James D’Arcy and Roger Morlidge star as a younger Holmes and Watson in the made-for-TV SHERLOCK.
SHERLOCK
aka CASE OF EVIL 2001, Screen Media Films, DD-2.1/S/16:9/LB/CC, $26.98, 89m 44s, DVD-1 By Kim Newman
This revisionary made-for-TV film includes many elements cal- culated to annoy purists (eg., Holmes’ threesome with society sleuth groupies!), but plays ef- fective SMALLVILLE-style games as spiky characters settle into their familiar roles. Watson (Roger Morlidge) is a working coroner (and boxing blue) who initially bristles at boyish know- it-all Holmes (James D’Arcy), then partners with him to tackle a fiendish Moriarty (Vincent d’Onofrio, doing a terrific James Mason). Mycroft (Richard E. Grant, matching Christopher Lee’s Holmesian spread, follow- ing Stapleton in the BBC HOUND and a Sherlock stand-in in a TV play, THE OTHER SIDE) is seden- tary here because Moriarty bru- tally carved up his legs, inspiring the boy Sherlock to a lifelong crusade. The great scientific
achievement of Moriarty, a pio- neer in crime, is refining opium into “dy-hydro-morphine”— though he hasn’t yet come up with a suitably heroic street name. It fruitfully plies the idea that we are in at the beginning of something by doing 19th Cen- tury first drafts of elements from SCARFACE or THE FRENCH CONNECTION II: Moriarty mur- ders his gangland rivals to cor- ner the drugs market, Holmes fights addiction after the villain has tested his product on him, and unprecedented use of fire- arms turns a simple raid into the first gangster shoot-out. As in the Billy Wilder and Barry Levinson films, Holmes’ love interest (Gabrielle Anwar) is problematic, suggesting he’ll swear off women from now on. Neater is the run- ning gag about a sleazy reporter (Peter-Hugo Daly) who pesters Holmes, prompting the detective to muse that his posterity had bet- ter be taken care of by Watson, who is thus inspired to pick up his pen. Screen Media Films’ no- frills DVD does at least present this lavish-looking TV film (shot
in Victorian-look Romania) in a smart-looking 1.78 transfer, with muted pastels and mysterious nighttime blue-greens.
THE SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION
1954, Madacy TV Favorites, DD-2.0/+, $11.98, approx. 300m, DVD-1 (2 discs) By Kim Newman
This set collects episodes from producer Sheldon Reynolds’ SHERLOCK HOLMES TV series, filmed in France and England. Ronald Howard (CURSE OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB), a good-hu- mored, slyly sel f-deprecating sleuth, is partnered with a stout- hearted, two-fisted H. Marion- Crawford (later the Watsonian Dr. Petrie in Harry Alan Towers’ FU MANCHU pictures) and Archie Duncan (THE HORROR OF IT ALL) as a grinning Scots Lestrade. Other discs, including several from Alpha Video, have different (though overlapping) contents: all offer me- diocre transfers of shabby ele- ments. Madacy often splice wrong end credits onto episodes, driving
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