The Masks of Death   
 
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Year:  1984
Rating: 6.0
Ah, Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes and John Mills as Watson. How much cozier can you get. Lay back in your armchair with a fireplace near by, a dog at your feet and some brandy within reach and watch these two professionals play two of the great figures in literature and film. They will set everything right as they always do. Of course, I have no armchair nor dog nor fireplace and don't drink brandy, but if I did this would have been the time for it. Not that this is particularly good or exciting but that is besides the point - they are like comfortable shoes. Two English legends. This was to be Cushing's second to last film - he was getting ill. And he looks so thin and fragile but he still has that Cushing authority about him. Another acting legend is present as well - as Irene Adler in a rather pointless role but still welcome - Anne Baxter in one of her final roles - she was to pass away in 1985. Same goes for Ray Milland who has only a cameo - one of his last roles as he was to die in 1986. Throw in Anton Diffring and Gordon Jackson and its like Saturday night at the Actors Retirement Home. I eat that stuff up.



This was a TV production and it looks it - it has that dark interior Masterpiece Theater look - but it is directed by another great - Roy Ward Baker. The good films he directed are lengthy - The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, And Now the Screaming Starts, Asylum, Scars of Dracula, The Vampire Lovers and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. But like for the actors those were his glory days. Cushing had played Sherlock in a TV series decades before and of course in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1959, so it is somehow fitting that he ends it in that role.



Holmes has retired and has been tending to his damn bees in Surrey (where Cushing was born) but he has been called back to London - he still rents 221 Baker - and the inspector (Gordon Jackson) wants his help on three mysterious deaths. But Holmes and his good man Watson are called off on a case of a disappearing German prince. In the end of course the Germans - this takes place in 1913 - are up to nefarious misdeeds. It is way too leisurely but still just fine for a TV production. Cushing is one tough Sherlock - curt and constantly rude - Watson is smarter than usual but still takes the brunt of Holmes's invective. Why he took it all those years is perhaps the greatest mystery of all!