Director: Terence Fisher

Writer: Curt Siodmak, based on characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Cast: Christopher Lee, Hans Söhnker, Hans Nielsen, Senta Berger, Ivan Desny, Wolfgang Lukschy, Leon Askin, Edith Schultze-Westrum, Thorley Walters

Plot: A new case has come to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Christopher Lee and Thorley Walters, respectively): the return of arch-nemesis Professor Moriarity (Hans Söhnker). The battle begins when a man turns up murdered on Holmes’s doorstep, causing a clash with Scotland Yard’s Inspector Cooper (Hans Nielsen), who is unconvinced that Moriarity is in fact the criminal genius Holmes claims him to be. If that wasn’t bad enough, Moriarity is scheduled to be knighted. Holmes deduces the dying man was directing them to a local pub, where they overhear Moriarity plotting with a henchman. Watson accidentally alerts Moriarity to their presence, and the two leave quickly. Holmes has heard enough though – Moriarity has as good as confessed to a pair of murders related to his current scheme, but Holmes still doesn’t know what the Professor is plotting.

Going through the newspaper, Holmes believes Moriarity’s next target will involve a necklace of Cleopatra owned by one Peter Blackburn (Wolfgang Lukschy). They arrive at Blackburn’s home to find him murdered, his face destroyed by a shotgun blast and his wedding ring now missing. As they investigate, trying to avoid Inspector Cooper, Holmes finds a patch of freshly turned earth. Cooper suspects Blackburn’s wife Ellen (Senta Berger) and her lover, Paul King (Ivan Desny), a theory he grows more certain of when he finds clothes buried in the fresh Earth. Ellen confesses that, earlier, Peter himself killed a prowler, then switched his clothes with the intruder to fake his own death. She leads him to the real Blackburn, hiding in the cellar, but instead find the man’s corpse, having scratched “M-O-R” into a crate before he died.

Holmes disguises himself to sneak into Moriarity’s home, finding the necklace amongst a series of deadly traps. Moriarity turns up to visit Cooper just moments after Holmes presents the necklace as evidence. Moriarity, of course, has an alibi, claiming the necklace was stolen years ago and he’s pleased to see it being returned to its rightful owner. Despite this, Holmes is convinced the Professor will make another attempt on the necklace. Moriarity, however, approaches Holmes alone and tries to offer him a partnership, which Holmes turns down flat. Moriarity instead plans to take action as the necklace is auctioned off – he is summoned as an “archeological expert” to verify the authenticity of the necklace. As he leaves, Holmes informs Moriarity that several of the thieves involved in the cast have been captured… and he expects the professor will join them soon.

Thoughts: Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace was a German film, but filmed in English. Why the filmmakers felt the need to come in and re-dub the English speaking actors with a separate English audio track is beyond me, but the sort of Godzilla quality it gives to the voices is only the first problem with this bizarre attempt at adapting one of Doyle’s later stories. The writing feels very off here. An early scene in which Holmes and Watson discuss the relative merits of the London Times newspaper feels half like an advertisement for the paper and half like a practice for the sort of bizarre logical leaps that would be a trademark of the Adam West Batman television series a few years later. Holmes, in fact, talks so much about how trustworthy the Times is that I wound up checking on Wikipedia to see if they helped subsidize the production of the film. (As far as I can tell, they didn’t.)

Christopher Lee is our star, which makes it even more perplexing why they would bother to re-dub the voices in this film. Lee’s voice is absolutely phenomenal, and he seems to be putting in a valiant effort as Holmes. The occasions where he disguises himself are great – even as we watch him putting on a fake mustache and makeup, it would be very easy to forget we’re looking at Holmes in disguise. If anything, the real tragedy of this film is that Lee could make a fine Holmes (he would play the great Detective two more times, both in the 90s, in films I haven’t seen but now dearly wish to), if only he were given something good to play with. As it is, even the scene where he’s searching Moriarity’s home, rummaging around a mummy and nearly being bitten by a (presumably) deadly snake is head-shakingly boring. And honestly, there are few worse things for a movie to be… even a bad film can be memorable and fun in certain ways, but if a movie is boring there’s really nothing that can be done for it.

