Verdict
Summary
The movie isn’t what I’d consider to be one of the best or better Holmes movies simply because there’s not much mystery to it. Holmes (and the audience) always seems to know exactly who dunnit and how, and so the only pleasure to it all is just settling into yet another Holmes episode. Lee is the real reason to watch it, and director Terence Fisher, who’d done some Hammer Horror pictures, does a pretty nice job with the Berlin locations. Long available only as a public domain title in crummy transfers, Severin brings Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace to its first official release on disc in the US in a clean and clear widescreen transfer. Severin treats the title with the respect it deserves.
Plot:
Master sleuth Sherlock Holmes thwarts master criminal Moriarty … again!
Review:
A major archeological find is unearthed in Egypt and is brought to London for study. The find in question is a bejeweled box and what is assumed to be Cleopatra’s necklace. It’s no surprise that people associated with the priceless finds begin turning up dead, and when a man shows up stabbed at master sleuth Sherlock Holmes’ doorstep, Scotland Yard turns their upraised brow at Holmes, who insists that he has nothing to do with any of it. Holmes (played by Christopher Lee) and his trusty doctor friend John Watson (Thorley Walters) quickly come up with a prime suspect: Renowned archeologist and master criminal (and longtime nemesis of Holmes) Professor Moriarty (Hans Sohnker) who is conveniently back in town, likely to get his hands on Cleopatra’s necklace. Turns out that Moriarty has positioned himself as the expert on the necklace and will likely figure out a way to get it for himself, but with Holmes on the case, the necklace’s fate remains undecided. It’s clear to everyone except Scotland Yard, of course, that Moriarty is the culprit behind the murders (and we know he has a trick cane that shoots daggers from the tip), and thanks to Holmes’ clever disguises and crackerjack plan to steal the necklace while it’s on transit to a secure location, Holmes is always one quick step ahead of Moriarty, and the climax at an auction house will have some surprises for both of them.
Fascinating for being shot in Berlin at the height of the Cold War, Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace is billed as “the only time Christopher Lee played Sherlock Holmes in a movie,” but Lee would go on to play Holmes a number of other times on television, so perhaps this should be billed a bit differently. Lee, wearing a prosthetic nose, certainly looks and acts the part, but his voice was dubbed over by another actor, so we’ll never get his complete performance as intended. The movie isn’t what I’d consider to be one of the best or better Holmes movies simply because there’s not much mystery to it. Holmes (and the audience) always seems to know exactly who dunnit and how, and so the only pleasure to it all is just settling into yet another Holmes episode. Lee is the real reason to watch it, and director Terence Fisher, who’d done some Hammer Horror pictures, does a pretty nice job with the Berlin locations.
Long available only as a public domain title in crummy transfers, Severin brings Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace to its first official release on disc in the US in a clean and clear widescreen transfer. Severin treats the title with the respect it deserves, adding a new audio commentary by film historians Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw, an on-camera interview with director Fisher, a short feature on Fisher, an the trailer. Concurrently, Severin has also just released another Sherlock Holmes title with Peter Cushing called Sherlock Holmes, which collects several BBC episodes that Cushing did as the titular detective.
