Holmes movie review
Mar. 1st, 2009 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elabyAnother Holmes movie review! Whee :)
Tonight we watched The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire, a TV movie produced by Hallmark (I think) with Matt Frewer as Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as Watson.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jadefox32 gave it to me! Thank you so much ^_^
It was really neat :) Watson was fantastic, and that always makes me happy. A Holmes movie pretty much gets a thumbs-up from me if Watson isn't portrayed as an idiot, and he was great in this one.
This movie was about a monastery in Whitechapel whose brothers and sisters were being terrorized by what they described as a blood-sucking bat monster. A group of them had just come back from South America, where they had been working at a missionary where a bunch of the people died from a mysterious disease. There were a lot of bats in the area, and thinking that the bats were carrying the disease, the missionaries had the bats killed. Then monks started being murdered; puncture wounds were found in their necks and witnesses saw a cloaked figure with a face like one of the local bat gods. When the missionaries returned to England, the murders continued. After much talk of the devil and scoffing from Holmes and more murders, it turned out to be one of the monks, who had gone insane after a long bout of the disease in South America.
Anyway, onto the characters! Matt Frewer plays a very interesting Holmes. He certainly has the disdain and arrogance down, and he was tall and gaunt and angular. By the end, I'd gotten used to him, and I think he plays a pretty good Holmes. From what little I've read about him, he's Canadian and American, and I swear he studied Hugh Laurie to do his Holmes accent, because he kept giving me Wooster vibes XD Which was a little strange to say the least, but I still thought he was pretty good. The only thing that I really didn't agree with about his characterization (and this may have been the script and not him) was that he asserted that he was agnostic, and (although he had highly amusing things happen to him later on to make him rethink his position) he showed a lot of scorn at the beginning about the idea that there might be any larger controlling force in the universe. While I know Holmes doesn't believe in supernatural explanations, from the brief glimpses of philosophy that we get from him, I really think he believes in some higher power. To what extent, I don't know, but given that he's an Englishman in the late 1800s and from things he's said, I tend to think that he has some belief in the Christian God. His moss-rose speech in "The Naval Treaty" and that bit at the end of "The Cardboard Box" where he says it's unthinkable for the universe to be ruled by chance would suggest as much. I'm sure the extent of Holmes's belief system has been examined like crazy by scholars, but I haven't read any of it yet. Anyway, long story short, that was the only part that I was kind of like "Er, no," about. And the story obviously delighted in pushing that boundary, because a medium who Holmes thoroughly discounted as a quack told him he'd be saved by a church, and then a piece of cathedral sculpture fell on the bad guy at the end just as he was about to shoot Holmes *snickers* And also (which I totally guessed before it happened!) a workman who saved Holmes from being trampled by a horse was, at the end, revealed to be named Mr. Church XD
That scene, actually, had one of the bits where I really liked Matt Frewer's Holmes: he'd lost his pipe when he got shoved in front of the horse, and when Mrs. Hudson came in to give him the pipe back on behalf of the workman, he gave this delighted "My pipe!!" with a huge happy smile, and it was kind of adorable XD Also, his expression upon learning the workman's name was priceless, as was Watson's.
Watson, played Kenneth Welsh, was really wonderful. He not only exhibited his knowledge as a physician several times, he was also extremely useful, brave, and a good friend. He didn't believe that vampires were behind the killings, but he kept urging Holmes to keep an open mind and not discount things just because they might not have a verifiable basis in science. He did so with patient affection. He was also compassionate, as I love people who play Watson to be, and he fell into the Holmes-comforting role easily. I like it when movies show that Watson's always having to tell Holmes not to be so hard on himself when things aren't going his way. He did what Holmes asked him in matters regarding the case, but he was never subservient to him, and Holmes never treated him with anything but respect and friendship. Watson also took great delight in the whole "saved by a church" thing, and totally cracked up at Holmes's astonishment when he found out the name of the man who saved him from being trampled. What little snatches of their relationship we got in the movie were very well done and warm and comfortable. Entirely comfortable, which was nice.
These actors also did a version of "Sign of the Four" and "Hound of the Baskervilles," I think. I should see if I can find them :3 Oh! And I discovered that Matt Frewer has done a bunch of voice-acting. He played Panic in Hercules, the Disney movie, and (more interesting to me) he played Jackal in Gargoyles. Whoa.
