Sherlock Holmes (John Longden) and Dr. Watson (Campbell Singer) are
investigating the disappearance of Neville St.Clair (Hector Ross), who
seems to have been lured away right from his ownm dinner party by
beautiful Doreen (Beryl Baxter), and quite possibly to his death. Holmes'
only clue is a beggar with a twisted lip, but he takes him and Watson
right to Luzatto's (Walter Gotell) opium den, where Holmes finds
St.Clair'S presumably dead body, but loses him again. Going through
St.Clair's personal correspondence, Holmes finds out that Luzatto and
Doreen are blackmailing him because he has killed Doreen'S husband, but
questioning Doreen, Holmes finds out that isn't even true, Luzatto has
killed her husband but put the blame on St.Clair, who was then totally
passed out on opium, to turn him into a tailor-made blackmail-victim. But
it'S not money Luzatto wanted but St Clair's ability as a master of
disguise, which makes him a perfect dope peddler. Holmes has Luzatto's
place raided, everyone arrested, and he reveals St.Clair himself to be the
beggar witht eh twisted lip. As a dope peddler, St.Clair should of course
be arrested with all the others, but since he didn't kill Doreen's husband
and was blackmailed into selling dope, Holmes lets him off the hook and
doesn't give his secret - that he was actually the beggar, a key figure in
the case - away. Eaqrly (and ultimately failed) pilot for a
proposed TV-series that above all else suffers from a script that's a bit
too far-fetched to remain totally believable. Apart from that, the cast
isn't really good: Sure, John Longden makes a pretty decent Holmes who's
also more ruthless than many other actors playing the role, but the rest
of the ensemble is hardly mediocre. Every Sherlock Holmes enthusiast
will have to see this of course, but everyone else will not have missed
anything not seeing it.
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