her murderer, who slowly strangles her before butchering her corpse, causing her blood to spray on an adjacent wall by his frenzied assault. But Mann throws in a crucial difference from your average Ripper movie, which makes an already horrific scene even more chilling; as the victim, later identified as Sally Saintsbury (whose last name is an homage to H.A. Saintsbury, who played Holmes on stage in The Speckled Band, and on film in The Valley of Fear), gasps desperately for breath, the camera pulls back. The dying woman makes eye contact with five shadowy figures whose features are hidden behind black and white tragedian masks, and who witness the slaughter passively. One does step forward for an instant, as if to intervene, before one of his colleagues pulls him back.
The identity of the creepily-smiling killer (played by Richard M. Pepemi, who also coproduced the movie) is revealed in the very first scene, but that only means that the narrative hook is not the identity of the Ripper copycat, but the identity of the faces behind the masks, and the motive for their vicarious sadism. (This story element was inspired by a dream Mann’s father had.) Saintsbury’s death leads Inspector Lestrade to a nicely-cluttered sitting room at 221B to beseech the help of Holmes and Watson, in the hopes of avoiding a repetition of the Autumn of Terror of 1888. But the plot twists only continue in the inquiry that the good doctor chronicles as that of The Case of The Woman Who Was Murdered Tomorrow, the film’s subtitle. As disturbing as the butchery in Crow’s Court was, Scotland Yard is even more troubled by the appearance of a newspaper article in The Morning Chronicle detailing the murder … that went to press hours before the actual crime was committed, leading to the incarceration of journalist Parker Raleigh.
To say much more about the intriguing plot would be unfair — there are other deaths after Saintsbury’s; the sixty minutes of running time pass quickly, and whet the appetite for more. Overhyping isn’t appropriate — the denouement is a bit rushed, and the sophistication of the mystery isn’t at the level of the very best pasticheurs, Denis O. Smith and Donald Thomas — but the story easily survives comparison with many other original tales, including Mann’s offbeat personal favorite, the much-derided Edward Woodward vehicle, 1990’s Hands of a Murderer.
There are many nice touches; Terry Wade, who had previously appeared alongside Mann when the latter portrayed William Gillette, is a solid and credible (albeit unusually clean-shaven) Watson, who takes the initiative on several occasions, and who comes across as a genuine partner in sleuthing for his eccentric companion. Richard W. Kerr’s Lestrade, who seems to have gotten more than his fair share of facial hair, perhaps from Watson, is a serious policeman, in the spirit of Colin Jeavons’ benchmark portrayal, rather than the Dennis Hoey buffoon, who managed to make Nigel Bruce’s Boobus Britannicus seem like Mycroft Holmes.
Of course, the film rises or falls on the central character, and Mann, even if not an obvious visual fit for the part, does a good job in emphasizing the characteristics he felt were most worthy of note. He observed that Holmes “is a brilliant deductive machine, [who] fails in other aspects of the human experience.” Mann’s Holmes is a believable creation, whose intellect, love of theatricality, propensity for bizarre and life-threatening experiments, and loyalty to his friends combine to make a three-dimensional figure.
The sets and costumes don’t embarrass anyone by any means, and it’s not easy to differentiate the production values of the popular Canadian Victorian Murdoch Mysteries series from “Shadow Watchers.” Filming was done in Kingston, Ontario, a very old city that was actually Canada’s first capital. Mann and his crew make use of some appropriate locations, the right camera angles, and “properly-clothed background players” to create a plausible Sherlockian London. And the plotline itself was influenced by the writer’s desire to maximize the available locations, equipment and people he had access to, showing his creative flexibility.
Mann tosses in a few other Easter Eggs besides the Saintsbury reference; for example, one female character is named Evelyn Norwood in homage to the great silent actor who was the Holmes of his day.
Mann was clearly fortunate to benefit from the willingness of many with substantial theatrical experience to work without pay; his hard work is convincing evidence that quality film pastiches can be made without megabucks, bells and whistles. He is to be commended for translating his reverence for the original stories into a diverting solidly-acted entertainment. Sherlockians could do much worse than downloading or buying the film, and the prospect of sequels is a welcome one.
