Sherlock Holmes in New York

Duped onto coming to New York city Sherlock Homes (Roger Moore) is unable to help the police locate missing gold because of Professor Moriarty's ploy.

Moore isn't bad as Holmes. He has no particular resemblance to Holmes of the illustrations, though he is tall. He can do the cool, calculating thing. But the part does lack the sparkle of Moore's humor. Holmes gets off the occasional zinger in the stories but he's not known for his sense of humor.

Patrick MacNee is a perfect Watson, but he doesn't have much to do.

Charlotte Rampling isn't my ideal of Irene Adler, but she's good. John Huston seems to enjoy overacting as the Professor.

The story is kind of dumb (I can't see countries submitting to the process described). But they've got to have some MacGuffin. And as much as I enjoy Arthur Conan Doyle he penned worse stories.

I can see two sorts of people enjoying this movie: Sherlock Holmes completists with open minds (such as I) and those who know nothing about the original stories.

Holmes takes on the evil Professor Moriarty, his old nemesis. I didn't like Roger Moore as Holmes any more than I care for him doing James Bond; he is alright, but I like the way other actors handle these characters better. I really didn't appreciate the phony looking sideburns on Holmes, seems the make-up department could have been more competent. Also, I thought the acting was forced at times, and at others a bit corny and hammy. I did like the great old oompaul pipe of Holmes, and enjoyed the production overall. It was another good mystery solved by the Master of Sleuths.

Am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and get a lot of enjoyment out of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. Also love Basil Rathbone's and especially Jeremy Brett's interpretations to death. So would naturally see any Sherlock Holmes adaptation that comes my way, regardless of its reception.

Furthermore, interest in seeing early films based on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and wanting to see as many adaptations of any Sherlock Holmes stories as possible sparked my interest in seeing 'Sherlock Holmes in New York', as well as it having a talented cast and seeing how Roger Moore would fare.

'Sherlock Holmes in New York' is not terrible. It's not all that great either. Mediocre is more like it.

As said by me many times, there are better Sherlock Holmes-related films/adaptations certainly than 'Sherlock Holmes in New York', the best of the Jeremy Brett adaptations and films of Basil Rathone fit under this category. It's to me towards the bottom of Sherlock Holmes films, it is marginally better than all the Matt Frewer films (particularly 'The Sign of Four') and also much better than the abominable Peter Cook 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' (then again almost anything is better than that).

There are good things. The sets and costumes are handsome enough and there is evidence of atmospheric photography. The music also has atmosphere.

Moore is an agreeable, if far from definitive, Holmes with a charming twinkle in his eyes, while Charlotte Rampling has elegance and class. Parts of the mystery does intrigue and engage quite a bit and likewise with some of the script.

For all those good things, there are numerous major debits. It does feel too often pedestrian and stagy. Tension and suspense isn't enough and too much of the case is too simple, especially a denouement that makes the viewer feel annoyed at themselves at how they didn't solve it before very early on. How it's solved is all too easy and doesn't do Holmes' masterly deductions justice.

A good deal of 'Sherlock Holmes in New York' is on the cheap side and too much of it is flatly directed and too wordy. The more romantic angle agreed felt out of place.

Patrick MacNee has little to do as Watson and the buffoonish way he characterises can't help me think it was a directing issue or unfamiliarity with how Watson should be portrayed. He played opposite Christopher Lee later and that was a much better pairing and more subtle in interpretation. For me, there has never been a more hammy Moriaty than John Huston and that is not in a good way, there is nothing sinister about him and the dreadful over-the-top-ness takes one out of the film, even in the more forced moments of the script and story and there is also a fair bit of that going on.

To conclude, mediocre but not unwatchable. 4/10 Bethany Cox

I watched this on its premiere on NBC back in 1976 when I was really starting to have a real interest in Sherlock Holmes. Roger Moore struck me as looking a bit young for the part (even though he wasn't), but his performance really impressed me. Patrick MacNee was very much my idea of Watson, and Charlotte Rampling was beautiful, dignified and ladylike as Irene Adler (although I really doubted the likelihood of Holmes actually being romantically involved with her). But the grandest part of the show was John Huston in the role of Moriarty. Here was a professor who reeked of evil, was fiendish, devilish, and to top it all off, wickedly brilliant. So with a cast this impressive (Gig Young and David Huddleston as well), a production this stylish, and a thorough sense of fun all the way through, it's a great oversight that the powers that are in control of this movie are not making it more widely available than just finding it on a TV schedule sometime (and I haven't found it lately myself) by releasing it to VHS or DVD (especially for us Holmes fans). If I am wrong here, please let me know and set me straight. So far, my hunts for a video release have come up empty and I really would like to see it again. My e-mail is as above: name, Philip Davis.

Roger Moore and Patrick Macnee are clearly having a laugh together as Messrs. "Holmes" & "Watson". This time our team of sleuths are in the Big Apple hot on the trail of their nemesis "Prof. Moriarty" (a rather underwhelming John Huston) who has just carried out a fairly spectacular bank robbery. Unlike in virtually every other "Holmes" adventure, here he has himself a lady friend - "Irene Adler" (Charlotte Rampling) and soon she and her young son "Scott" are pawns in this perilous game of cat and mouse. The chemistry between the top two keeps this going well enough, but the story is pretty thin and Huston features only but sparingly as the adventure sort of crawls along. The last ten minutes are pretty lively, though and fans of the characters and of the genre ought to enjoy this colourful, well made and scored drama. Not the best, but still just about worth a watch.