Le Secret de la pyramide

In the mid 80s, audiences were hungry for heroes in the mould of Indiana Jones. Films featuring Sherlock Holmes were quite out-of-fashion. People expected a hero with a bit of dash and a penchant for action; not a meticulous, stuffy, ultra-intelligent sleuth. Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Fear is an unusual hybrid, because it takes the period trappings of a Holmes mystery and dresses them up with Indy-style action and mysticism.

The story has young student doctor John Watson arriving at a boarding school in Victorian London. He meets, for the very first time, a brilliant young student named Sherlock Holmes and they rapidly become friends. At the same time, a series of bizarre murders have been going on close to the school. In each case, people have had terrible hallucinations and in desperate states of panic have inadvertently killed themselves. Holmes and Watson investigate, and uncover an ancient cult which is responsible for the killings.

The film has its share of problems. For one thing, purists will know that the very first meeting of Holmes and Watson was described at the start of the book A Study in Scarlet, and didn't take place in a school. Some of the performances are overly hammy, particularly Freddie Jones in yet another of his wild-eyed characterisations. The idea of a huge pyramid being ingeniously concealed beneath a London warehouse is hard to swallow (surely someone would have noticed them building a construction of this size in such a tightly-packed city). However, the problems can be forgiven because the film moves at a lively pace and is invested with lots of clever dialogue and stirring action. There's even a touch of humour (something lacking from the original Conan Doyle novels). One scene in particular is most amusing, when young Watson is shot with an hallucinatory dart and imagines an army of living cream buns jumping into his mouth! The climactic duel on the ice is very excitingly staged too. There's also a surprisingly downbeat event at the end which thankfully strips the film of the typical 80s sentimentality. This is agreeable and entertaining stuff.

The Temple of Doom-flavoured UK title for this Steven Spielberg-produced adventure—Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Fear—gives a pretty good idea of what can be expected: Sherlock Holmes hasn't got a whip to crack, and a deerstalker replaces the Fedora, but underneath all of the film's Conan Doyle trappings, this is essentially another in a long line of Indiana Jones-inspired movies, complete with a Thuggee-style Egyptian cult murdering people with hallucinogenic blow-darts and performing human sacrifices in their underground pyramid.

As such, Holmes' sleuthing abilities are more than matched by his derring-do, the young detective (ably played by Nicholas Rowe) swashbuckling his way through the film, accompanied by trusty sidekick Watson (Alan Cox) and love interest Elizabeth (Sophie Ward). This being a Spielberg production, Young Sherlock Holmes benefits from great production design (snowy Victorian London looks wonderful) and is heavy on the special effects, with impressive hallucinatory set-pieces involving stop-motion animation, animatronics, and even an early example of CGI (albeit very brief).

If you're a fan of both Sherlock Homes and Indiana Jones, this 'Indiana Holmes' adventure should provide more than enough escapist fun for the duration. 7/10.

Three teenagers, two boys and a girl, based at a fusty old English boarding school in the dead of winter, solve mysteries and fight supernatural forces. The leader of the three has a keen intelligence as well as a native ingenuity to get him and his pals out of the tightest of tight spots and even has a snotty rival in class, determined to bring him down. Their real protagonist though is one of the school masters while elsewhere there's a proliferation of eccentric older characters who interact with the youngsters. Sound familiar...?

But Holy Hogwarts, this isn't the long-lost prequel to the Harry Potter blockbuster series, or maybe it is...

What it is instead, is an imagined first adventure of the young Holmes and Watson, who we see meeting as schoolmates at Brompton Public School where Holmes's credentials as a young smart-aleck and Watson as his plodding but not always dumb sidekick are established.almost immediately. Add in the pretty young female niece of an eccentric old science teacher who sidelines by creating flying contraptions, mix in some murders caused by a hallucinogenic drug administered by the blow-dart of a cloaked female figure, top off with a ritualistic sect determined to sacrifice the young girl and you have an enjoyable and exciting boys-own family-entertainment sumptuously created by Spielberg's Amblin Productions, as written by Christopher Columbus and directed by Barry Levinson.

Cleverly inserting most of the familiar tropes we associate with the adult Holmes and Watson, including sayings, clothing and mannerisms, it's a rollicking ride from start to finish notably including an early example of the potential of Pixar productions in one of the animated sequences. There are cinematic nods to great uncle Steven with scenes highly reminiscent of "E. T" and "Raiders Of The Lost Ark".

Nicely acted by the no-doubt carefully cast youngsters, with good adult support too, backed by a suitably florid John Williams orchestral soundtrack, the whole film is easy on the eye and ear. I remember watching it on first release and being disappointed, then as now, that it wasn't successful enough at the box-office to generate the obviously anticipated and indeed epilogued sequel.

All it seems that was missing from the winning formula was a little magic...

My son turned 12 in August. We purchased this movie at a drugstore while on vacation because I remembered watching it a loving it when I was younger. My son has a love of mysteries and "spies", so I thought that this would be a good movie for him to enjoy. He watched it twice the first day and has seen it several times over the last couple of weeks. It really appeals to younger mystery fans, even though it is rated PG-13, for violence. I would recommend any parent see this movie before they let their kids see it. Some of the violence is hallucinatory, and therefore quite "scary". I think the way it begins Holmes's and Watson's friendship is fun and creative. I think the script and characterizations are well done (especially in light of more current movies, which are just to draw viewers to the theater and have no substance.) The casting was inspired, and I don't see how they could have improved upon it. The cinematography was great and the special effects very good for the time of this movie. Some people might find Holmes's character a bit smug, but that is accurate to the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I recommend this movie to mystery fans, fans of Sherlock Holmes (but NOT "perfectionist" fans), and anyone who enjoys a young fellow showing up his elders.

What if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a story where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson met as adolescents? What if he made it a very suspenseful mystery that explanied may of the great sleuth's character traits and stylistic characterisics? What if...well, he did not, but screenwriter Chris Columbus, director Barry Levinson, and producer Steven Spielberg do bring us a fine film that does these things called Young Sherlock Holmes. Young Sherlock Holmes is the meeting of fantasy film and classic literature, and it is a meeting that coexists very nicely. The great detective meets his future colleague and friend Dr. Watson in a London prep school amidst the mystery of what six men did many years ago in Egypt. Several of the men begin to die in horrible, inexplicable ways, and the young Holmes suspects mischief. The film is a veritable treasure trove of Sherlock Holmes allusions. The film is fast-paced, fun, fantastical, and creates insights into why Holmes developed emotionally the way he did. Nicholas Rowe does a superb job playing Holmes, bringing to the role intelligence as well as compassion. Alan Cox does an equally good job playing his young sidekick and doctor to be. The special effects are first-rate, yet in no way detract from the Victorian world of Doyle and Holmes and Watson. Start watching and it will not be long before you'll be saying, "The game is afoot!"