Not sure why my dad had this saved as something he wanted to watch. The movie feels the need to run a brief thing at the beginning and end that basically, "Yes, we know this doesn't match the canon established by Doyle's stories, just go with it will ya?" Film equivalent of Silver Age DC's "imaginary story" tag.
Holmes reads notices about two people committing suicide for no apparent reason, and decides there must be foul play. Even more so when one of his mentors ends up the same way. It turns out the victims are being dosed with some hallucinogenic via blowdart, and seeing all sorts of crazy crap. The serpent heads on a guys hat rack seem to come to life and coil around him. Watson is attacked by a crypt full of sweets, although they try to shove themselves down his throat rather than eat him in revenge. Feels like an excuse to show off the finest in mid-1980s special effects, or some props they must have had lying around from an early treatment of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The mystery is no great shakes. Granting that Holmes is not anywhere
near the observational genius he'll become at this point, the movie
feels more like a high adventure trying to use a half-assed mystery to
get to the action set piece. It's really more a matter of how Holmes and
Watson are going to overcome the long odds they're up against as two
teenagers with no backup.
It's fine as far as a movie about Holmes and Watson meeting as adolescents and solving their first case together goes. The movie does the bit with nods to significant characters or costuming. Holmes already annoying Lestrade all the time, Watson buying an antique pipe that he gifts to Holmes later, Holmes trying to learn the violin and being annoyed he hasn't mastered it after 7 minutes or something. No early examples of Holmes taking illicit drugs, unless his getting dosed with the hallucinogen is what started him on his path of taking opium.
2 comments:
I remember it being marketed at the time as having revolutionary special effects. One of the first modern uses of cgi or something like that.
Aside from that, the only thing I remember about the film is a scene in which Holmes guesses Watson's name.
I could see that about the effects. They definitely aren't bad for the mid-80s. Not really what you'd figure a Sherlock Holmes would hang its hat on, but had to get those durn kids off their newfangled skateyboards and into the movie theaters somehow.
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