MURDER BY DECREE: Blu-ray (Avco/Embassy, 1979) Kino Lorber

Christopher Plummer and James Mason co-star as super sleuth, Sherlock Holmes and sidekick, Dr. Watson in director, Bob Clark’s Murder by Decree (1979); a handsomely mounted, though oddly dull ‘would be’ thriller that attempts to inveigle Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved literary wit and master of deduction in the Jack the Ripper murders of yore. An Anglo/Canadian co-production, with Harry Pottle’s atmospheric production design, and, Reginald H. Morris’ moodily lit cinematography to recommend it, Murder by Decree – very loosely based on The Ripper File by Elwyn Jones and John Lloyd – and rather slavishly influenced by Stephen Knight’s 1976 book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (Knight’s presumption about the Ripper killings being motivated by a sinister Masonic subplot, since to have found its way into subsequent movies about the eponymous Jack), further muddles ‘history’ by using analogues for two characters culled from real-life suspects, Sir William Gull and John Netley, respectively reconstituted herein as Thomas Spivy (Gull) and William Slade (Netley). Comparatively, Murder by Decree can be considered a precursor to the Hughes brothers’, From Hell (2001) as – most certainly, similarities abound between these two pictures. And Murder by Decree possesses a pedigree, aspiring to be elegant, stirring and potent. However, several elements prevent the picture from attaining such greatness; the first, arguably, John Hopkins’ screenplay that, having decided upon a more likable Holmes and bon vivant for Dr. Watson, rewrites Conan Doyle’s drug-experimenting detective, and introspective sidekick as lovable cohorts on a lark for their own intellectual amusement. Hopkins, who co-authored the Bond caper, Thunderball (1965) is aiming high here to transform Sherlock Holmes into the sort of likable super hero of the deerstalker and accomplished violin-playing sect to maintain his relevancy with ‘then’ contemporary audiences.  The transition, alas, does not entirely yield a reformed Holmes, who almost immediately exercises his anti-Royalist sentiments while amusingly observing as a group of caterwauling seditionists accost the Prince of Wales as he takes his bows at the opera house, suggesting to Watson, “On the contrary, I prefer bad manners in the theater to active violence in the streets.”

From the outset, as a huge Holmes’ fan, I desperately wanted to like Murder by Decree more than I actually ended up liking it. And this had very little to do with my grave difficulty in digesting handsome, Chris Plummer as a less abrasive Holmes, as for me, the cinematic epitome of Arthur Conan Doyle’s methodical crime-solver remains Basil Rathbone, not the least for the content of his character, but in absolutely typifying the original Sidney Paget illustrations of Holmes as ‘two profiles pasted together’. Certainly, Murder by Decree’s production values are unimpeachable. And even furthermore the plot, decidedly salvageable, with Holmes ‘encouraged’ by a contingent of Whitechapel shopkeepers to investigate the Ripper crimes, much to the chagrin of Scotland Yard, Murder by Decree never entirely comes together in anything better than fits and sparks of watered-down genius. The ‘murders’ are exceptionally tame – even by cinema standards, circa 1979 – their ‘tasteful execution’ teetering on a sort of cordiality meant, I suppose, to exude an air of ‘class’. This, alas, all but diffuses the big build-up as the camera sidewinds its way through these narrow and labyrinth-concocted, fog-riddled byways and allies, the initial sightings of an ominous horse-drawn hackney carriage, emerging from the dense pea soup, a segue to a few crazed expressions, as terrorized unfortunates fall prey to ‘the ripper’ in a blood-less display that makes dear ole ‘Jackie’ no more or less obnoxious than a peeping Tom who takes things a bit too far.  

Although the murders are described as ‘grisly’ – the inference does not culminate with anything more than a so-so, even occasionally ‘bland’ summation of the crimes, as reformulated in Holmes’ brilliant mind. Clues, and occasional misdirection, lead Holmes and Watson to the home of Robert Lees (Donald Sutherland) – a psychic who suggests he can ‘see’ the killer as plain as day. The investigation also leads Holmes into conflict with Scotland Yard, though Inspector Foxborough (David Hemmings) is empathetic, if harboring a crucial piece of evidence, and, an altercation with the haughty and patrician Police Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren (Anthony Quayle) who orders Holmes to abstain from any further investigations. In the pivotal roles of local ‘working girl’, Mary Kelly – doomed to meet with an untimely end, and Annie Crook, the mentally tortured ‘unfortunate’ locked away in an asylum, Susan Clark and Genevieve Bujold – respectively – distinguish themselves. If you have seen From Hell, then Murder by Decree plays like a very wry/dry run for that blood-soaked horror-fest, via Crook’s connection to that most sacred and influential of all high-born English households in the land. But we cannot even grant Murder by Decree props for such originality, as 1965’s A Study in Terror was the first to suggest a connection between the ripper and Queen Victoria.  In retrospect, Murder by Decree is trying too hard to inveigle Holmes in a sinister tale that requires no additional participants to make the story click as it should, what with the Freemasons already indicted as co-conspirators. The purpose of Holmes’ involvement, therefore, is to serve as the audience’s narrative guide through this tangle of taut and tawdry torments.

