It’s around lunchtime and contacting certain friends time, so this is a good time to post this 1968 version. The best rated is 1987, rated 7.9), so obviously unavailable, ditto with 1983, only in animated form. 1932, 1923 are not highly rated. This is a short, made for TV version, with Peter Cushing … it will need to do … best of what is available.

A review:

“Repeating what they did with “A Study In Scarlet”, the BBC series with Peter Cushing & Nigel Stock decided to adapt Doyle’s 2nd-ever Holmes story– and the 2nd novel– as a single episode, rather than a 2-parter. This seems insane, except on watching the result, I’m stunned that so little that seems important was left out. In fact, there are several sequences in this version I have not seen in ANY of the multiple other ones I’ve seen, and several scenes that are allowed to play out at a rather relaxed, leisurely pace. Of course, to make up for this, huge chunks are cut out entirely, and what’s left races by at a frightening pace, the likes of which I’ve only seen in the 2nd half of the Tom Baker version of “HOUND”.

Ann Bell presents a very sweet, attractive version of Mary Morstan, and more time is spent focused on the budding romance between her & Watson than any other version I’ve seen outside of the 1932 Arthur Wontner-Ian Hunter film. Paul Daneman’s Thaddeus Sholto is reasonably eccentric (including his “Elmer Fudd” lisp), much younger than Miles Malleson’s from the ’32 film, not as handsome as the one from the Ian Richardson film, but nowhere near as annoying-as-hell as when Ronald Lacey played him in the Jeremy Brett version. It’s amusing and a bit awkward when, near the end, both Mary & then Watson mistake his actions as those of a romantic rival, when he’s just someone out to do the right thing.

Cushing’s Holmes is genuinely hyper-active in this, as he’s racing to get thru as much of the dialogue and the story as possible in the absurdly-limited time allotted. He doesn’t even have a chance to go undercover in disguise as Wontner, Richardson or Brett did. But I did enjoy his amusment at the expense of his Scotland Yard counterpart.

The highlight of this version, for me, was John Stratton as Inspector Athelney Jones, a man who’s so arrogant, egotistical and conceited, he makes Lestrade look like a real sweetheart by comparison. More than any other version of Jones I’ve seen, Stratton is hilarious when he first dismisses Holmes as “the theorist”, then, only seconds later, begins spewing out his own half-baked theories, which Holmes takes almost too much delight in picking apart. “And the dead man gets up to lock the door from the inside?” “…There’s a flaw there… Somewhere… “

In recent years, the locked-door murder has become to me a blatent tribute to the one in Poe’s “The Murders In The Rue Morgue”, with a sailor and an organgutan replaced by a one-legged man and a pygmy. Despite this episode being near the end of the 2nd BBC series, so much of it displays Holmes explaining his methods and philosophy toward life that it screams to be watched before all the others (except for “A Study In Scarlet”, which should be watched first). I especially enjoyed his meeting up with the butler, McMurdo, who he once went several rounds of boxing with years earlier.

In a bit of continuity I missed on earlier viewings, Wiggins (Tony McLaren) makes his 2nd appearance, coming to see Holmes by himself after he was instructed to leave the rest of his underaged detectives in the street in “Scarlet”.

So much of the back-story, mood and character were left out of this adaptation, yet the parts that are here make me enjoy this as a very enjoyable alternative to the others. My favorite is still the Ian Richardson film, while my least-favorite, sadly, is the one with Jeremy Brett. (Now I’m just waiting for the British Film Institute to do their massive restoration project on the Eille Norwood series, so I can see the 1923 version cleaned up properly. The video currently on Youtube is a real chore to plow through until then.)”