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Lenny Picker directed himself as Watson (to Alan Haber’s undeservedly-obscure Holmes) in 1976, in a Jamaica High School classroom production of Willia
m S. Baring-Gould’s account of Holmes’s involvement with the Ripper case.
He can be reached by email at [email protected].
The Autumn of Terror, by M J Elliott
SHERLOCK HOLMES INVESTIGATES THE JACK THE RIPPER MURDERS
V
ictorian England’s greatest detective and its most notorious murderer — the fact that one of them is entirely fictional has not prevented authors and film-makers from imagining what would happen if one were on the trail of the other. With the recent success of Guy Richie’s movie, Sherlockian pastiches are increasing in number, and two concern themselves with Holmes’s confrontations with history’s first serial killer. Now would seem, therefore, to be the ideal moment to examine these and earlier works dealing with the same subject.
Before venturing further, the reader should be warned that this article contains what are commonly known as “spoilers.”
William S. Baring-Gould’s seminal 1962 biography Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street tantalizes the reader for several chapters with references to the Ripper murders and the implication that the troubled detective himself might be the killer: “Perhaps, as Holmes made the cuttings from the Times with his jacknife … Watson, deep in his armchair … watched him, worried, wondered and waited.” Eventually, we are presented with a mini-pastiche, Jack the Harlot Killer, in which Holmes — sacrificing his dignity by disguising himself as a prostitute — traps Jack and discovers him to be none other than Inspector Athelney Jones of The Sign of the Four. This solution at least explains why the policeman never appears or is referred to elsewhere in the Canon, although an equally likely reason might be his supreme ineptitude.
Three year later, A Study in Terror became the second Holmes film to be made in color, the first to feature an appearance by Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (a note-perfect performance by Robert Morley), and the first to pit Holmes against his all-too-real adversary. Originally written by Donald and Derek Ford as Fog, the film flopped badly in the US, probably being hindered rather than helped by an advertising campaign that tried to suggest an association between Sherlock Holmes and the then-popular TV series Batman starring Adam West. John Neville is a crisp, Rathbone-like Holmes, and though many critics tend to view his Watson, Donald Houston, as a welcome change from the Nigel Bruce model, the truth is that he bumbles far more than his predecessor Andre Morell, who gave us one of the most accurate and satisfying portrayals of the Doctor in Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles (1959).
Study scores high on atmosphere but low on logic — the killer is revealed to be young Lord Carfax (John Fraser), a man so obsessed with the family name that he has taken to slaughtering prostitutes in the hope of eliminating the one responsible for his brother’s downfall. This, however, is entirely at odds with everything we’ve seen of Carfax, who earlier calls for leniency on the part of his tradition-obsessed father, and is even so unconventional a Lord as to volunteer in a Whitechapel soup kitchen (alongside a young Judi Dench, in one of her earliest screen roles). The motive Holmes ascribes to Carfax simply makes no sense.
The novelization of A Study in Terror is also worthy of consideration, as it is credited to the celebrated American crime writer Ellery Queen, in reality, cousins Frederick Dannay and Manfred B. Lee. The book features their detective hero, also named Ellery Queen, and is therefore also considered part of the official Queen canon which began in 1929 with The Roman Hat Mystery and ended in 1971 with A Fine and Private Place. Ellery receives a manuscript purporting to be a description of Holmes’s part in the Ripper case and, between reading sections of the tale, attempts to track down the anonymous individual who send him the account. But this is not the only adjustment made, for the central plot has undergone a radical overhaul, including murders not seen either in the film or in recorded history, and an abrupt ending in which Lord Carfax leaves Holmes and Watson to die in a burning tavern after confessing to the crimes. But once Ellery has discovered just who sent him this apocryphal volume, he goes on to show that Watson was incorrect in his identification of Carfax as the killer — the young man was merely shielding his father, a far more likely Ripper. Although the truth behind the decision to adapt the screenplay can never be known, it would be nice to imagine that A Study in Terror was perceived as an exciting adventure, but one that missed the mark as a satisfying mystery and so took pains to correct that deficiency. It is worth noting that only the portions of the novel featuring the character of Ellery were written by Dannay and/or Lee. The Holmesian segments were the work of Paul W. Fairman. This was not uncommon in the latter days of the Queen series — during the 1960’s, Lee’s health problems, both physical and mental, led to several books being written by other hands, including Fairman, Avram Davidson and Theodore Sturgeon.
