Carry On Up the Jungle (1970)

 "Game?"

"Any time, if you are."

This is... well, there are some good one liners, the cast is good as ever (although Kenneth Williams is glaringly absent)... but, well, it's hardly the best of the series.

Why? Well, there are the moments that make one wince- Bernard Bresslaw in blackface, the jokes about the "natives"- but this is a Carry On film from 1970 set in deepest Africa: such things are priced in.

Then there's the obvious cheapness. This is set in Africa yet clearly shot on a set in Hertfordshire, so much so that it feels almost claustrophobic at times. There are various lions, elephants and giraffes... all of them very obviously stock footage. If all of this were made into a joke, it would work... but breaking the fourth wall is not the Carry On style. Also, Terry Scott as Tarzan is... a courageous bit of casting, to put it mildly.

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh here? After all, the Carry Ons are coming off a run of very strong films, but might that be the problem? Is Carry On Up the Khyber going to prove impossible to top? I suppose the script and performances are as good as ever here, and it's certainly good to have Frankie Howerd again after all this time. But this film just feels... well, cheap.

Black Sabbath- Paranoid (1970)

It's extraordinary, looking back, how Sabbath could have released this second album so soon after the first. I suppose it was an era where rock band worked, toured and wrote much more quiickly. Killing themselves to live, so to speak.

Paranoid is, of course, brilliant. It must surely be the band's most well-known and popular album and, in "War Pigs", "Iron Man" and the titular track, contains some of the band's most iconic songs. Yet there's zero filler here- even deep cuts such as "Hand of Doom" are magnificent. 

There's still a similarity in style from the album's predecessor with the band's signature heavy riffs that evoke unease and horror. Yet this album branches off into different directions and is less dependent on this feel. There's a variation of styles in thos collection of songs, with the band's signature longer track with their superb transitions, but also shorter songs. Bill Ward's jazz sensibilities are allowed freer rein, lot least with his far from pretentious drum solo in "Rat Salad". The band are, by this point, fully formed- heavy, with their own sound, but announcing that they are by no means limiting themselves and reserve the right to explore.

Julius Caesar (1970)

 "This was the noblest Romam of them all."

Obviously, I know this play. I also know the 1953 film with Marlon Brando, and with John Gielgud in a less exalted, but more electrifying part. I mean, is the superlative Sir John Gielgud... phoning it in? I do believe he is.

Not that this film is crap. It's just not the 1953 film, probably. I mean, I saw it probably twenty-five years ago, long before this blog. Memory is an imperfect intrument. But it- and Brando, especially- made a deep impression on me. Any subsequent Mark Antony has big boots to fill. And those big soliloquys must be approached with trepidation. An actor lives or dies by them.

So how does this compare? Well, the standard British characters actors are very RSC. Robert Vaughn impresses with Casca, giving a daring yet pleaasingly arch performance. Diana Rigg shines during her one big scene.

But what of Charlton Heston? Well, this was brave of him. He's no Brando, not even close, but he's good enough. His "Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of Earth" is so so, but his funerary speech for Caesar is fascinating. Not as passionate as many, but great facial acting and restraint, which really, really works.

The entire production is fascinating. We begin with a bird of prey, circling. The battle is visceral, as is the bloody murder. There is no honour in war here, only bloodshed. Shades of Vietnam, and Oh, What a Lovely War?, the 1970 zeitgeist. This is not the best version, being quite flat. But hey, it's Shakespeare.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

 "The're going to kill you, and then dissect you. In that order."

This is, perhaps, a mainly predictable sequel in which another human astronaut- Brent- arrives on the tail of Taylor and discovers the same society in a slightly more ecomomical manner. It seems, at first as though we're getting a rerun of the first, but with a B-movie actor (James Franciscus, of the splendid Valley of Gwangi) instead of an A-list one- although Charlton actually has a significant role here.

Yet ultimately, as the apres invade the Forbidden Zone, after a nice bit of gorilla vs chimpanzee conflict, we learn more, as it now seems the Zone is inhabited by telepathic humans (I love how we don't hear their voices as they interrogate Brent, but his responses are carefully worded so we can follow...) who feel very futuristic and worship a nuclear bomb.This is all delightfully twisted, especially the extended fifty megaton version of "All Things Bright and Beautiful", culminating firstly in all of them removing their suspiciously convincing masks to show their ravaged faces, then a scuffle, then sudden armageddon, which makes me rather interested in how come we shall be getting several more sequels. It's all delightfully bonkers.

