Aha! I found my old videotape of the movie and made a DVD recording of it. Sadly, the video is old and blurry enough that I can't read all the amusing captions on the Sidney Paget drawings in the title sequence, and some scenes are too dark, but at least it's watchable. I still will have to keep looking for a good/official DVD version of the film to buy. Perhaps it might be re-released if the Robert Downey Jr. movie is a hit.
I earlier reviewed Nicholas Meyer's book, so let me review the film version. Lots of spoilers.
Duvall is good as Watson, a caring, stalwart, handsome fellow drawn faithfully from the canon. However, his limping seems too prominent at times. (I personally prefer Watson having a shoulder wound so that his leg is good for all the running around he has to do on Holmes's adventures. Indeed, maybe after STUD was published, Holmes said, "Watson! Don't tell them where your wound is! It lets every criminal know that you have a weak spot to attack. No, tell them it's in your leg, so they will be surprised by how fleet of foot you are." "But Holmes, I've already published this version!" "You've published it as cheap fiction, along with that melodramatic Mormon nonsense.") It really seems incredible that Holmes would expect Watson to go trudging around with half their bags while trying to keep up with the dog. Also, in the voiceover, Watson often sounds as if he's stuffed up. I suppose it's an effort at a hoity-toity British accent, but I'd rather that he sounded more natural. At least Watson is smart enough and knows Holmes well enough to plot taking him to Vienna, and to know that Holmes is hiding his cocaine in a false bottom of his luggage.
I'm surprised that they made Mary Morstan dark haired, when she is supposed to be a dainty blonde lady. Still, she is fully accommodating and understanding about Watson heading off to Vienna for who knows how long. I notice that Watson asks her to get "Cullingworth" to do his rounds. Jackson, Anstruther, and now Cullingworth--how many of these substitutes did Watson go through? It seems as though these fill-in doctors might have each got fed up with having to take Watson's cases on short notice, for indefinite periods of time. It's too bad that Mary doesn't know who Toby is, for I thought Watson would have told her of the dog during the SIGN case, or that she would at least have read his published account. I guess the dog became a bloodhound because nobody knew what breed a "lurcher" was.
Anyway, Nicol Williamson does a convincing job as a drug-addicted Holmes, and his opening scene in Baker Street displays his paranoia and illness. It's odd that Holmes makes Watson prove his identity by asking where he keeps his tobacco. That's too easy a question. (In the book, Holmes asked this question along with others, like what words he said to Watson when they first met. Watson says "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive." Technically this is incorrect. Holmes's first words to him are "How are you?" but Holmes accepts this answer.) All these questions are too easy, because anyone who has read Watson's accounts would know those answers. Holmes should have asked something unprinted and private, like his birthday or what Watson's middle initial stood for.
Afterward, Professor Moriarty visits Watson to claim his innocence and protest that Holmes is persecuting him. Moriarty mentions having tutored the young Holmes boys, but clams up about the "tragedy," and looks pathetically skittish. Later, Mycroft doesn't explain the tragedy either, though he hints at it when he and Watson order Moriarty to go to Vienna. I still don't like the idea of Moriarty tutoring the boys, or that he had affair with the mother. I mean, how on earth did Moriarty survive the wrath of the cuckolded Mr. Holmes, and why would the father be so horrible as to do the deed in front of his young son, even splattering him with blood? But you have to go along with it as being part of the premise of Meyer's pastiche.
Oddly, Holmes's disguise as a dustman is laughably bad, so I'm glad he didn't attempt to be the old Italian priest on the train. Soon Watson and Holmes embark on their pursuit of Moriarty, until they finally arrive at Freud's door in Vienna. Alan Arkin is good as Freud, but sometimes too much is made of Freud's psychological methods, and there's too much praise, especially when Watson at the end calls Freud the greatest detective. I mean, come on! He's not a superhero. He's a fallible, real-life man, and not all his theories were valid. But he does have nice perceptive moments when he notices Holmes muttering Freudian slips about how women are dangerous, and Moriarty is the "serpent of Eden."