Tonight we watched The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire, a TV movie produced by Hallmark (I think) with Matt Frewer as Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as Watson.
jadefox32 gave it to me! Thank you so much ^_^It was really neat :) Watson was fantastic, and that always makes me happy. A Holmes movie pretty much gets a thumbs-up from me if Watson isn't portrayed as an idiot, and he was great in this one.
This movie was about a monastery in Whitechapel whose brothers and sisters were being terrorized by what they described as a blood-sucking bat monster. A group of them had just come back from South America, where they had been working at a missionary where a bunch of the people died from a mysterious disease. There were a lot of bats in the area, and thinking that the bats were carrying the disease, the missionaries had the bats killed. Then monks started being murdered; puncture wounds were found in their necks and witnesses saw a cloaked figure with a face like one of the local bat gods. When the missionaries returned to England, the murders continued. After much talk of the devil and scoffing from Holmes and more murders, it turned out to be one of the monks, who had gone insane after a long bout of the disease in South America.
Anyway, onto the characters! Matt Frewer plays a very interesting Holmes. He certainly has the disdain and arrogance down, and he was tall and gaunt and angular. By the end, I'd gotten used to him, and I think he plays a pretty good Holmes. From what little I've read about him, he's Canadian and American, and I swear he studied Hugh Laurie to do his Holmes accent, because he kept giving me Wooster vibes XD Which was a little strange to say the least, but I still thought he was pretty good. The only thing that I really didn't agree with about his characterization (and this may have been the script and not him) was that he asserted that he was agnostic, and (although he had highly amusing things happen to him later on to make him rethink his position) he showed a lot of scorn at the beginning about the idea that there might be any larger controlling force in the universe. While I know Holmes doesn't believe in supernatural explanations, from the brief glimpses of philosophy that we get from him, I really think he believes in some higher power. To what extent, I don't know, but given that he's an Englishman in the late 1800s and from things he's said, I tend to think that he has some belief in the Christian God. His moss-rose speech in "The Naval Treaty" and that bit at the end of "The Cardboard Box" where he says it's unthinkable for the universe to be ruled by chance would suggest as much. I'm sure the extent of Holmes's belief system has been examined like crazy by scholars, but I haven't read any of it yet. Anyway, long story short, that was the only part that I was kind of like "Er, no," about. And the story obviously delighted in pushing that boundary, because a medium who Holmes thoroughly discounted as a quack told him he'd be saved by a church, and then a piece of cathedral sculpture fell on the bad guy at the end just as he was about to shoot Holmes *snickers* And also (which I totally guessed before it happened!) a workman who saved Holmes from being trampled by a horse was, at the end, revealed to be named Mr. Church XD
That scene, actually, had one of the bits where I really liked Matt Frewer's Holmes: he'd lost his pipe when he got shoved in front of the horse, and when Mrs. Hudson came in to give him the pipe back on behalf of the workman, he gave this delighted "My pipe!!" with a huge happy smile, and it was kind of adorable XD Also, his expression upon learning the workman's name was priceless, as was Watson's.
Watson, played Kenneth Welsh, was really wonderful. He not only exhibited his knowledge as a physician several times, he was also extremely useful, brave, and a good friend. He didn't believe that vampires were behind the killings, but he kept urging Holmes to keep an open mind and not discount things just because they might not have a verifiable basis in science. He did so with patient affection. He was also compassionate, as I love people who play Watson to be, and he fell into the Holmes-comforting role easily. I like it when movies show that Watson's always having to tell Holmes not to be so hard on himself when things aren't going his way. He did what Holmes asked him in matters regarding the case, but he was never subservient to him, and Holmes never treated him with anything but respect and friendship. Watson also took great delight in the whole "saved by a church" thing, and totally cracked up at Holmes's astonishment when he found out the name of the man who saved him from being trampled. What little snatches of their relationship we got in the movie were very well done and warm and comfortable. Entirely comfortable, which was nice.
These actors also did a version of "Sign of the Four" and "Hound of the Baskervilles," I think. I should see if I can find them :3 Oh! And I discovered that Matt Frewer has done a bunch of voice-acting. He played Panic in Hercules, the Disney movie, and (more interesting to me) he played Jackal in Gargoyles. Whoa.
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Date: 2009-03-03 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-03 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-03 06:46 pm (UTC)This is totally random, but when I was reading all of this paragraph, all I could think of was Scully and Doggett. *giggles*
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Date: 2009-03-03 10:13 pm (UTC)lifematebest friend, and I know you're a little crazy about this logic thing, but you really need to open up a little," sort of thing. Bwee.I miss Doggett!