The underground bomb worshippers were a definite influence on The Face of Evil, fellow Doctor Who fans. And we get no fewer than two former foes of Adam West's Batman in Maurice Evans and Victor Buono. The latter plays a character calls "Fat Man." Although Don Pedro Colley plays a character called "Negro"which is... yeah, 1970 was a different time. Fortunately.

The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

 "Times are hard. People just aren't dying off so quick..."

This isn't the first time I've seen this film, but it's probably pushing two decades since I last saw this, and it's lost none of its power. It's a shame the film, apparently, flopped at the box office; the script, direction and Ralph Bates are all superb, and even Kate O'Mara's inexplicable mittel-European Irish accent strangely works.

The Curse of Frankenstein introduced Hammer Horror films properly, telling the familiat story with a focus on Frankenstein himself as an amoral and obsessive villain rather than a tragic figure. This film absolutely doubles down on that, with Bates' Victor Frankenstein being a cynical, manipulative, cold bastard who not only kills for his work but demands sex from his housekeeper and cruelly refuses to marry Elizabeth, who is besotted with him, but cruelly exploits her financial troubles to make her his housekeeper. This Frankenstein is a deliciously nasty piece of work, and Bates carries this film in an absolute tour de force of a performance, although Dennis Price is absolutely wonderful as the splendidly camp grave robber,.

The monster turns up fairly late on in the film, but that doesn't matter. It's all about Frankenstein himself as the antihero we love to hate. Best of all, he survives unharmed at the end, unlike all of those who have crossed or even annoyed him. This is peak, confident Hammer, and t's superb, box office be damned.

Black Sabbath- Black Sabbath (1970)

This may be an old favourite of mine, and hardly exploring new ground, but sod it; I've driven from North Tyneside to southern Leicestershire today, and I'm knackered.

But there's value in going back to this very revealing debut album after several years, and finding new stuff in it. It's still at once a soundscape and a collection of distint and extraordinary structured songs all at once. Sabbath have always been known for marrying complex transitions between different sections of the song with an overall coherence, and that's present from the very first, eponymous track, along with the whole damn album. There's the horror, uneasy feel, with the devil's chord and the whiff, as the band have themselves said, of Hammer Horror, very much contemporary.

And yet it's not heavy metal, not that such a thing truly existed in 1969-70. There's a psychedelia feel, and although it's clealy not an album made by hippies it certainly belongs in that context. Except, of course, this is not made by fey middle class aesthetes from Cambridge or California but four very working class lads from Birmingham, a much grimmer place in 1970 than it is now.

This is also clearly an album from before the awful racial segregation of today's mucic indusstry. There's no while "rock and pop" or black "urban". Here we have a rock band which has an extraordinary jazz drummer in Bill Ward who would not be out of place on a soul record, and frequent occasions where the music has, shock horror, a groove. This is an extraordinary album, yes, but very much one of its time.

Phoenix in Obsidian by Michael Moircock

.

This is the second in Moorcock’s Eternal Champion and, if rather less unified in its structure than the previous novel, is a very interesting- and, in my experience, very fast- read.

There are lots of ideas here- a dying, frozen future Earth where humanity has become decadent, knowing that there is no future. Threre are some nice touches in describing such a culture: the visual arts and the prose of this society are absurdly over-complex, as is the architecture. Less fortunate is the kink-shaming description of their somewhat adventurous and painful sexual habits as a sign of decadence, but this is 1970.

We have a Moon that has long since crashed to Earth and become a mountain range, We have a scarlet fjord. We have long-lost technologies. We have a baddie who is a most worldly bishop and makes me think of those popes of the time of the Borgias. We have tantalising habits of the Eternal Champion's many existences and his ultimate backstory.

Yet the ideas here are all brilliantly imaginative rather than the sorts of ideas than may raise a novella of science fantasy weirdness to aspire to the literary. Unlike its predecessor, I don't think Phoenix in Obsidian does that.