Christopher Plummer, in his physical and acting prime, makes for an utterly dashing Holmes, ever more the pin-up for that imperious ‘super dick’ who takes the affectation of the deerstalker, Meerschaum pipe, and violin to heart, transforming Holmes’ hallmarks into wholly acceptable accoutrements. It is the arc in Plummer’s character evolution that is most rewarding – his Holmes, affected, even mildly transformed by the audacity of what he unearths. So, I suspect some of my disappointment with Murder by Decree stems and lingers from the fact Hopkins’ screenplay leans on Holmes’ acquisition of a human heart, than it does on exposing the ripper; the big reveal distilled into a chase for the man with the face, as Hopkin’s screenplay offers the audience virtually no ‘engagement’ with the killer, hinging almost exclusively on Holmes’ revelation, things would have been better off if he had never taken up the case in the first place. And Holmes repeatedly gets the stuffings knocked out of him – physical antics, Conan Doyle’s highbrow intellectual sleuth would never have engaged in. Plummer makes exceptional use of his actor’s training in Holmes’ penultimate declaration of contempt for the aristocracy before the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (Sir John Gielgud), driving home his populist censure against political elitism. But it all just seems for not, as the picture is not particularly interested in proving this point either. So, where is the movie’s creative aegis situated? Ah, now, that remains a finer point of contention for which, having reviewed Murder by Decree thrice now – once for the overall impact of its entertainment value – at face value – and twice more, to glean additional insight from its two competing audio commentaries, I still find no clear cut satisfaction to base my assessment as anything better than an elegantly attired warhorse with more than a handful of nicely turned out Holmesian touches, mostly tied to its superbly realizes Victoriana bric-a-brac.  

Murder by Decree is hardly a ‘paint-by-numbers’ outing. Indeed, there is more than an ounce of originality in it. And, in the intervening decades, it has acquired a grade as one of the most consummate and authentic cinematic pastiches, worthy of inclusion to the legit Holmesian legacy, its fidelity to several competing source materials – arguably, admirable.  Plummer’s take on Conan Doyle’s denizen of detection, impassioned and mischievous, flies in the face, both of authorship and the tradition of Holmes as something of a steely-eyed cold fish. James Mason interprets Watson with a pseudo-slant of intellectual wherewithal and patriotism, far removed from the bumbler class of Watsons of yore (not indigenous to Conan Doyle, although I still have a soft spot for Nigel Bruce’s buffoonery). Further to the good, Plummer and James Mason possess genuine bro-mantic chemistry herein as two textbook examples of the sophisticated, confirmed ‘ole bachelor’s’ ilk, deliciously fleshed out with excellently scripted repartee. There is a lot going on in Murder by Decree – too much to spend any ample degree of time with the time-honored Holmesian foil, Inspector Lestrade (Frank Finlay), or even appreciate Donald Sutherland’s spooky psychic as anything better than a cameo.  The legend of Jack the Ripper is given its own short-shrift as well – a sort of cold case file, meant to suggest the ripper was little more than an impressionist boogeyman, ingeniously concocted by the highest figures in the land to incite terror in the hearts and minds of London’s lowly populace, deflecting their interests with scandal from the even more insidious truth.  Lurking just beneath the surface are all sorts of queries on England’s caste system, intermittently brought into focus by James Mason’s punctilious persimmon. But again, it’s the tale that gets sincerely bogged down in impressions, reflections and diversions aplenty. In the end, Murder by Decree just falls apart under the weight of its own competing commentaries.

Shot on sets built at both Elstree and Shepperton Studios, with every penny of its rather modest $5 million budget showing up on the screen, Murder by Decree arrives on Blu-ray via, Kino Lorber, in a transfer provided by StudioCanal that leaves something to be desired. For starters, there is some intermittent edge enhancement and image instability. Fine details shimmer, and certain portions of the frame seem to suffer from a curious gate weave. Colors are anemic at best. Flesh tones are pasty pink. The palette tends to favor a grey/blue or brown/beige spectrum with rare opportunities to really show off Reginald H. Morris’ cinematography to its best advantage. At intervals, fine details are lost in the crevasses of this evocatively dark and unrefined image. Film grain is oddly realized, in some scenes, appearing quite indigenous to its source – if slightly thicker than anticipated, while at others, looking digitally harsh, and, still at others, almost completely disappearing.  The audio is 2.0 DTS mono and adequate for this presentation, if hardly to set the world on fire. Indeed, what’s here is very flat, but with dialogue nicely realized and clear. We get two competing audio commentaries, the first from director, Bob Clark, and the second, featuring Howard S. Berger and Stephen Mitchell. Actually, I prefer Berger and Mitchell’s contributions here. Despite having no participation in the actual movie, they seem to be more engaged with it than the director. Bottom line: Murder by Decree is a dour outing whose redemptive feature is the on-screen chemistry between Plummer and Mason. The rest really does not add up to anything more or better than applying the proverbial lipstick to a pig. And what does one anticipate from a pig but a grunt? This Blu-ray is an uneven affair. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

2