Being as I am a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast, I find very fascinating the idea of having the detective investigating the infamous Ripper murders. It is an idea that never occurred to Doyle or, at least, he never materialised on paper. The first Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet, came out in 1887, just one year before the murders. This is an impeccably atmospheric depiction of Victorian London with a top-notch cast of the sort you will hardly see in a film today, and the sequence of events is so suspenseful that keeps you engaged until the very end.But you mustn't take the conspiracy theory seriously, because it is totally ludicrous. I have never read the Stephen Knight book from which this film borrows the idea of the Royal family and the Freemasons' association with the mysterious killer or killers. But although it sounds fascinating and there must be people who truly believe it, when you think a little about it you realise its absurdity. The heir to the throne falling for a commoner and marrying her in secret? A so high and mighty a person as a Victorian royal could be, knowing that if the affair ever came to the public knowledge the Monarchy would be ruined? He might seduce her, (after all, many kings in the past used to have mistresses and they fathered bastards), but never get mixed-up with the girl to the point of marrying her. That is totally preposterous. And then, how the conspirators did know whom the girl had revealed her secret to? She moved among the East End crowds and could have told just anyone. How could the murderers know which persons in particular she had been talking to so they could silence them forever? Nevertheless, despite all of these questions that make the famous conspiracy theory totally implausible, if we watch the film just as the piece of entertainment it is, with a fascinating blend of fiction with real-life characters of the Ripper's time (Sir Charles Warren, Robert Lees, Mary Kelly and the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury), this is an excellent suspense film to kill a couple of hours on a Saturday night.

Murder by Decree is directed by Bob Clark and adapted to screenplay by John Hopkins from the novel The Ripper File written by Elwyn Jones and John Lloyd. It stars Christopher Plummer, James Mason, David Hemmings, Susan Clark, Frank Finlay, Anthony Quayle, Donald Sutherland, Geneviève Bujold & John Gielgud.Film pitches Sherlock Holmes (Plummer) and Dr. Watson (Mason) into the hunt for Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel, London 1888...I've been exploited old fellow, by the very people for whom we are searching.The greatest of detectives searching for Britain's most notorious serial killer, it's a killer pitch that had already had a film made in 1965 called A Study in Terror. That was a film that couldn't quite get it right, here, 14 years later, there's a bigger budget and "A" list gloss to help tell the tale. And boy does it work! In the cannon of Sherlock Holmes, Murder by Decree is to Holmes films what On Her Majesty's Secret Service is to the James Bond franchise. Appertaining to the great detective himself, it's the odd one out, a divisive picture, not because it's rubbish or technically shy, but because the main man protagonist dares to be human, a man of conscious; politically, socially and ethically. He's still the same charming, clever and complex character most have come to know and love, but Murder by Decree fronts him out as a human being, with Watson alongside him as a non buffoon bloke doing his bit for the case whilst remaining sensitive about the last pea on his plate! It's these characterisations, splendidly played by two actors of considerable talent, that are at the core of the film's success.If she dies and you come under my hand? Expect no mercy.Period production value is high, it has to be for a Jolly Jack based movie. Bring the dark, bring the smog and bring the Victorian costumes (Judy Moorcroft). Then play it out amongst shadowy lamp lighted cobbled streets and let the sets drip with slum London sweat and tears. All that is required then is to have a source story of compelling interest, of which Murder by Decree scores greatly as well. It's fanciful for sure, but the most spectacular of all Ripper theories. From a secret love child to the Freemasons, and up to Royalty itself, it's a potent notion put forward. That is of course conjecture as a solution, but the makers are to be applauded for taking that idea and successfully combining the Arthur Conan Doyle creations with historical reality, something that A Study in Terror fell considerably short on.Rest of the cast is filled out with some quality as well, where Hemmings, Quayle, Finlay, Gielgud and Bujold don't disappoint, the latter of which gets to really perform with substance in the pivotal scene set in an Asylum. Only real let down is Sutherland, or more like what the makers did (didn't do) with him. His psychic Robert Lees crops up for a couple of small scenes for what we expect will be a telling contribution to the plot, but they aren't. It seems like just an excuse to do Sutherland up like he had just awoken from the grave, and to give the picture some ethereal sheen moments. For the finale and the big reveal of the Ripper, Plummer is simply magnificent. He holds court in front of his peers, including the Prime Minister (Gielgud), and unfurls the explanation with impassioned fortitude, it's then that we realise this was always a Sherlock Holmes movie, and not a Jack the Ripper piece. With that, it's one of the best featuring the Deer Stalker wearing fellow. 9/10