That, however, is no crime. This is a hugely enjoyable piece of pulp fiction that can be read by a time-poor reader in the space of four or five days. We do not need to ask for more.

Right. One more Moorcock to go, then something else...

The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock

 

I’ve never read this before, or indeed any Michael Moorcock novel other than the two I’ve already blogged. This is a much earlier novel, much less tied to real human history and mythology, and so a very different experience, despite the obvious shared links with Moorcock’s Multiverse, which I am now infinitesimally closer to understanding.

It’s a highly satisfying read, both philosophical and full of unexpected yet entirely logical twists and surprises as what is, on the surface, a very simple narrative deals with heave themes of the ethics of war, the darkness of human nature and its propensity for atrocities, and a devastatingly bleak view of racism and ethnic conflict. 

And yet, I confess, I found the opening chapters difficult. The idea of John Daker somehow having multiple existences in multiple realities and being cursed with that knowledge is fascinating, but it serves as texture rather than as the focus of the plot. We begin with Erekose exploring an unfamiliar Earth with continents and cities unknown to us, at a time in history (past or future?) which is equally unknown. Despite the subtle prose and characterisation this presents Gigi unties for the reader, yet the novel soon settles down and hooks the reader with its prose and characterisation.

The ending is extremely satisfying-and leaves all sorts of questions which will, I’m sure, be echoed in other novels. Is this our Earth, or another Earth of the Eldren, colonised by humans in the far future? Or is history just cyclical? Regardless, this novel is fascinating.

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

 

I’ve resisted blogging novels for the ten years I’ve had this blog. Why? Partly because I’m in the habit of writing notes as a watch things I intend to blog, and it’s both less instinctive and more intrusive to do that while reading a book. Also, inertia: I was in the habit, for years, of treating this as a film and TV blog. Then it expanded to albums. Now, it seems, the blog title has become even more inaccurate. Also, I’m off work looking after a poorly Little Miss Llamastrangler so why not?

When it comes to fantasy novels, I like quirky and weird over those long, pompous trilogies with dwarves, elves and dragons. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin can pull off that sort of thing, but their many inferior clones, I fear, tend to bore me.

This is the first novel in what is, to paraphrase Douglas Adam’s, an increasingly inaccurately named trilogy. It is, however, pleasingly weird and imaginative, and a splendid introduction to Roger Zelazny, an author new to me. Its slowly unfolding tale of demigod siblings warring through the ages not only looks suspiciously like a major influence on Highlander, but cleverly deals with all the necessary exposition of world building by giving our protagonist, Corwin, amnesia at the start so he learns who he is alongside the reader. The characters may be godlike beings, but they read as three dimensional people with interior lives and real relations.

The prose is impressive too, which helps a lot. I’m no prose snob, and I don’t by any means read only literary fiction despite doing English at uni many years ago. I don’t mind functional prose, but bad prose I cannot tolerate. Bad prose ruins Agatha Christie for me. Her plots may be ingenious, but she’s no Margery Allingham. But the prose here is just the right balance of hard boiled and whimsical, with the light cynicism leavened by some delightful imagery.

The novel is fairly short, but the next one beckons…

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

 "They were all evil, and remain evil after death."

I've seen and blogged a previous adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in the form of Crypt of the Vampire but this, Hammer's version, is fascinatingly different, and not only in the fact that it stars, sort of, Peter Cushing as opposed to Christopher Lee. 

This film, like its predecessor, is a fairly faithful adaptation. yet it is fascinatingly different, and not only because of the greater emphasis on the lesbian attraction between Carmilla and Emma which looms large over the entire film. To begin with, there is no red herring, or at least not for the audience; the characters may suspect Kate O'Mara's governess, but we know Carnilla is a vampire from an early stage as we are made aware of an earlier victim. This is far less of a straight character drama and far more of a sensationalist horror grand guignol with sex and violence as the selling points... and it works. This is a significantly better film.

It helps that the cast is so superb. Ingrid Pitt and Cushing excel as ever, but they are ably supported by a very young Kate O'Mara ad an almost unrecognisable George Cole. The direction and production similarly recreate the familiar Mittel-European setting (this time rural Austra in the 1780s) with real aplomb.And yes, of course there's a tavern full of suspicious locals.

