Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace

The Purloined Necklace

Sherlock Holmes and 
the Deadly Necklace
aka Sherlock Holmes und 
das Halsband des Todes
West Germany/France/Italy 1962
Directed by Terence Fisher
Severin Blu Ray Zone 0
As part of Severin’s 
The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee 
Blu Ray Boxed Edition

Warning: Some slight spoilers.

Okay, I confess, the biggest selling point of Severin’s recent Blu Ray Boxed Edition, The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee Collection*, was to finally see the man playing the lead character in Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace. Three years after appearing opposite Peter Cushing’s Holmes as Sir Henry in The Hound Of The Baskervilles (reviewed here), Mr. Lee and the director of that movie, Terence Fisher, took themselves off to various locations in Ireland and Germany and shot what amounts to a black and white Krimi based on the Sherlock Holmes character, although it’s not actually based on any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s actual stories, it turns out. 

Now I’ve wondered over the years why this movie has such a bad reputation with people, especially given the talented director and a screenplay by Curt Siodmak, to boot. Well, while it’s possibly not for Sherlock Holmes purists (my dad was not impressed), I’d have to say that this was an enjoyable romp which I found most entertaining. 

Christopher Lee is impressive in this as an imposing but playful Holmes... perhaps not as stuffy as many interpretations but it’s a refreshing change, it has to be said. In Fisher and Lee’s earlier Holmes movie, Peter Cushing’s able assistant Dr. Watson was played by the great Andre Morel and that actor played him a little more truer to the original stories, I think. Here, though, we have another Hammer Horror stalwart, Thorley Walters, playing Watson and, while it’s not true to the character, he does play it fully channeling the old Nigel Bruce, bumbling friend version of the character from the Basil Rathbone films and, frankly, I’m very comfortable with that (Bruce is definitely my favourite Watson). In fact, Thorley Walters actually played Dr. Watson four times in his career, each time to a different actor playing Holmes in a production unrelated to any of his others. 

The film starts off with crisp black and white shots of London and the Thames before being cleverly substituted with footage filmed, I think, in Dublin (maybe not so cleverly inserted, in fact). We find Holmes in a disguise but the make up guys have not gone to so much trouble that you can’t tell it’s Christopher Lee and, frankly, it adds another level of the charming lack of credibility of Watson’s less than mercurial mind when he somehow can’t recognise his friend in this disguise. 

Pretty soon the characters find themselves embroiled in a murder investigation and a plot to steal a priceless necklace. They do battle with Moriarty (played by Hans Söhnker) and also encounter a very young Senta Berger, four years before she starred opposite George Segal in The Quiller Memorandum (reviewed here). I won’t say much about the plot but it’s very entertaining and also uses some moments of bizarre high comedy. For instance, early on in the film when Holmes is extolling the virtues of The Times newspaper, he demonstrates the respected newspaper’s effectiveness when rolled up and disarms Watson of a dagger with said item, which he asks his friend to attack him with. The knife flies up in the air and comes down onto Mrs. Hudson’s roast beef as she walks in with it. This scene also serves as a heads up later when he similarly saves his own life from a knife which is released from Moriarty’s walking stick... although, it has to be said, when the two of them meet I was just sitting there waiting for Holmes to start rolling up his newspaper for just such an occasion. 

There is also a fair amount of unintentional comedy too, not least because of the set up I chose to watch the film in. As many of the films in Germany at the time (and many in Italy for a long time, I believe), the film was shot silent and all the dialogue and foley was added after the fact, with the various actors speaking their own language. Since Lee and Walters were the primary characters, I decided to watch this in the English dub because I knew the lip synch would be closer when they were on the screen. However, it turns out that the two did not dub themselves and a couple of American sounding actors stood in for their voice performances, by all accounts. Lee’s dubbing is okay and Walters isn’t too distracting but, what is distracting, is whenever they talk about Moriarty they pronounce it MoriarAty! This just sounds completely off and is quite funny. 

One last thing... I’m not too familiar with Terence Fisher’s style as yet (although I should be, I’ve seen enough of his movies over the course of my life) but I was really liking the way he was framing the film here. He tends to be totally obsessed in this, it seems to me, with the centre of the widescreen frame. Most of the time the main characters are to be found around the centre of the frame or, if not, they soon gravitate to that area. Indeed, in a shot transition which is almost jarring in that it goes from a centre aligned shot to the next scene where Holmes and Watson are at the right and left extremes of the frame with dead space between them, he manages to go from this to a centre aligned design again. He does this by having Christopher Lee walk to the left slightly while panning around with the camera on the seated Watson on the right until both the characters are placed centrally once more. Nice stuff. 

Other than that, well, the music isn’t that great. It’s credited to Martin Slavin but I’m wondering if it was just library music cued in, perhaps written by him to apply for various scenarios in a number of films? It doesn’t really add to the thing, to be honest. Asides from that though, I have to admit that, contrary to most people’s experiences with the film, I did find Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace to be an extremely entertaining piece and I will certainly catch up to it again one day. I did have a good time with this one and it was worth getting the box for, I reckon. 

*At time of writing this review... two more volumes of The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee have also been released in the time it’s taken me to get this one up on the blog. My apologies. But all the films in them will eventually be reviewed here (if I live that long).