Sherlock Holmes TV Movies with Jeremy Brett
       
The Master Blackmailer (1992) - 6.0



Of the 60 Sherlock Holmes stories from Arthur Conan Doyle, 43 of them were adapted in the Grenada TV series starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. They only came to a stop because Brett died in 1995 at the early age of 61. I recently came across him as D'artagnan in a Three Musketeer TV mini-series from 1966 when he was quite young and dashing. I still prefer Rathbone as Holmes, but Brett comes in a close second. Five of these adaptations were full-length films - The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Sign of Four which were both novels - and The Last Vampyre, Eligible Bachelor and this film. This is based on the story titled Charles August Milverton which is in the Return of Sherlock Holmes section. The character of the Master Blackmailer was based on a true character, Charles Augustus Howell whose days of blackmailing came to an end on a London street when he was found dead with his throat posthumously cut with a coin in his mouth. It is an unusual Holmes story.




There is no mystery. The criminal is known from the beginning. There is no detecting. Holmes simply decides to break into the man's house and steal all the incriminating evidence to save his client. To do this effectively, disguised as a plumber, he has to romance Milverton's maid and promise her marriage. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) is shocked at such cad behavior, but Holmes says what is a broken heart compared to a broken life. Though the story is expanded to show many things only mentioned in the book, it follows the story very closely even taking much of the same dialogue. Holmes has rarely been as upset as he is in this one at the venality of the blackmailer. 103 minutes.


The Last Vampyre (1993) - 6.0



This feels like a very odd choice for the Grenada Sherlock Holmes series to expand into a full-length film. The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire strikes me as one of Doyle's weaker Holmes short stories. A man comes to Holmes and Watson and tells them that he thinks his Peruvian wife is a vampire. He saw her with blood on her mouth and bite marks on their baby boy. He also saw her strike his son from another marriage on two occasions. He has had her locked into her room. Upon visiting, it takes Holmes about ten minutes to figure it out. There is no vampire. The wife was trying to save the baby. It is the other son that is up to no good. I suspect that it is just because of the word Vampire in the title that they chose this one to expand. But of interest is that this is the story in which Holmes mentions the Giant Rat of Sumatra, "a story for which the world is not yet prepared" that other authors have played with. How I thought could they take this slight story and turn it into a 100-minute film. Easy as it turns out. Make a nearly different story with the Doyle story only there in its skeleton form. One of the things I enjoy about the Jeremy Brett TV show is that they generally stay true to the Doyle story. Not this time.



This time it is a minister who comes to Holmes at Baker Street (are there ever any other lodgers there I wonder) and tells him that the village suspects that a new visitor named Stockton (Roy Marsden) may be a vampire and that since he has arrived people have gotten sick and a young baby died after he touched it. This is the same baby as in the short story but there are no bite marks. Just the Peruvian wife and her sexy Peruvian maid who are quite creepy. It all gets very strange to the point where the viewer begins to wonder if Stockton is indeed a vampire who has taken on the older son as a disciple. In the end Holmes repeats "a story for which the world is not yet prepared". Was forced to watch this on YouTube - first time for an entire film and there were frigging commercials every five minutes. What a racket.


The Eligible Bachelor (1993) - 7.0



This feature-length episode in the Grenada Sherlock Holmes series is based on Doyle's short story titled The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor. Not much of a name change but they take a small mystery and blow it up into a gnarly horror film. The short story begins with a Lord coming to Holmes and Watson asking them to find his missing wealthy American wife. She vanished on the day of the wedding and the police have had no luck finding her and suspect an old lover of the Lord's of killing her. By the time the Lord leaves, Sherlock tells him he has solved it. And he does and finds her with her husband from America. She had been married previously but thought he had died in an Indian massacre. When she saw him at the chapel, she realized that she had to get away and be with him. The Lord does not take it well but that is the end of the story. The Lord is a bit of a pompous ass but no villain.



The film takes that kernel of an idea and runs with it - straight into Gothic hell. Holmes is going through one of his periods of depression and nightmares. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) checks to see if he is on morphine. Bored with the quality of cases coming his way, he wishes Moriarty was still alive to challenge him and in his nightmares he keeps seeing the two of them fall from the Reichenbach Falls. As in the book, the Lord asks for him to find his missing wife - but Holmes does not solve it immediately. Instead, he begins to piece together the background of the Lord. He appears to be in the habit of marrying wealthy women and then they either die or disappear. He is a monster with a killer servant and a large cat that runs free in his dilapidated mansion. Holmes nightmares come true.