Yes, this is the start of '70s Hammer horror, using sex and sensation to sell in a way they'd never so explicitly done before. It has to be said, though, that it bloody well works.

Scream and Scream Again! (1970)

“That bloody chicken wasn’t killed- it died of old age!”

 This is an odd film, not at all what the marketing, title and poster lead us to expect, but unexpectedly a rather good one.

The film's selling point is, of course, that it can boast the holy horror trinity of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the same horror film. But instead we get an utterly bonkers science fiction conspiracy thriller in which Cushing has but a brief cameo and the other two are not exactly in starring roles.

This is a gritty, realistic police procedural with slickly gritty direction, naturalistic acting and a basis in the more down-to-Earth end of science fiction. The plot may be utterly mad but pays off well, with the two apparently unrelated subplots- people being kidnapped and having their limbs surgically removed, while a sinister man with apparent superpowers commits a series of murders to climb up the greasy pole in a dodgy, unnamed, military dictatorship.

This all works rather well, as does the "A" plot of the pursuit of a serial killer with vampire-like attributes who kills girls whom he meets in nightclubs, which takes up an awful lot of the film. The film is, I suppose, rather disjointed, but it doesn't feel like it and is all drawn together in an effective climax. The overall effect is of a film which defies expectations in hat type of film it turns out to be, but in fact turns out to be surprisingly good.

El Topo (1970)

"Who are you to judge me?"

"I am God."

I don't usually recite the plots of films for this blog- it's a pretty redundant thing to do- but I'll briefly do so for El Topo so as to underline the surreality: a mysterious gunfighter in black is riding around aimlessly with his mostly naked seven year old son for some reason, when he comes across a village which has been violently massacred with blood everywhere, and discovers that this is the work of the bizarre Colonel, whose reign of debauchery over a nearby monastery is both incredibly surreal and full of Catholic symbolism; this is the most Bunuelesque bit, I suppose, but there's an awful lot of vague counterculture Eastern philosophical symbolism too.

So suddenly there's a girl, and a kind of fairytale martial arts vibe as she pledges to love him only if he fights and bests four eccentric gunfighting masters. Then the two girls with whom he's having a relationship turn on him and shoot him. Then suddenly he's finding a way to release a large group of incestuous underground prisoners, only for them to be massacred in turn by the denizens of the not-very-nice local town. But long before the end even of the first act we reach a point where the very concept of narrative plot is very, very tenuous. There's lots of sex, violence and blood though.

What does all this mean? Buggered if I know. There's loads of symbolism, both Catholic and Eastern but, the 20th century having begotten Dada, surrealism, modernism, postmodernism and, indeed, the Sixties, I have no idea. But this is without a doubt the weirdest of the 455 films I've blogged.

The Conformist (1970)

"I want to see how a dictatorship falls.”

I’ve always hated unthinking confirmity so, as you can imagine, I found this film rather satisfying. It may be adapted from a novel I don’t know, but it’s rare to find a film that feels so much like literary fiction in its treatment of theme and inferiority, an impressive achievement when one must use visuals and acting as a substitute to being privy to characters’ thoughts.

Marcello Clerici is cold, reserved, not given to easy display of feeling, perhaps because of sexual abuse in his youth, and self-conscious about this, as well as secretly not being quite unambiguously heterosexual. But this very self-consciousness makes him anxious to fit in, to be “normal”, an attitude he shares with his blond friend Italo.

So he conforms. Even his marriage to Giulia, while he sees as rather simple and with whom he has no real connection as a person, is done so he can appear normal. The trouble is, of course, that confirmity can be a particularly terrible thing if you happen to live in an oppressive society such as, say, Fascist Italy in 1938, and the film centres on a moral dilemma; will Marcello get his hands dirty by assassinating an old anti-Fascist professor? In the end he does, of course, and he conforms to Fascism and tyranny in all of its openly evil aspects.

His relationship with Anna is interesting, too. The professor’s wife, yet also attracted to both Marcello and the innocently oblivious Giulia, she seems to offer her body as a peace offering to Marcello in a doomed attempt to stave off the inevitable. Yet she is attracted to the man she hates, accepting sex and comfort from him even as she confronts him with human rights abuses under Mussolini.

