The Crucifer of Blood
A beautiful young woman asks Holmes to help her father, a former army captain and hopeless opium addict break free of the curse surrounding a stolen treasure.
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- Cast:
- Charlton Heston , Richard Johnson , Susannah Harker , Edward Fox , John Castle , Simon Callow , Clive Wood
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Reviews
hyped garbage
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
There are definitely worse Holmes movies -- "Sherlock: Case of Evil" and Reginald Owen's "A Study in Scarlet," for example. And I have to admit I expected this to be worse than it actually is.I often like Charlton Heston's performances, but he is totally miscast here. Add to that the rather lame, and at times implausible, story; the often plodding pace; and the distractingly intrusive sets. However, it held my interest enough to hang on to the end -- just barely.Do yourself a favor: if you're in the mood for a good Holmes film, watch Billy Wilder's "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," or one of the early episodes of Jeremy Brett's Granada series.
I agree that Charlton Heston wasn't the man for this role, I had "the advantage" of watching/having to watch the French version, as such I didn't have to listen to "American English English". On the other hand I found his disguises superb. The action and the "end game" both made the film well worth watching. There are many films where the "baddy" becomes obvious - this is not one of them!Richard Johnson plays a believable John Watson. The Watson role is difficult to play in the sense that he is an educated man, so shouldn't appear stupid, just less capable of crime deduction. But we shouldn't forget that doctors are experts in deducing illnesses from the symptoms of their patients. Connie Booth is a lovely lady - a pleasure to see everything she's in!
Crucifer Of Blood is an entertaining pairing of two fine but sadly aged actors, Charlton Heston and Richard Johnson, as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Both in their sixties at the time, they were far too old to be cast as the umpteenth incarnations of the energetic super-sleuth and his intrepid assistant. Nevertheless both bring the roles to life better than any younger actors of the time likely could have.This high production values British picture, a loose adaptation of Conan Doyle's Sign Of The Four, is rather tongue-in-cheek in tone anyway. It's as florid and melodramatic as a silent movie with all the de rigueur Holmes artifacts ostentatiously displayed -- the deerstalker cap, the Victorian bulldog revolvers, the magnifying glass, the hansom cabs, and the great, billowing clouds of artificial fog. It's all jolly good fun if you're in the right mood and are not a picky Holmes purist. After a while, you don't mind that even the heavy ulster coat can't disguise Heston's curvature of the spine. Or that Johnson shows such frightful wrinkles in his closeup love scenes, it makes the object of his affections, 26-year old Susannah Harker, look like jail bait.Yours truly is admittedly not much a fan of the Sherlock Holmes movies or literature, but my picky, old wife is. And she liked this one about as well as any. Crucifer Of Blood is expertly directed by Charleton's son, Fraser C. Heston, who also wrote and produced. A fast-paced, atmospherically filmed, spirited, witty, inventive, and enjoyable picture from beginning to end.
Well made television movie based on the stage play by Paul Giovanni. (His play was based on the Doyle story "The Sign of Four.") Heston and Johnson make a fine Holmes and Watson and the direction by Fraser Heston, Charlton's son is well paced and timed for all the Sherlockians out there. Callow turns in a fine Inspector Lestrade.