text: What was this, a Zucker brothers movie? I don't mind a little humor in my Holmes (I'm a big fan of Billy Wilder's "The Private Life of SH"), but this version of "The Sign of Four" feels like a Grand-Guignol-esque episode of "Murder, She Wrote" (right from the opening credits, that are of the worst possible kind: a montage of scenes from the movie) as directed by Mel Brooks. Ian Richardson is a fine actor, and certainly looks the part (he's a dead ringer to those drawings from The Strand!), but his interpretation of the character is all wrong and overly humorous, from the silly smile he frequently sports (I thought the drug Holmes was into was cocaine, not weed) to his expressions of comical stiffness in the carnival sequences. Not to mention that when he disguises himself as an old man, he is so over the top that despite the fine makeup we instantly recognize him. David Healy is an unmemorable but, given the circumstances, acceptable Watson, and is not too much of a buffoon... at least not more than the rest of characters. Cherie Lunghi (Excalibur) plays Mary Morstan in an exaggerated ingenue fashion straight out of a 1930s vaudeville.<br /><br />Story-wise, there are some pointless additions (like giving Tonga vampire teeth, an appetite for raw meat and a carnival pit as a place to live, turning him into a reject from Island of Dr. Moreau), and we are even denied the pleasure of discovering the mystery alongside Holmes, as we are well informed of everything way before Holmes finds out. And this is full of tired clichés: not only we get the infamous catchphrase "Elementary, my dear Watson" (which, as any Sherlockian will know, Conan Doyle never ever wrote), but we are exposed to such blatant commonplaces as having Hindi music pop out of nowhere when Holmes goes to see a white guy in Hindi clothes.<br /><br />Bottom line: In Britain, in the eighties, two rival TV companies attempted to create a long-running series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, and produced initial TV-movies as potential pilots. One of them starred Ian Richardson, the other starred Jeremy Brett. Thankfully, the one that got its way through multiple episodes was the good one!<br /><br />3/10. Travesty.