The scenes of Holmes's cocaine withdrawal are too dimly lit in my copy of the movie, so it's hard to see what's going on half the time. It was interesting to see Holmes have a nightmare about the Speckled Band, as well as the Redheaded League, and I think the Hound of the Baskervilles. He also hallucinated worms (or were they red leeches from one of the unpublished cases?) in his food and insects on Freud's wife. Watson is forced to punch Holmes out when he calls him a "stupid cripple" but he graciously pretends the whole thing was imaginary when Holmes apologizes for it later. There was not much hurt/comfort slashiness other than the tender way that Watson looked at Holmes and touched his forehead.
I liked the mystery plot about Lola Deveraux better than the plot in the book. I'm confused by her apparently being French and yet having been Freud's patient in Austria. Surely he was not famous enough for his work with cocaine addiction that she would have consulted him long ago? I'm also not sure of her history, because Holmes talks of her being a mezzo-soprano, and yet Freud implies that she used to work in a brothel. It's bad enough that Sherlockians make out Irene Adler to be an adventuress or "Grande Horizontale" instead of an opera singer, but this is just too much. I did like Holmes's evident sympathy for her, and his respect for her courage in escaping her imprisonment, though. It's nice that she was perceptive enough to realize that her boyfriend the Baron knew too much about her abduction, but it's odd that she could manage to leave a trail of lilies without him becoming suspicious. Those flowers were huge! But it does appear that the idea of Holmes with a redheaded woman seems to be common.
The Baron is played by Jeremy Kemp, who would later play Grimesby Roylott in the Granada TV version of "The Speckled Band." Clearly it takes a special kind of villain to essentially agree to sell your girlfriend into a harem just because you're deep into gambling debts. And he hired somebody to revive her drug addiction too. It's indulgent enough that Meyer had the Baron and Freud "duel" in a tennis match, but I still do not understand Meyer's logic in having the Baron and Holmes duel with swords when they both had guns. And of course I don't buy that Holmes somehow managed to climb onto the roof of the train while holding both a revolver and a sword. Come on! The sword fight is totally unnecessary melodrama, in a movie already overstuffed with trampling horses, a murdered nun, kidnapping by an Ottoman Empire Pasha, and a train chase.
I do hope that the action-adventure Sherlock Holmes movie will at least have logical reasons for any fights that Holmes and Watson engage in. Seeing Robert Downey Jr. shirtless is all very well, but don't make it gratuitous.
I should mention that the scene at the brothel was somewhat amusing, but in many ways unnecessarily involved. If they really wanted us to hear the whole "I never do anything twice" song, then they shouldn't have had Holmes and Watson arrive until the very end. It's absurd that Watson, who had been so insistent on not wasting time in rescuing Lola Deveraux, should suddenly feel content to just stand and smile at a risque song, then look at erotic pictures. Where's his chivalry, not to mention his loyalty to Mary? I mean, at least have Watson shush Holmes and warn, "I know what sort of place this is. We shouldn't make a scene or we'll be thrown out" to show that he is still thinking of the abducted woman. Finally Holmes and Watson begin searching for Lola, bursting into a bedroom with a man and two women. Holmes quickly leads Watson away, remarking, "Don't look, Watson! The queen wouldn't like it." Then they discover Freud alone in another bedroom, and the madame thinks that the three men are only meeting for a homosexual encounter. Freud is not really alone, however, for he has discovered the corpse of the nun whom the Baron kidnapped along with Lola.
Both Holmes and Freud deduce about the kidnapping, and they capture Lowenstein, the Baron's accomplice, and get him to reveal that the Pasha is leaving for Istanbul. Thus the train chase of two specials bound for Istanbul. I liked seeing Watson say, "It's now the Orient Express" but still, you wonder why they didn't just explain that they were trying to stop the abduction of a woman right away. The train official was quite amusing in his concern for railway property. I wonder why he was stupid enough to lean out when the Baron was shooting at them, though. It seems that Nicholas Meyer is obsessed with action, even action that makes no sense.
Overall it's a good, though clearly imperfect film. I did not mind the ending with Holmes and Lola Deveraux on the boat. Their talk of long journeys was quiet and understated, even graceful. Knowing that Watson is not suffering under any illusion of Holmes being dead, it's not really as if Holmes is abandoning Watson, who after all is still married. They'll be back together soon enough.
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