Word: sherlocks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Delicious. The perfect scene, the perfect villian, the perfect setting for some first-rate Sherlock Holmes sleuthing...
Unfortunately, in Murder By Decree Sherlock Holmes never shows up--Christopher Plummer does. Though dressed in all the right clothes and given the best Dr. Watson ever, Plummer never stops being Plummer, not for a minute. Who ever heard of a sexy, sauve, passionate Sherlock Holmes, a Holmes with blow-dried hair and visible muscles, anyway? Would the real Sherlock Holmes burst into tears at the sight of a beautiful, helpless woman unjustly committed to an insane asylum? Would the real Holmes leap at the throat of an official in an attempt to kill him? Would he sweat in front...
...make sure that everyone knows that this is, after all, a Sherlock Holmes movie, Clark crams a lot of that vintage Holmesiana so dear to the hearts of Conan Doyle fans and provides the audience with radical plots, mysterious cults, rot in high places, missing persons, plus, of course, fog, cobblestones...
CLARK'S B-MOVIE ORIGINS are obvious in this film. His psycho-killer Black Christmas clearly inspired the lurid murder scenes in Murder By Decree. And while one expects a little blood and weird goings-on in Sherlock Holmes' pursuit of criminals, such attention to violent detail is unnecessary...
...film isn't bad for an ordinary murder mystery, but don't go expecting to see Sherlock Holmes there. As the master sleuth himself would have said, "It's elementary my dear Watson. What we have here is an impostor. Would the real Sherlock Holmes ever stoop to such depths of passion? Never...