And yet, five years later, as Mussolini’s regime falls, Marcello is able to conform once more without a qualm, denouncing his former Fascist beliefs and even his old friend Italo, no doubt set to thrive in the new democratic Italy. Such conformists surround us, their potential for evil often latent, but they are monsters. This is a fine film.

Cromwell (1970)

"An England without a king is unthinkable!"

I watched this film principally because I wanted to see two great actors- Richard Harris and Alec Guinness- play two iconic roles from history; Oliver Cromwell and Charles I. And they are, indeed, magnificent. Their performances- Harris as a principled sociopath slowly descending into a dictatorial sociopath and Guinness as a politely arrogant congenital liar- are superlative and alone enough to make the film worth watching. The film succeeds brilliantly if seen as a character piece based on its broadly valid idea of Cromwell- a man who can honestly give everything for the supremacy of Parliament and then simply dismiss it when it does not live up to his expectations. For this reason the film succeeds as drama in spite of being so incredibly rush and in spite of its ending so suddenly.

And yet... no film set in the past can be historically accurate in full. I accept this. Events must be compressed into a shorter period of time and simplified to fit the medium of cinema. And yet... here we have Cromwell as one of those MPs whom Charles tries to arrest in January 1642. We have Cromwell present at Edgehill. We have the Earls of Essex and Manchester making speeches in the Commons. We even have arch-republican Henry Ireton (a shockingly young Michael Jayson) trying to persuade Cromwell to take the crown, in spite of having died during the (glossed over) Irish campaign in 1651. All this is a little much to swallow; these are not small things.

I'm also uncertain about the dialogue; a film set in the mid-seventeenth century should either use modern dialogue or contrive to use contemporary speech but contrive to favour those sentence constructions and that vocabulary that would be understood today, preferably the second. Instead we get a bizarre mish-mash of speech which mixes archaisms such as "withal" with modern coinings such as "international". The effect is clumsy and distracting.

Still, it all looks magnificent and, in the final analysis, it's all about the acting. And, judged by this criterion, the film is superb.

Waterloo (1970)

"My God, Sir! I've lost my leg!"

"My God, Sir! So you have!"

There are three striking things about this superb film: Rod Steiger's electrifying, extraordinarily charismatic and career-defining performance as Napoleon, the incredible scope and accuracy of the battle scenes, and the fact that it was made in Brezhnev's Soviet Union with an international cast. That just seems bizarre.

Still, it's an extraordinary piece of cinema and one of the most accurate historical films ever made; even the dialogue is mostly documented from real life and I recognised a few of Wellington's. The only inaccuracies I could spot were the constant references to "Belgium" (not a country until 1830) and the slight musical reference to the modern German national anthem as Blucher's Prussians arrive to save the day. This is anachronistic; the tune existed at the time but it's lyrics were a paean to Emperor Franz of Austria, hardly a friend of Prussia. The Habsburgs were hardly friends of pan-German nationalism, which in any case wouldn't really become a thing until after the revolutions of 1848. Anyway, the film...

 Steiger steals the show as Napoleon, a charismatic genius refusing to give in to the failing health of his body, but Christopher Plummer also deserves high praise for his unflappable and blunt Wellington, refusing permission to have Napoleon assassinated ahead of the battle as such things are Simply Not Done. The opening scenes are extraordinary, though: Napoleon rants and raves like Hitler in Downfall before finally abdicating, only to escape from Elba with but 1,000 troops and suede power again through sheer magnetic charisma. It's eyebrow-raising here to see a somewhat corpulent Orson Welles in a cameo as Louis XVIII.

This is a true epic in scope, both thematically and visually. If you haven't seen it.. sorry for the spoiler, but Napoleon loses. Sorry.

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)

" Peter, I was just jotting down a few reasons why you might want to leave IOP and come over to us at the Fairburn Organisation."

"Oh yes, that's very well put. I particularly like the noughts."

