There are few things that creep me out more
than bats and ancient monasteries with their darkly lit corridors and terrifying
religious imagery. So this TV movie had a head start on making me uneasy.
Vampires on the other hand are much too familiar to us all. This was the
fourth in a series of Sherlock Holmes TV films starring Matt Frewer. Frewer
always seems like an odd ball presence to me no matter what character he
is playing and his Holmes is nothing like the Holmes we are used to. Not
in some visible manner as he wears the deer stalker cap and smokes the pipe
but he feels much too modern with his sarcasm always at the ready, the expressions
he makes behind people's back, his laugh and grinning teeth and a suffocating
smugness that annoys. His Watson on the other hand played by Kenneth Welch
in all four feels very much of his time. They are a peculiar couple but a
much more equal one than in many Holmes films.
Yes, I could clearly not become a monk for many reasons but living in one
of these places most of all. Electric lights would make all the difference
but would no doubt take away the atmosphere the film was trying to attain.
Monks are being killed in a horrible manner and with two puncture holes in
their neck. Holmes who has no patience for the supernatural or discussions
on the after life refuses to believe this is a vampire killing these people.
Lots of possible suspects among the monks and lots of bats, Vampire bats.
Enjoyable enough for a TV movie and perhaps worth my time to track
down the other three - though all three seem much more based on the stories
which is a shame - Hound of the Baskervilles, Royal Scandal and Sign of the
Four have been done to death but perhaps they will surprise me.
