Product: Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, The {The Master Blackmailer (#1.7)} [VHS] (1993)
Rating: 1.0
Wretched
THE MASTER BLACKMAILER (1992) Directed by Peter Hammond. Based on the shory story THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.Starring Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke, Colin Jeavons, Rosalie Williams and Robert Hardy.Another in the wretched last season efforts in the Brett Sherlock Holmes series and all the more so in that the story..perfect for a 45 minute ep...was unwisely here bloated up beyond belief to a one hour and forty five minute movie. Filled to suffocation with padding, by the time the film actually gets to the story in question..about one hour and five minutes in....the whole thing is just dead in the water. Worse we are subjected to a 25 minute Gay Agenda sequence that besides being completely foreign to the material is also completely extraneous to the plot and could have been cut with ease. I cannot imagine anything more certain to kill a mystery suspense film dead than a twenty minute sequence in a Victorian Gay Bar with transvestites singing Gilbert and Sullivan.Better than the horrific THE LAST VAMPYRE , this is not to say it is good only that the above mentioned cast, especially Hardy as the odious Milverton do superb work and so make the experience not as stomach churning as it could have been. Too bad really as this, like THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE, will probably never be attempted again in our lifetimes and so, like all things the Gay Agenda touches, is a destructive waste.