Roger Moore is a bit handsome for Sherlock Holmes and Patrick Macnee uses a hoarse voice that sounds cured by cigar smoke, but this is an interesting and watchable flick. The story is a double one: Holmes can either save his own son by Irene Adler or solve the mystery of several megatons of missing gold bullion which would lead to an economic catastrophe and possibly war. I won't say whether he succeeds at both. The gold business is given rather short shrift and is solved in about one minute by the perceptive detective. Indeed the solution is so simple that it leaves the authorities in New York looking like dolts for not having figured it out themselves.
Well, Moore is no Rasil Bathbone, and Macnee hasn't got very much to do except offer a few wisecracks -- "Holmes, the problem with tea here is that it comes in POUCHES." But very effective use is made of the extensive sets left over from an earlier Twentieth-Century-Fox period movie -- I forget which one. Horse-drawn vehicles chase each other clippity-clop across cobbled streets glistening with rain.
Charlotte Rampling plays an upright woman, more or less, in this one. She's quite good, although her eyes remain sensuously hooded and her voice continues unwittingly to carry a throaty invitation. Best is John Huston, overacting for all the part of Moriarty is worth, red-faced, snarling, hair-mussed, rolling his eyes, and that marvelous voice. You must catch Huston and Moore exchange insults at the beginning. Huston: "You never could resist the 'tour day force', the 'coo day grass.' Your ego is insatiable." Moore: "Yes. Atrocious -- along with your French."
It's fun to watch. I kind of find myself wishing that Moore hadn't played the later, less individuated Holmes. No cocaine use, no misogyny, but he does play the violin and smoke his non-canonical calabash a lot. Oh -- and thanks to the name of the bank where the gold is stored I finally realized where "the Bowery" came from. The name of the institution is "The Bouwerie Bank," giving away its Dutch ancestry.