This is one of the greatest films ever made, a work of true genius. Yet so few people have seen it, or even heard of it, in spite of its stellar cast: it stars Peter Cook, and features the likes of John Cleese, Leicestershire lad Graham Chapman, Arthur Lowe, Harold Pinter (a Nobel Prize winner, no less!), Denholm Elliott, Julian Glover, Dennis Price, Ronnie Corbett and many, many more, and was scripted by Cleese and Chapman. It seems to have flopped, and pretty much vanished off the radar. That's a tragedy; it's one of the greatest works of satire ever, in any medium. Watch it now. Please.

Michael Rimmer (Cook) is a man with no past or hinterland but limitless ambition, who suddenly appears from nowhere. He seems to have no desires beyond the pursuit of power, and his entire personality is constructed so as to achieve his goals, even choosing his wife by focus group. We begin with him inveigling his way into a hopelessly inefficient advertising business managed by the hopeless Ferret (Lowe). This is a far cry from Mad Men, in spite of the sexy secretaries, and probably something of a commentary on the state of British industry circa 1970.

Rimmer gradually gets himself into a position of real power via mastery of opinion polls, and gradually ends up as a spin doctor to the political world, and eventually an MP, Chancellor, Prime Minister and ultimately absolute dictator. Rimmer ends up with the Tories, but it all seems very New Labour. And this is 1970. This film is quite scarily prophetic.

In 1970, political differences meant something. The political left was actually socialist. Unions had real power. Sensible, Keynesian economics was the orthodoxy. It all seemed to be a far cry from our modern era of managerial politics and interchangeable political parties, run by what Peter Oborne describes in his thought-provoking book as "the political class". Today (as Adam Curtis has rather eloquently discussed, especially in such series as The Trap and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace), this sense of politics as merely being about efficient ways of running a market economy with an ever-shrinking state. It seems such a clear contrast between then and now. Why, then, is this film so eerily prophetic?

The cynicism of the political class, and the meaninglessness of ideology, is plain to see. The unnamed Labour prime minister (suspiciously northern, pipe-smoking and, well, Wilsonesque, and played by the caretaker from Grange Hill!) unsuccessfully tries to lure Rimmer into joining the party, insisting that his lack of left-wing views need not be a problem, as Labour is "not bound to dogma". Worse still, once Rimmer is comfortably ensconced in senior Tory circles, a member of the cabinet makes a speech which is obviously meant to evoke Enoch Powell's racist "Rivers of Blood" speech. Yet Rimmer suggests that the Tory leader should do nothing to prevent the speech, but sack the minister afterwards. That way he can have his cake and eat it by looking like a man of principle by publicly opposing racism, while still giving the impression that the Conservatives are tough on immigration. It's deeply, deeply cynical.

The film isn't laugh out loud funny in the way that people might perhaps expect from this cast; it's very much in the style of Yes Minister or The Thick of It. But it's easily as good, as funny and as truthful as both of these, and I personally believe that it's a little more philosophically profound, even if there is a bit of nihilism underneath. Also, there's a pretty naked woman in it. Just saying.

There's another. less political, subtext too, I think. Peter Cook seems to be giving Rimmer the mannerisms of David Frost, and Cook once famously commented that his biggest ever regret was saving Frost from drowning. This entire film may well be one long character assassination, which would be rather ironic. Frost is executive producer...!

There's one thing that's puzzling me a little, though. There's a scene supposedly set in Nuneaton, although there's a suspicious lack of local accents, and I'd love to know whether or not it was filmed there. I know Nuneaton well, being a Hinckley lad, but I wasn't born until 1977, and I know the town centre was extensively redeveloped in the early '80s. So, can anyone put me out of my misery and tell me if it was filmed there or not? I can't say I recognise any of the locations, but things may have changed a lot.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

“Dust, Mrs Hudson, is an essential part of my filing system.”

Wow. That was amazing. Fanwank this film may be, and somewhat light on star wattage, but the script just sparkles with wit and metatextual knowingness. This is certainly the finest Sherlock Holmes film I’ve seen to date. It’s the only Billy Wilder film I’ve seen to date, but it certainly not the last.

I know little about Robert Stephens (Holmes) and less about Colin Blakeley (Watson), and both of them reminded me, rather oddly, of Leonard Rossiter in their styles of performance. Stephens gives us an arch, knowing Holmes, who always seems to be aware of his nature as a character in a film; we know when the film’s final act is dawning because Holmes tells us so! Blakely plays Watson more-or-less as the buffoon of legend, although he’s shown to be an intelligent and competent physician, and as something of a ladies’ man.

