Robert J. Maxwell Not a travesty, this version of Conan-Doyle's most famous and most filmed novella opens in accordance with the printed version, with Matt Frewer as the world's first and only consulting detective, pacing around the room and dramatically throwing off hypotheses about the nature of the recent visitor who has left his walking stick behind. At that, the film limits the number of conclusions drawn by Holmes. (Eg., the breed of DOG that carried the walking stick for its master.) All of this is attended by Kenneth Welsh as the skeptical Dr. Watson. I hate saying this because I wish all filmic preparations of the canon well. But if there is something tic-y and overripe about Frewer's portrayal of Holmes, there is something impassive and vacant about Welsh's Dr. Watson. He's barely there. Ever.The movie follows the narrative fairly closely at first, even introducing us to Miss Laura Lyons, typist, whose role is given some importance. She's almost always deleted. The story leaves Conan-Doyle behind at the climax. He may still be struggling in one of those bottomless bogs in the Great Grimpin Mire for all we know. I won't describe it except to say that the hound isn't too terrifying.The departures from the original narrative do some damage to the film as a whole. Too bad. Grenada TV's version, from the series with Jeremy Britt, is frankly better.

JoeB131 Spoilers if you haven't read the novel or seen one of the 20 or so better adaptations of the story. Probably one of the poorer adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, this one has Matt Frewer (a good actor) as Holmes who is absent for most of the movie. While this is close to the original story (which is mostly told from the view of Dr. Watson) Holmes is more absent from this adaptation than he normally is. This one is written in a way where Watson probably would have figured it out for himself given another ten minutes. I can't give this one a good review, and I love a lot of the quirkier Holmes adaptations... even the one where Watson is a Chinese woman for some reason.

zorro2a OK Matt Frewer is no Jeremy Brett, but l feel there has been a lot of poor remarks about his portrayal of Holmes, l could not fault his accent he dressed well, and you must remember the actors like Charlton Heston and Edward Woodward have played Holmes and no one chastised them.The story is the same we all know it well, but the photography was stunning, the music added to the overall action, l have to mention the actor who played Watson, superb, a bit like Nigel Bruce from the 40's but not as bumbling, l have been a life long Holmes fan, raised on Basil Rathbone's Holmes, but not until Jeremy Brett has anyone come near the character as Conan Doyle wrote him, but l think Matt Frewer has done a good job and l would recommend anyone to see this film and make their own mind up 7 out of 10

dif1959 I cannot agree with most of the comments here. Any film version of a Holmes story is going to be a problem - why pick on this one? After all, something of the rather pointed (sometimes uncomfortable) sarcasm of the literary Holmes comes through. No performance is seriously bad in this film; Frewer comes over well, so do the rest. I sometimes wonder if affection for certain film portrayals rather overrides the accuracy of the story - this one was not the worst by a long shot. Utter accuracy is not probable in the film world, so we should, I think, not be all too picky. Even so, the flavour of the stories is one which no director has ever captured, I admit. This film goes some way towards rectifying the matter.