Just because a movie flopped, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. Case in point: A Study in Terror, the original Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper film. Although it failed to fill theaters when released in 1965, it holds up well all these decades later.
Thirty members and potential members of the Tankerville Club of Cincinnati (which has active participants from five states) viewed the film along with three shorter presentations at our Sherlockian Film Festival last Saturday. The historic Parkland Theatre, which the club rented for the occasion, was built as a vaudeville theater in 1881, the year Holmes and Watson met. Importantly, it also has a pub attached for pre-screening socializing.
Reaction to the film was highly positive, and vocally expressed through cheers and laughter (and not of derision). A Study in Terror has a good plot that is reasonably true to the characters, with many lines of dialogue drawn directly from the Canon.
John Neville and Donald Houston were fine as Holmes and Watson, and seeing a young Judi Dench was a treat. But Robert Morley was the greatest Mycroft ever! Physically, he looked the part but he also oozed the superiority one would expect of the elder Holmes. He was also the first to play Mycroft on the big screen.
Mike McSwiggin, Second Most Dangerous Member of the Tankerville Club, organized the film festival and procured an incredibly pristine version of A Study in Terror (don’t ask me how) that added to the joy.
Your mileage may vary, of course, and this film may not be to your taste, but it seemed to be the hit of the day.
The other features each had their attractions -- Christopher Plummer in "Silver Blaze," Douglas Wilmer in "The Beryl Coronet," and most notably Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as Dorlock Homes and Dr. Watson in the classic cartoon “Deduce You Say!”
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