The first scene proper (after a short modern-day framing device)  starts the metatextual fun straightaway, as Holmes compares the “reality” with Watson’s published stories, complaining that the public now expect him to wear the ridiculous clothes from the illustrations in The Strand! We then move on to a rather interesting bit of speculation as to Holmes’ sexuality. This is a rather obvious thing to do, perhaps, but 1970 is probably about as early as it could be done in a Hollywood film. A rather haughtily attractive Russian ballerina with seemingly supernatural menopause-dodging powers (“I must say that she doesn’t look 38.” “That is because she is 49…”) wants to spend a week shagging Holmes so she can have a child by him as an exercise in eugenics. Nice work if you can get it.

Holmes isn’t keen, though. So much so, that he resorts to claiming that he’s, er, like Tchaikovsky, a previous choice (“You couldn’t go wrong with Tchaikovsky.” “We could, and we did.”, and claims to be shagging Watson. This has unfortunate consequences for the good doctor, who has up to this point been having rather a lot of fun with some attractive young ladies. He’s not in the best of moods, unsurprisingly, once he gets back to Baker Street and, this being 1887, starts to fret about scandal, leading to some wonderfully arch retorts from Holmes. The whole sequence ends with Holmes refusing to discuss his sexuality, which remains a great big question mark.

This sequence takes up the first thirty minutes, after which the main plot begins. The whole thing is rather more coherent than might at first be expected, though. The sequence sets up the theme of the film- Holmes’ relationship with women, and the question which it poses is more or less answered.

The arrival of a mysterious, amnesiac Belgian lady, Gabrielle Valladon, starts off the larger part of the film, and this leads to some rather sexually charged scenes between her and Holmes. The case doesn’t get very far, however, before Holmes receives a summons from his brother Mycroft (the justly ubiquitous Christopher Lee). There’s a delicious little retcon here, as we’re told that the outwardly eccentric “Diogenes Club” is in fact a front for British Intelligence. Mycroft warns Holmes off the case which, of course, only encourages him.

Holmes seems to make a real connection with Mme Valladon, and they have a rather interesting discussion about his experiences with women. Most interestingly, he claims, in an interestingly light-hearted tone, that his mistrust of women ultimately stems from his fiancée (!) inconveniently dying just twenty-four hours before their wedding. Are we to believe this, or do we have a case of unreliable narrator syndrome here? We should probably remember Holmes’ fourth wall-breaking tendencies at this point.

To Inverness, then, and some rather gorgeous location filming in the Highlands. It soon becomes clear that things are mixed up with the legend of the Loch Ness Monster- oops! This is a bit of a clanger, as the legend of the Loch Ness Monster is not anywhere near as old as you’d expect, dating back only back to 1933. The whole thing really kicked off with a famous photograph which appeared in 1934. April 1^st 1934, to be precise…

The monster, it turns out is mechanical. It seems that Holmes is close to solving the mystery, when he receives a summons from Mycroft. It’s revealed that the “monster” is an experimental submersible, and that Mime Valladon’s husband died accidentally while testing the device. In a nice twist, it’s revealed that “Mme Valladon” is in fact an agent of the Kaiser, Fraulein Von Hofmannsthal, and that she has rather cleverly enlisted Holmes to do all the work for her. He’s fallen hook, line and sinker for her charms.

The best bit’s near the end, though. Queen Victoria- a Holmes fangirl, naturally- is such a delight. Wonderfully, she refuses to allow the submersible project to continue, because it’s “unsportsmanlike” and “un-English”!!! She dismisses Mycroft’s protests by insisting that she will write to her nephew Willie (who won’t succeed his grandfather and his unfortunate father as Kaiser until next year, but never mind!) and get him to abandon any similar plans by Germany.

We end, sixteen months later, on a sad note, as Holmes reads of Fraulein Von Hofmannsthal’s death at the hands of the Japanese, having been caught spying. He’s clearly deeply affected. It seems that Holmes is, after all, susceptible to certain women (although he may still be asexual). She did, after all, defeat him.