Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace | |
---|---|
German | Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes |
Directed by | Terence Fisher |
Screenplay by | Curt Siodmak |
Based on | The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle (uncredited) |
Produced by | Artur Brauner |
Starring | Christopher Lee Senta Berger Hans Söhnker Hans Nielsen Ivan Desny Leon Askin Wolfgang Lukschy Edith Schultze-Westrum Thorley Walters |
Cinematography | Richard Angst |
Edited by | Ira Oberberg |
Music by | Martin Slavin |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Constantin Film |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 87 minutes |
Countries | West Germany France Italy |
Language | German |
Box office | 198,324 admissions (France) [1] |
Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (German : Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes [2] ) is a 1962 mystery film directed by Terence Fisher and written by Curt Siodmak, based on the characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson created by Arthur Conan Doyle. It stars Christopher Lee as Holmes and Thorley Walters as Watson, along with Senta Berger, Hans Söhnker, Hans Nielsen, and Ivan Desny.
The film was an international co-production between West German, French, and Italian companies, led by Artur Brauner's CCC Filmkunst. It was released in West Germany by Constantin Film on November 30, 1962, and received mixed reviews.
The film's plot has Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson attempting to recover a stolen necklace, formerly worn by Cleopatra, from Professor Moriarty. Holmes tries to convince the police that the professor is a criminal, but his pleadings fall on deaf ears.
One-time Universal screenwriter Curt Siodmak ( The Wolf Man ) wrote the screenplay, based on the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The film was intended to be an adaptation of Doyle's final Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear , but only minor elements of this story remained. [4] [5]
West German producer Artur Brauner originally conceived the film as the first of a German film series. The producers' contact with the Arthur Conan Doyle estate led to the estate vetoing their original schemes to set the film in the present day such as the Edgar Wallace German film series and have Dr. Watson played by German comedian Heinz Erhardt. Many scenes of the film had to be reshot due to the Doyle estate not approving the dailies. Director Terence Fisher wrote memos to Brauner complaining the film was too static and not cinematic enough, leading to many rewrites by various uncredited screenwriters. [6]
Filming took place in July and August 1962 in Berlin, Dublin, and London. Interiors were shot at Spandau Studios. [3] The scenes at Moriarty's house were filmed at Glienicke Palace. To ease the process of dubbing the film into multiple languages, the film was shot without sync sound, a common practice in continental Europe at the time.
Christopher Lee donned a false nose [7] to play the famous detective for the first time. For unknown reasons, Lee and the rest of the cast were dubbed. [4] Although Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace was originally filmed in English, the English language audio track was recorded post-production by different actors, mainly American, with Mid-Atlantic accents. [7] Lee was dubbed by actor William Kiehl, who also dubbed him in Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) and The Whip and the Body (1963). In the German-language version, Lee was dubbed by Harry Wüstenhagen, who was the German voice of Holmes in several other productions including A Study in Terror (John Neville) and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Nicol Williamson).
The film has a jazz score by Martin Slavin. [7]
The film's German premiere was on 30 November 1962. The Italian version was released on 3 May 1963 and the French one (Sherlock Holmes et le collier de la mort) on 20 May 1964. [3] Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace was not released to theatres in the United Kingdom until March 1968, and it went directly to television in the United States. [4]
Fisher and Lee were not happy with the film. Fisher called it "a film well worth left alone" [8] and Lee said of it, "I think it was a pity, this film, in more ways than one. We should never have made it in Germany with German actors, although we had a British art director and a British director. It was a hodge podge of stories put together by the German producers, who ruined it. My portrayal of Holmes is, I think, one of the best things I've ever done because I tried to play him really as he was written, as a very intolerant, argumentative, difficult man, and I looked extraordinarily like him with the make-up. Everyone who's seen it said I was as like Holmes as any actor they've ever seen both in appearance and interpretation." [4]
Segnalazione Cinematografiche criticised the film for reducing the tale to banalities and for being a sloppy adaption with modest performances by director and actors. [9] However, the German Lexikon des internationalen Films called it "an amusing detective game" set at the turn of the century that came quite close to recreating "the strange attraction" of Conan Doyle's Holmes adventures. [10]
The Monthly Film Bulletin said of the film that "apart from some startling anachronisms the period detail was on the whole nicely done", [11] but Marjorie Bilbow of Cinema and T.V. Today said, "As a story woven around an unknown detective it would have been forgiveable, but classic characters demand more accurate handling than this." [11] A more recent review from George R. Reis of DVDdrive-in.com called the film "an enjoyable little mystery" and Lee "a wonderful Holmes". [12]
Charles Prepolec of the Holmes fan website BakerStreetDozen.com wrote, "There are some amusingly broad characters that add an element of humour, including a sadly Nigel Bruce-like performance from Thorley Walters. Comedic turns abound in a pub sequence with Holmes in his thug disguise. There are some well played scenes between Lee and Hans Söhnker, played out on a bench that echo the fantastic exchange between Holmes and Moriarty recorded in The Final Problem . Great stuff, but unfortunately not frequent enough in this film." [13]
Christopher Lee went on to reprise his role as Holmes in two made-for-television films in the 1990s, Incident at Victoria Falls (1991) and Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1992), featuring Patrick Macnee as Watson.
