Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1991) - 5/10

This two-part TV movie produced in Europe could easily have been shrunk to half of its 3 hour running time without any harm. In fact, quite the opposite. Still Christopher Lee as Holmes and Patrick Macnee as Watson is something I could not pass up. The two of them were to star in one more Holmes film together - Incident at Victoria Falls a year later in 1992.


Both Lee and Macnee are about to hit the 70 year old mark in this film and the characters they play are clearly well-past their prime too. At the beginning of the film Holmes complains that no one seems to remember him any longer. They both physically move as slowly in the film as evolution and Watson huffs and puffs his way through. But a new case is brought to them by Mycroft Holmes and the chase is on! Slowly.


A new danger that could destroy the world might fall into the hands of the Kaiser and Holmes and his stalwart cohort must rush to Vienna to try and find it. This great danger is a . . . remote control. Oh, how times have changed. But in the wrong hands such as Bosnian terrorists it could be used for political chaos. In Vienna Holmes runs into "The Woman" - Irene Adler played by Morgan Fairchild who is an opera star. She spends much of the film doing all she can to seduce Holmes other than putting Viagra into his soup. He would need a lot. Two other historical characters showing up for no particular purpose are Elliot Ness and Sigmund Freud. Englebert Humperdinck is the lead male singer. It is not a bad plot but it is rolled out so slowly that you might suspect if you were a cynic that it was to fill two TV showings.


It is interesting (to me anyway) that Irene Adler and Mycroft have taken on such mythic roles in Holmes adaptions since Adler was featured in only one short story in which she outwits Holmes (Doyle's first short story, The Scandal in Bohemia) and Mycroft only had brief appearances in four of Doyle's short stories. Of course Moriarty, the greatest villain of all time, only showed up twice.


Sherlock Holmes: Incident at Victoria Falls (1992) - 6/10



This is the second (and final) Sherlock Holmes TV film (the first being Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady) starring Christopher Lee as Sherlock and Patrick Macnee as Dr. Watson. They make a nice pair of slightly curmudgeonly characters past their prime. Watching them get around makes me feel like I am in a retirement home but their chemistry is fine - these two great stars of the past.


The film which does not attempt to paint them as any younger than the actors are has Holmes at the onset of the film declaring that he is retiring from the detective business and moving to Sussex to raise bees (which is what in fact Holmes did as seen in Doyle's His Last Bow). But King Edward (Joss Ackland) brings Sherlock in for one last case. To go to South Africa and safeguard The Star of Africa. Off they go like two old ladies but it gets stolen and then people start getting murdered and in three somewhat bloated hours Holmes tracks down the killer - which is made fairly easy as nearly everyone else is dead! It is a bit slow going - 90 minutes would have been just fine but the killer is actually a surprise. For reasons known only to the scriptwriter, the historical figures of Teddy Roosevelt (Claude Akins), Lily Langtree (Jenny Seagrove), General Roberts (Richard Todd) of the Afghan war and Marconi are thrown into the plot as well as the fictional character of Raffles, the great jewel thief. I mean why not.