Before the advent of Jeremy Brett "Murder By Decree" had the finest Holmes/Watson/Lestrade teaming in Christopher Plummer, James Mason and Frank Finlay. It's too bad they have such a ridiculous story.
The good: the acting is impeccable. All except a strangely dull, murmuring Donald Sutherland; and a blustery Anthony Quayle. For a more lively Victorian Sutherland catch "The Great Train Robbery."
The bad: everything else. In most Holmes movies he's bounding around London in his famous deerstalker cap and his cape. It's no different here. Holmes even wears this preposterous costume to the opera.
In 1888 Holmes and Watson were impecunious young men sharing digs until their careers took off (Watson wasn't yet married). Here, in 1888, they are prematurely aged, like two old codgers unable to get by alone on their pensions.
The story this is based on (I read Stephen Knight's book when I was young and impressionable) has long been exploded. Of course, in a work of fiction (and Holmes stories are all fiction) they can do what they like but I'd rather have seen this Holmes/Watson combination in a more rousing tale.
It's really silly from the first. Spooky as the empty East End streets are and fine as they are in setting a mood, the streets in the East End of London were teeming with people day and night. One of the biggest mysteries of Jack the Ripper (if one hand was "Jack the Ripper"--we know the blanket name grouping a series of similar murders was an invention of the sensational "fake news" press) is how the victims were all taken to secluded areas. Obviously, the murderer(s) had to be denizens of that area, knowing where to go for seclusion and how to escape swiftly.
Other silly points of this story are the closed carriage. The thing about so-called Jack the Ripper is the facility with which he or she or they came and went with no one noticing anything. A fancy carriage would be noticed. But so would a man in a high hat and cape carrying a patent leather Gladstone doctors' bag: the stereotypical Ripper image.
Worth watching is Mason's competent, courageous, yet still humorous Watson (though I can't imagine a doctor who bravely operated on the field of battle being squeamish about the injuries suffered by "Ripper" victims).
It's a shame because Plummer and Mason are so perfect for their parts and so good. I'd like to have seen them do other Sherlock stories! Also, I've been a Mason myself for thirty years and though I grew disenchanted with them, the Masonic stuff is half-rubbish. But as an honorable fellow who won't violate his Masonic code, disenchanted or not, I can't say which half.
Not only do we have a first rate Holmes/Watson combination, we have a subtle, extra-canonical David Hemings. But I love Plummer, Mason (odd name for this yarn) and Finlay.
