4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / SDR SCREENSHOTS
Right, Christopher Plummer plays Sherlock Holmes, who examines the latest murder victim in the Whitechapel district of London. Center, Frank Finlay plays Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Left, legendary actor James Mason plays Dr. John H. Watson, who surprisingly doesn’t have the stomach to view the dead body.
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“MURDER BY DECREE”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray; 1979, PG for some violence
Best extra: Archival commentary by director Bob Clark
SHERLOCK HOLMES investigates the “Jack the Ripper” killings. That’s the premise of “Murder by Decree,” directed by the late Bob Clark (“A Christmas Story,” “Porky’s,” “Tribute”) and written for the screen by John Hopkins.
With an absolutely brilliant cast, excellent dialogue, terrific costume and production design, the film is a treasure and a special treat for fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but certain to entertain most audiences. Holmes and Watson are deliciously portrayed by Christopher Plummer (“The Sound of Music,” “Knives Out”) and James Mason (“North by Northwest,” “Odd Man Out”) and supported by stellar British and Canadian actors such as Anthony Quayle, David Hemmings, John Gielgud, Genevieve Bujold, Donald Sutherland, Frank Finlay and Susan Clark. The plot is well-constructed, suggesting an interesting – and fairly plausible – scenario for the motives behind the horrific murders of prostitutes in Victorian London’s Whitechapel district.
(1) Watson and Holmes attend the opera. (2) King Edward (Victor Langley) and Princess Alexandra (Pamela Abbott) arrive at their box. (3) After the couple is booed, Watson gets the majority of the audience to cheer the royals.
VIDEO/AUDIO
The European-based StudioCanal scanned the original 35mm camera negative (1.85:1 aspect ratio) in 4K, but oddly no HDR grading was applied to the 4K disc. The added cost for the HDR grading may have put the upgrade outside the budget. The 4K imagery still has excellent clarity, especially the wide shots and the detailed textures of the tweed jackets. The film base also produced a heavy dose of natural film grain, more likely a product of the time. The colors are saturated throughout, but since the color space was kept in the lesser Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) Rec. 709 color space, facial toning pushes toward the red side.
British cinematographer Reginald H. Morris (“A Christmas Story”) captures the drama very well, but at times over lights Holmes’ lab and a nighttime scene outside the Opera House. Both are just too bright, especially compared to the visually moody look of Guy Richie’s modern adaptation “Sherlock Holmes” (2009), with Robert Downey Jr. (Holmes) and Jude Law (Watson). Still, it’s in keeping with the distinctive art style of Bernie Wrightson, illustrator for “Creepy” and “Eerie” magazine, and Stephen King’s “Creep Show.”
Everything was encoded onto a 100 GB disc and averaged over 80 Megabits per second of video.
The two discs include the original uncompressed 2.0 mono track and the remastered six-channel DTS-HD. A scream that takes place near the finale is remarkably disturbing, a nightmare-born cry that’s hard to forget. The dialogue-driven drama is always front and center, and Paul Zaza’s eerie orchestral score, which incorporates many Scottish themes, is nicely balanced throughout.
1&2) A group of Whitechapel merchants visit Holmes and ask him to solve the murders.
(3) One of the models used to create a nighttime scene of London. (4) Holmes and Watson meet a mysterious informant at the docks. (5) A scene that is overlit by cinematographer Reginald H. Morris, in the Baker Street residence. (6) Robert Lees (Donald Sutherland) is a psychic who the informant told Holmes to contact.
EXTRAS
The KL Studio Classics 4K and Blu-ray discs offer two archival commentaries – one by film historians Howard S. Berger and Steve Mitchell, the other by Clark – both worthwhile – but Clark, who died in 2007, provides plenty of interesting perspective and fun trivia. He starts by pointing out the miniature sets used to depict London in 1888 as the film opens, and praising the superb talent of his English crew.
Clark marvels at the fantastic cast he was able to assemble, since the film was his first large-scale production – and to which he refers as a “work of passion for all of us,” and “one of the most joyful collaborations I ever had.” He talks about his original choices for the casting of Holmes and Watson having been Peter O’Toole and Laurence Olivier – which the two legendary actors accepted at first, but soon concluded they could not work together. Clark then cast Plummer as Holmes, but later had to convince James Mason to take the role of Watson. Mason didn’t want the character to come off as a fool, as he appeared in many previous iterations, so Clark says he had “two scenes rewritten on the spot,” to accommodate the actor. “The project seemed blessed. I got every actor I wanted.”
Mason and Plummer worked beautifully together, Clark adds, usually needing only two or three takes per scene, and sometimes just one. The actor playing the killer, Peter Jonfield, had been chosen from a group of extras, solely on the basis of his unusual face. Clark points out that he was interested in presenting Holmes in a humanistic light, so that Plummer gets to “show emotions that Basil Rathbone wouldn’t have.”
(1) Holmes visits the morgue, where he sees the murdered corpse of the merchant who sent him to Lees. (2) Anthony Quayle as Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren. (3) Watson tries to help in the investigation by talking to a prostitute, who ends up luring him into an alley, where he's mugged. (4) Holmes charts the killings. (5) Holmes questions the terrified Mary Kelly (Susan Clark).
Clark eschewed graphic violence in the murder scenes, and wanted “above all, restraint … only fleeting glances of the horror that unfolded.” Regarding his approach to shooting a film, Clark says, “I won’t cut if I don’t need to – when there are wonderful actors and great backgrounds …” Ideas for the plot came to Clark from an 1888 newspaper article, which mentioned the Freemasons, and also a rare type of grape that became an important clue for Holmes in the story.
The graffitied quote scrawled on the wall of an alley, seeming to blame the murders on Jews, also came from a 19th-century article. In addition, there really was an underground revolutionary group in 1880s England, whose mission it was to overthrow the monarchy. Clark praises screenwriter John Hopkins, who had also written the screenplay for the fourth James Bond film “Thunderball” (1965). When Clark showed the screenplay to the Sherlock Holmes Society, he says they were “pleased with it,” but made it clear that they hoped Holmes’ “addictions wouldn’t feature in the film.” As it turned out, there is only a vague allusion to it, in a scene involving a syringe.
Clark notes that he had been a Shakespearean actor at one time, as well as a film editor, “so I don’t shoot a lot” of takes. He works out each shot on 3x5 cards ahead of time, akin to storyboarding. He says he insisted that some of the sets to be oversized, so he could “keep the cameras moving;” these were the early days of the Steadicam. Clark points out that the Canadian actress who plays Sutherland’s wife (Tedde Moore) also played the kind teacher in Clark’s “A Christmas Story,” which is now among annual holiday staples. He also notes that Hemmings insisted on doing some of his own stunts. Gielgud was appearing in a play during production, so he only had one day to nail his climactic scene as prime minister. “Murder by Decree” was shot both on location and on sound stages in studios, primarily at Shepperton, in Surrey, England.
Clark says he decided to use reprise clips to go along with the end credits, which was rather old-fashioned at that time, so it would seem as though the actors were taking a bow onstage. Clark marvels at the challenge of having had to turn 1978 London into 1888 London, and adds that he sees being a director as a “benign dictatorship” … akin to “playing God for a little bit.”
— Peggy Earle
(1&2) Holmes and Watson travel to an asylum, where they meet with Annie Crook (Geneviève Bujold), whose story helps Holmes solve the mystery. (3) While Holmes searches for Mary Kelly, he's surprised by Inspector Foxborough (David Hemmings). (4) Watson tangles with the killer (Roy Lansford). (5&6) After a tussle with Holmes and a chase, Inspector Fox is fatally injured. Nighttime fog scenes are nicely captured.