Review of Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) by Steve M — 20 Oct 2005

The Deadly Necklace.

Starring: Christopher Lee and Thorley Walters.

Director: Terence Fisher.

This 1962 German film (with its two British stars and a British director) has very little to recommend it. The script is like a reject from the Universal series starring Basil Rathbone (with everything I don't like about the weaker efforts among those amplified ten-fold here, most notably Watson being portrayed as a bumbling, retarded simpleton), with an unbearably bad score. (Christopher Lee has supposedly said that he is pleased with the film. While I won't quibble with his opinion that he and Walters more closely resemble Holmes and Watson than any other on-screen pair, I don't think it's enough for anyone to be pleased with this weak effort.).

The plot of "Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace" sees Holmes and his arch-nemisis Professor Moriarity matching wits over an Egyptian necklace owned by Cleopatra, witih it being stolen and re-stolen several times through the film. There are a couple of interesting moments between Holmes and Moriarity (who is played by an appropriately sinister actor), but the downside is that they feel like they belong more in a hard-boiled, pulp fiction detective novel than a Holmes adventure.