The Master Blackmailer (1992)

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

I am a longtime fan of the hour-long Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes dramatizations, but the three longer ones I have seen -- this one, The Sign of Four, and The Hound of the Baskervilles -- have left me disappointed. I was going to give this one a pretty negative review, until I went on-line and read the original story, Charles Augustus Milverton. The faults are almost all in the original, which Doyle wrote in 1904 and which feels pretty rushed and mechanical. Holmes does hardly any deducing or reasoning in this, but then he doesn't in the original, either. The dramatists have done an excellent job in creating a new foreground story and interweaving the central blackmail plot from the original story into several other blackmail plots. They have also developed the Watson character much more, and have fleshed-out Holmes' romance-in-disguise with the housemaid (the ever-excellent Sophie Thompson). Robert Hardy gives a masterful performance as the villain. As to the core scenes of the original story -- they are all here, practically verbatim. A pet peeve of mine is when dramatists take a classic character from literature and in an attempt to modernize and flesh-out the character, have the character do and say things that contradict the values of the original character. I thought that a bit of that had happened in this version, but again -- the Holmes here is the Holmes in the original story. It seemed to me that Holmes here was a bit too quick to go along with the lady's desire to hide the embarrassing letters from her about-to-be husband. After all, she wrote the letters, so doesn't the groom have a fair claim, at least, not to be deceived about his future wife? If the letters are really not so embarrassing, but the groom would terminate the wedding anyway, doesn't that tell us that perhaps he isn't so very suitable? That maybe this marriage should not happen? Is she really marrying the man for money and title, and not for love? The Holmes in the earlier stories would at least have given some thought to these questions, and the Doyle who wrote the earlier stories would have re-shaped his plot to answer all these concerns. But not in this story. While the dramatists did a good job in expanding the story, it would have been even better had they expanded it by developing the moral and romantic issues in the impending marriage that the original story overlooked.

The stand-out sequences from 'The Master Blackmailer', for me, are the ones between the brilliant Jeremy Brett (in disguise, naturally), and Sophie Thompson. Could it be the great detective has actually fallen for a lady?This aside, there's a intricate blackmail plot involving Robert Hardy (excellent), and plenty of opportunities for Holmes and Watson to get themselves in awkward situations before solving the mystery.Probably the best of the feature-length episodes, and a fine example of the work Brett and Hardwicke did to immortalise Conan Doyle's characters for the small screen.

I tend to look askance at departures from Doyle's sacred writings, but the additions in this film were well-chosen and done well. Those of us who have most of the Holmes canon mostly memorized tend to forget that for many viewers this may be their first exposure to Holmes, Watson and the foggy streets of Victorian London. A bit more atmosphere and additional plot may be a good introduction for newcomers to the Foggy Fables.The large body of work left by Brett and his associates is, I believe, the best and most faithful Holmes films so far.

Jeremy Brett is simply the best Holmes ever, narrowly edging out the great Basil Rathbone of course, and this is probably the best adaptation of a Conon-Doyle short story.A length adaptation includes some new plot strands that fit in well to the surrounding drama and heightens the hatred one feels for Milverton.Excellent performances all round, especially from Robert Hardy, and both Brett and Hardwick fully rounded and comfortable in their roles makes this a superb piece of drama.