Thorley Walters played Watson in three other productions, The Best House in London (1969, with Peter Jeffrey as Holmes), The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975, with Douglas Wilmer), and the made-for-television Silver Blaze (1977, with Christopher Plummer). [7]
Retromedia Entertainment released Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace on DVD in 2005. In 2006, Alpha Video released a double feature DVD including Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace and the 1931 film The Speckled Band , starring Raymond Massey. In 2021 the film was released on Blu-Ray by Severin Films in the collection "The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee".
"The Final Problem" is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring his detective character Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom, and McClure's in the United States, under the title "The Adventure of the Final Problem" in December 1893. It appears in book form as part of the collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915, and illustrated by Arthur I. Keller.
Detective Inspector G. Lestrade is a fictional character appearing in the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Lestrade's first appearance was in the first Sherlock Holmes story, the 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet. His last appearance is in the 1924 short story "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", which is included in the collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
"The Adventure of the Dancing Men" is a Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as one of 13 stories in the cycle published as The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1905. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in December 1903, and in Collier's in the United States on 5 December 1903.
Without a Clue is a 1988 British comedy film directed by Thom Eberhardt and starring Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. It is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories but, in this version, the roles are reversed: Dr. John Watson is the brilliant detective, while "Sherlock Holmes" is an actor hired to pose as the detective so that Watson can protect his reputation as a physician.
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother is a 1975 American musical comedy film with Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, Roy Kinnear, and Leo McKern. The film was Wilder's directorial debut, from his own original script.
The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been very popular as adaptations for the stage, and later film, and still later television. The four volumes of the Universal Sherlock Holmes (1995) compiled by Ronald B. De Waal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. They include the original writings, "together with the translations of these tales into sixty-three languages, plus Braille and shorthand, the writings about the Writings or higher criticism, writings about Sherlockians and their societies, memorials and memorabilia, games, puzzles and quizzes, phonograph records, audio and video tapes, compact discs, laser discs, ballets, films, musicals, operettas, oratorios, plays, radio and television programs, parodies and pastiches, children's books, cartoons, comics, and a multitude of other items — from advertisements to wine — that have accumulated throughout the world on the two most famous characters in literature."
Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:
The Spider Woman is a 1943 mystery film starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, the seventh of fourteen such films the pair were involved in. As with all of the Universal Studios films in the series, the film is set in then-present day as opposed to the Victorian setting of the original stories. This film incorporates elements from the 1890 novel The Sign of the Four, as well as the short stories "The Final Problem", "The Adventure of the Empty House", "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and makes explicit reference to "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot".
Sherlock Holmes is a 1932 American pre-Code film starring Clive Brook as the eponymous London detective. The movie is based on the successful stage play Sherlock Holmes by William Gillette, in turn based on the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, and was directed by William K. Howard for the Fox Film Corporation. Brook had played Holmes previously in The Return of Sherlock Holmes and the "Murder Will Out" segment of Paramount on Parade.
Mrs. Hudson is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. She is the landlady of 221B Baker Street, the London residence in which Sherlock Holmes lives.
Sherlock Holmes is a 1922 American silent mystery drama film starring John Barrymore as Sherlock Holmes, Roland Young as Dr. John Watson and Gustav von Seyffertitz as Moriarty.
The Sign of Four is a 1983 British made-for-television mystery film directed by Desmond Davis and starring Ian Richardson and David Healy. The film is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1890 novel of the same name, the second novel to feature Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.
Silver Blaze is a 1977 British/Canadian television film directed by John Davies and starring Christopher Plummer and Thorley Walters. It is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 short story The Adventure of Silver Blaze.
Sherlock Holmes is a four-act play by William Gillette and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, based on Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes. After three previews it premiered on Broadway November 6, 1899, at the Garrick Theatre in New York City.
Professor James Moriarty is the fictional archenemy of Sherlock Holmes in some of the stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He has appeared in several forms outside of the original stories.
Sherlock Holmes is a German 1967 television series featuring Erich Schellow as Sherlock Holmes and Paul Edwin Roth as Dr. Watson.
Sherlock Holmes in the Great Murder Mystery is a 1908 American silent film produced by the Crescent Film Company of New York, and directed by early film pioneer, Fred J. Balshofer. The film was released on 27 November 1908 and is an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", which is considered the first detective story, though the plot was altered to include Arthur Conan Doyle's detective Sherlock Holmes instead of Poe's C. Auguste Dupin.
Sherlock Holmes is the overall title given to the series of radio dramas adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories that aired between 1952 and 1969 on BBC radio stations. The episodes starred Carleton Hobbs as Sherlock Holmes and Norman Shelley as Dr. Watson. All but four of Doyle's sixty Sherlock Holmes stories were adapted with Hobbs and Shelley in the leading roles, and some of the stories were adapted more than once with different supporting actors.
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