In Victorian times, a series of ghastly murders are being committed in Whitechapel. With public outcry growing and the police seemingly impotent, the world's greatest amateur detective, Sherlock Holmes, is tasked with finding the identity of Jack The Ripper …Whilst it has a little bit of a TV-movie / special-guest-stars feel to it, this is a handsomely mounted thriller with plenty of suspense and tells its sad story with passion and flair. Plummer makes a terrific Holmes, crafty and amused but also refreshingly forthright - his resentment of the Masonic establishment when he uncovers the truth is deeply moving. Hemmings is also good as the inspector whose secret is not what we expect it to be, and hard-working Canadian actress Clark (Madigan, Colossus: The Forbin Project) scores as Mary Kelly, the key witness/victim. The art direction by Harry Pottle and Peter Childs is excellent and the photography is horror-movie scary as the killer glides down fog-filled alleyways, although it does fall into the old trap of being so excessively dark that it's often difficult to see what's going on. Director Clark was an interesting guy - he made the early cult slasher flick Black Christmas and several other good/weird movies (Porky's or Turk 182! for example); sadly he died in a car crash in 2007. This is probably his classiest production, and a good showcase of his journeyman talent. A sort-of remake of an earlier British thriller, A Study In Terror, although plot-wise the pregnancy/marriage conspiracy storyline is closer to the more recent From Hell. If you're in the mood for a good old-fashioned thriller/chiller, turn out the lights and enjoy.

Christmas Story director Bob Clark's bloody crossover thriller takes what could've been merely a customary this-icon-meets-that-icon suspense thriller and furthers it toward something else. Whether that "else" is something duly Holmesian relies on the outlook of the viewer. Various fanatics grade this 1979 high-concepter among the premium Holmes movie takeoffs, welcoming its straight-faced, unpretentious take on the great consulting detective. Others recoil from Christopher Plummer's modest, emotional version, which conspicuously doesn't highlight the literary figure's unflustered deductive reach. That quality is my favorite of those which characterize the icon, but I am not disappointed in this film's depiction of Holmes and Watson, perhaps because of my partiality toward Plummer, as well as that James Mason gives us a refreshing no-nonsense Watson, though a stickler can plausibly contend whether or not the steadfast army surgeon would be so easily upset about his peas.Whether or not Murder By Decree is consistently mindful of the assets of the original characters and of the propriety observed throughout each pursuit, Plummer and Mason together, if nothing else, make one of cinema's most tenderly felt Holmes-Watson duos. On the whole, Murder by Decree is a doting deference to the halcyon days of Hammer Studio, and a crafty alteration of Victorian Britannia to the back end of the anti-establishment 1970s. Clark unravels Rebecca's gaslit London streets and inspects them through his sometimes too self-conscious wide-angle lens for the somewhat ham-handedly warped POV of one Jack the Ripper. Coach, black horse and unrevealed top-hatted steerer emerge from the fog as if out of Dr. Caligari's cabinet, before Clark cuts to a counterpart world of regal pageantry, where reports of the butchery of wanton women are virtually dismissed.The contrast with Holmes and Watson is what makes the merging of the two legends so interesting, rather than just a gimmick. Mason plays Watson in scenes with Sherlock as if they're an old married couple. "When will you be home?" But at work, he's effortless at self-defense despite his age and urbanity, with a smuggled pinch of Humbert as he discovers his finger snagged between a back alley hooker's teeth. Clark largely revolves his compositions around the cast, with Anthony Quayle and John Gielgud's colonial self-importance and David Hemmings' secret radicalism as the boundaries, flanked by the hushed anguish of telepathic Donald Sutherland and Geneviève Bujold's quivering in the asylum, which splinters the great detective's honored and important façade of reason into tears.Sumptuous 1880s reconstructions barely hamper Clark's feelings of the primeval, a durable vision stamped when a razed victim is pushed out of the Ripper's stagecoach passing the camera, an almost concealed glint giving us the perpetrator's outline. And ultimately, in line with what I say above about Holmes, the climactic open letter, where he, no longer in the company of pipe, violin or crooked morphine syringe, switches his probing proficiency from distinctive crimes to public accountability, not only demonstrates a unique emotional turn, but also reminds us Murder by Decree was made in the decade of immortal conspiracy films. Indeed, somewhat like a Tarantino film, it's a pastiche of genres, ironies, styles and most of all characters to create a unique movie.