Murder by Decree (1979)

 "I prefer bad manners in the theatre to violence in the streets..."

This film is an odd and intriguing beast. It's very well directed indeed, with the scenes involving the Ripper particularly well-realised. It has a superb cast. It's a very well made film. And yet...

Firstly, the script is somewhat plodding, slow, oddly paced and not quite worthy of the excellent way it's been realised. While James Mason gives us a first rate Watson, Christopher Plummer's generally impressive performance as Holmes suffers from the fact that the script doesn't really get the character- this Holmes is too openly emotional, too "normal".

This isn't the first time that cinema has put Holmes and Watson into the context of the Jack the Ripper murders but... well, SPOILERS, but this film adopts wholesale the then-fashionable theories advanced by Stephen Knight in his unfortunately titled Jack the Ripper:  The Final Solution, theories that woukd later form the basis of both the graphic novel and the film of From Hell..

And this is a problem. Not because such theories have fallen out of fashion (Personally, I don't buy the freemasonry nonsense- it's a very silly organisation but, except in the context discriminating against non-freemasons in their careers, harmless nonsense. I'd suggest borrowing a razor off that nice Mr Occam. The Ripper was probably Charles Lechmere.), but simply because adopting this narrative wholesale means that Holmes and Watson are by definition unable to have much agency or influence over events. 

Still, this is an interesting little curiosity nonetheless.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Golden Pince-Nez

 "May I shake your hand, Sir?"

"What? If you must."

Now that's more like it. This is the first solid episode in ages from the once-dependable Granada Sherlock Holmes. After a few episodes that were, essentially, not whodunits, at last we get an adaptation of a solid Conan Doyle murder mystery with a genuinely surprising and unpredictable twist. This may not be a highlight of the series, but it's an enormous relief to encounter an episode like this. Let's hope it represents an overdue return to form for the final stretch.

This is a broadly faithful adaptation, with the changes making sense with the casting- and the cast is truly excellent. The episode is notably missing Edward Hardwicke as Watson, of course, but it just about works having the superb but noticeably older Charles Gray return as Mycroft. The interplay between the two brothers is fascinating- Holmes archly notes that it os "ironic" that their late father left his magnifying glass to the sedentary Mycroft, although there's just about enough sleight of hand to excuse his not being so sedentary here.

There's a nice little red herring with Suffragettes too, and some wry social commentary on Edwardian attitudes to female suffrage, which Mycrofy is very much seen to share. The opening and concluding scenes with nihilists in Russia in the 1880s are well done, too- shades of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

Please let this not be the last good episode...

A Study in Terror (1965)

 "Mr Holmes is usually right..."

This is quite the obvious concept- Sherlock Holmes does Jack the Ripper- and one which, I suppose, succeeds or fails on the realisation.

There is, of course, something uneasy about the use of Jack the Ripper- of the brutal and sexualised murder of women- as entertainment, particularly in a film where men (and one woman, presented as the one "whore" not driven to the work by poverty). The male gaze, the Bechdel test, the sheer unthinking misogyny of it all- it can't go unacknowledged, much as we accept that such reactions were not common currency in 1965.

That said, though, this is a frustrating film. The script is, I think, first class- a superbly constructed whodunit, albeit cheating just a little with the final reveal of the killer not being earned, despite the neat cleverness of the other complex yet clear threads; good characterisation; a great deal of wit; lots of Sherlockian allusions in the script with frequent uses of Conan Doyle's dialogue. It's also a nice touch that the character of Dr Murray is a likely nod either to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself- a charitable man- or his mentor Dr Bell, or both.

And yet this excellent script is quite poorly realised. John Neville and Donald Houston are a pedestrian, superficial Holmes and Watson, failing to play their parts as actual characters rather than cyphers, wasting the nuanced lines they are given. The direction may be interesting in places- we get a rather odd shot of the final murder from the Ripper's POV, a disturbing riff on the male gaze- but the costuming (all the prostitutes wear symbolic red!) and sets are a little disappointing.

It's a shame that we end up with a film that's merely quite good; the script is better than that.

The Three Musketeers (1973)

“You cannot go to the Queen with dirty legs...”

I hadn’t seen this before, amazingly, so I certainly raised an eyebrow when the opening credits revealed this film to have been scripted by George MacDonald Fraser. This gives certain expectations and, true to form, the film turns out to be a highly entertaining and rather bawdy comedy that has a lot of fun with the culture of realpolitik and duelling that prevailed in the France of Louis XIII. This is a rather straight adaptation of the novel, albeit one in which Faye Dunaway as Milady gets oddly little screen time, but one that adds a splendidly comical gloss to what was hardly the most serious novel to begin with.

This is a decadent France reigned, but not ruled over by the feckless Louis XIII, not half the man his father was or, indeed, his son will be, leaving a vacuum to be filled by the ambitious Cardinal Richelieu, a competent but oddly miscast Charlton Heston, with the far more suitable Christopher Lee in a lesser role. Perhaps they just needed a big Hollywood name, but why hardly use Faye Dunaway?

Regardless, the whole thing looks gorgeous, odd though the Hong Kong martial arts opening may be, and the cast is quite magnificent. Michael York is the perfect bumbling D’Artagnan for this film,  Raquel Welch is the perfect sultry Constance, and Christopher Lee mystifies is all A’s to why he isn’t playing the Cardinal. The film is pretty much stolen by the splendid comic acting of Spike Milligan though, who shoes us what a bloody comic genius he is.

I don’t think I’ve seen a finer version yet than this.

Lifeforce (1985)

"Columbia, they're all dead!"

 Well, this certainly isn't the sort of film you'd expect of Tobe Hooper, he of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist fame. Oh, it's well-directed and acted, with horror-like touches, but it's an oddly straight piece of very British alien invasion sci-fi, stuffed with British character actors such as Frank Finlay (always the Witchsmeller Pursuivant to me), John Hallam (Forget Light- he'll always be Sir Wilfred Death to me), Patrick Stewart, Aubrey Morris and even John Woodnutt.

The script, to be frank, is British sci-fi by numbers and nothing special, a very well-made film but with an average script. It's like an episode of Doctor Who with a Hollywood budget and more nudity, right down to the suspiciously large influence plot-wise from The Quatermass Experiment, only without any of Nigel Kneale's characteristic pessimism.

Still, the film is acted well and looks good, with some truly magnificent examples of stop-motion animation which seemed to reach a real peak in the immediately pre-CGI era. Steve Railsback and Peter Firth make decent if rather unhinged-looking stars and it's fun to revel in the '80s-ness of the space shuttles, computer screens and obsession with the return of Halley's Comet. It's odd that a contemporary film should feature such suspiciously advanced space tech, but heigh-ho. Arguably beginning to fade into obscurity from its cult status, Lifeforce is definitely worth seeing not only because it's a fun bit of '80s nostalgia but because it's actually quite good, although I wouldn't put it more strongly than that..