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Crime, Drama, Horror, Mystery 95 min NR
IMDb6.5
Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper! Here comes the original caped crusader!
When Watson reads from the newspaper there have been two similar murders near Whitechapel in a few days, Sherlock Holmes' sharp deductive is immediately stimulated to start its merciless method of elimination after observation of every apparently meaningless detail.
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Resolved, cool, plot-driven and nostalgic.
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Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Taste Buds's numbers.
**_What if Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson took on the 1888 Ripper case?_** This was the first of two films that had this plot. The second one, “Murder By Decree,” came out fourteen years later and featured Christopher Plummer and James Mason in the roles of Holmes & Watson whereas this features John Neville and Donald Houston. It’s more colorful and arguably has a superior cast of women, led by raven-haired Georgia Brown as the notable singer at the tavern with Edina Ronay showing up in the last act as Mary Kelly. “Murder by Decree” is a half hour longer, more convoluted, and has a muted palette. Yet they’re both of about the same overall quality. They fill the bill if you're in the mood for a Victorian milieu, black coats, London fog, cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carriages, gas lamps, taverns, Whitechapel women, ghastly murders and old-fashioned detective work. Neither are as sordid & gory as Klaus Kinski’s 1976 rendition or Anthony Perkins’ “Edge of Sanity” (1989) nor as entertaining as “From Hell” (2001). You could call them respectable versions of The Ripper case that are dialogue-driven and eschew exploitation. I’d compare them to Jack Palance’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jeky
Read the whole review on TMDBNow, in my humble opinion there will never be a better "Sherlock" than Basil Rathbone, nor can "Watson" be anyone other than Nigel Bruce. That's not to say that others ought not to try, though - and here John Neville and Donald Houston turn in OK performances as our sleuthing duo. This time, they are charged with solving the mother of all crime mysteries - the identity of "Jack the Ripper". A lot of attention to detail has been incorporated into the superior production, the film evokes well the sense of seedy Victorian Whitechapel with it's lively nightlife and ladies of "ill repute". It actually has just a shade of "Hammer" about it. I did think, though, that the extensive cast diluted the potency of the thing though. There are too many characters and aside from Anthony Quayle, they sort of served to clutter up the story. The writing isn't bad, it tries it's hand at a little humour now and again, but it is frequently wordy - a little too descriptive denying us much opportunity to do any investigation along with them, ourselves. It's a decent watch, an authentic postulation of what might have happened, but Neville just isn't "Holmes" material for me, sorry...
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“Is the nostalgia doing the heavy lifting?”
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