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T
wo notable pastiches of the 1970s include Ripper references — the original cut of Billy Wilder’s motion picture The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes ran to close on four hours and was, at the request of the studio, heavily edited before release. Lost from the finished version was the final scene, in which Inspector Lestrade (George Benson, missing entirely from the final version) visits Baker Street, not realising that Holmes (Robert Stephens) has retired to his room with his cocaine bottle and a severe depression. Fortunately, eminent Sherlockians Michael and Mollie Hardwick retained this section of dialogue between the policeman and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakeley) in their novelization:
LESTRADE: We’ve had three rather nasty murders in Whitechapel. All women. Very nasty. Some of us at the Yard were wondering if perhaps Mr Holmes would be willing to step across and …
WATSON: I’m sorry, Lestrade. Holmes is … working on another case just now.
LESTRADE: Oh … too bad. I just thought it was the kind of thing that would interest him. Well, never mind. I daresay we can solve it without his help.
In an amusing scene from Loren D. Estleman’s 1978 pastiche Sherlock Holmes Vs. Dracula, Lestrade mistakes the Count’s handiwork for that of the Ripper.
LESTRADE: Our very worst nightmares have come true. The Ripper is up to his old tricks.
WATSON: A mistake, certainly!
HOLMES: What makes you think that this is the work of Jack the Ripper?
LESTRADE: Who but old Leather Apron himself would slash an inoffensive prostitute’s throat and leave her to drown in her own blood?
That same year, however, the Detective and Serial Killer were engaged in another screen battle. Announced in 1978 as Sherlock Holmes and Saucy Jack, Murder by Decree is probably the most satisfying depictions of the Ripper case, as well as one of the best Holmes films of all time. An Anglo-Canadian production made for a budget of less that $4 million, Decree was directed by the late Bob Clark, whose credits — with the exception of cult favorites Black Christmas and A Christmas Story — are largely made up of such depressingly lowbrow features as the Porky’s series and Baby Geniuses 1 and 2, gave us a film so drenched in doom-laden atmosphere that A Study in Terror seems like a children’s pantomime by comparison.
The book The Ripper File (based on a BBC television series entitled Jack the Ripper) is credited as inspiration for John Hopkin’s wonderfully quotable screenplay, but it also bears a considerable debt to Stephen Knight’s famous book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, in which the murders are depicted as part of a massive conspiracy involving the British Government, the Royal Family and the Freemasons, all acting to repress the facts concerning a bastard child fathered by Queen Victoria’s grandchild by murdering the prostitutes who knew the truth of the matter — the same theory formed the basis of the less-effective Johnny Depp film From Hell.
Peter O’Toole and Lawrence Olivier were originally cast as Holmes and Watson (O’Toole having previously been considered for the lead role in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes), but their intense dislike of one another made the match impossible. Elsewhere, Olivier would portray a meek Moriarty in the 1976 adaptation of The Seven Per-Cent Solution and O’Toole would lend his voice t
o four animated features based on Conan Doyle’s novels. Instead, Canadian Christopher Plummer took on the role of Holmes for the second time, having played the Master two years before in a Welsh television version of Silver Blaze, opposite Thorley Walters as Watson. Plummer portrays a more vulnerable Holmes than had been seen at that time, raging against the callousness of the ruling classes, and even crying on-screen. His sincere performance won Plummer a Canadian “Genie,” making him the first and, until Robert Downey Jr.’s recent Golden Globe, the only award-winning screen Holmes.
Cast alongside Plummer was James Mason, who, anxious to ensure that his Watson not be seen as a bumbler, insisted that two scenes be rewritten before agreeing to participate. One was deleted entirely, although it appears in the paperback adaptation by Robert Weverka. There is genuine warmth in the on-screen relationship between the two, and — despite the gap of 20 years between the two actors — they possess a chemistry which makes them an utterly believable duo.
By accident or design, Murder By Decree shares two of its major cast members with the earlier A Study in Terror, one of them appearing as the same character. Frank Finlay reprised his role as Lestrade, while Anthony Quayle — a Whitechapel surgeon in the 1965 film — portrayed real-life police commissioner Sir Charles Warren.