A Study in Terror

A careful but curiously ineffective piece of Sherlockiana in which Holmes (Neville) and Watson (Houston) tangle with Jack the Ripper in circumstances much less ingenious than those imagined for Murder by Decree. Donald and Derek Ford's script goes for the Conan Doyle flavour, but gets caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, since the producers (Compton, raised above their station, willy-nilly, by Polanski and Repulsion) were exploitation merchants at heart. All the pedantically pastiched dialogue, reverently played straight by a distinguished cast, therefore sits very uncomfortably with the crudely and gleefully shock-cut murders. The colour is nice, so are Alex Vetchinsky's sets, which include a delightfully smoky Whitechapel pub for Georgia Brown to belt out a couple of period numbers in.