While Lee seems to be trying to play Holmes straight (at least as far as I can tell with the poor voice dubbing), Thorley Walters’s Watson is a different story. The scene where he hangs around in the pub while Holmes investigates is positively disturbing. We see him approached by a barmaid (the film never outright says she’s a prostitute, but it may as well give her a sign) who starts feeding him a sob story about her sick mother. Watson, of course, being a doctor, starts to offer to perform an operation on the woman free of charge. At this point, it’s like watching one of your buddies talking to a girl who you can tell is only interested in him because he’s got an expensive-looking car and she clearly is hoping she’ll shower him with gifts – you’re stuck burying your head in your face and gritting your teeth because you know warning your buddy won’t do any good. What’s worse, this goes nowhere. It never comes back up, we never see the woman again, we just get a couple of minutes of Watson as an addlepated horndog presumably because the director couldn’t think of any other way to pass the time for the 100 seconds Christopher Lee was off-camera looking for a way to eavesdrop on Moriarity.

Hans Söhnker as Moriarity seems to be in a similar predicament as Lee. His performance seems perfectly adequate, and he’s certainly got the right look for an aging mastermind of evil. (If Mr. Söhnker or anyone from his estate happens to be reading this, I mean it as a compliment.) He is betrayed not by the actor, but by a script that has him posture and preen but never actually do much that seems particularly menacing. The end is particularly disappointing. After Holmes turns down Moriarity’s offer of partnership, it’s easy to get excited. “All right, the die has been cast, the gauntlet has been thrown, time for a face off!” But no, instead we get a civil conversation at the auction during which the two adversaries might as well be winking at each other, each saying, “Ah, I’ll get you next time, you old rascal, you.”

Hans Nielsen as Inspector Cooper, again like Lee’s Holmes, isn’t given much to work with here. While there’s nothing technically wrong with the performance, the character itself seems completely absurd in the context of this world. The story is (extremely) loosely based on the final full-length Holmes novel by Doyle, The Valley of Fear, and as such it is main very clear this is not Holmes’s first time working with Scotland Yard. The relationship seems to be solid and based on a lot of backstory and mutual respect. That said, it is patently ridiculous to imagine a police inspector who doesn’t listen to Sherlock Freaking Holmes when he shows up and points out an arch-criminal. Cooper’s skepticism seems completely irrational, like Scully constantly refusing to believe in the supernatural despite nine seasons of X-Files cases that prove it exists.

Adding to the bizarre choices that make up this movie is a weird jazz score. No doubt we’re listening to the very sort of music that was popular in 1962, but it feels grossly out of place in this period mystery. Instead of creating atmosphere, it wrenches you out of the film and you start looking around for a saxophone quartet. Admittedly, this may just be a pet peeve of mine – I never really like movies where they use anachronistic music in the soundtrack. To be frank, the only director I’ve ever seen pull off contemporary music in a period piece is Quentin Tarantino, and that’s mainly because his films go so far into the realm of the absurd that it doesn’t really seem that out of place after all.

I wish there were more to recommend this movie, but there simply isn’t. It’s a weak, weak attempt at telling a Holmes story. The story is weak, the villain is weak, the mystery is practically nonexistent. (Instead of being the deductive genius we know he is it basically boils down to “I know Moriarity is behind this because he’s Moriarity and currently alive, so who else could it be?”) The best thing about any of this is that there’s so much Holmes out there it will be easy to find something better and cleanse my mental palette.

The first Reel to Reel study, Mutants, Monsters and Madmen, is now available as a $2.99 eBook in the Amazon Kindle store and Smashwords.com bookstore. And you can find links to all of my novels, collections, and short stories, in their assorted print, eBook and audio forms, at the Now Available page!