KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother

Once the door had been opened by Mel Brooks with "Blazing Saddles", it became inevitable that there would be comedies coming on a regular basis from the collection of crazies that had put that gem together. The follow up was "Young Frankenstein" and it's a better film, although maybe just slightly so. Parodies of  Silent films, Hitchcock, and Biblical epics would be coming down the pike soon. In addition to Brooks, Gene Wilder would direct some of these 70s and 80s comedies and Marty Feldman would write and star in some of them as well. Today's entry into my Throwback Thursday series is the first movie that Gene Wilder directed.

He had this idea for a comedy take off on Sherlock Holmes while he was working with Marty Feldman and Madeline Kahn on "Young Frankenstein", and Wilder said that if he had been unable to cast the two of them in the film with him, he would have just skipped it. Fortunately, they read the script and liked it and both joined up to continue the shenanigans they had begun with Brooks. This is a farce with it's heart in the right place, and although it does descend to a couple of sex references that are mildly risqué, if you are watching with tweens and teen, you should be OK.

Mycroft was the brother that was mentioned in the original Conan Doyle books, and what Wilder has done is simply added a younger brother, frustrated by being in the shadow of his siblings and anxious to prove himself. Sigerson Holmes is a funny enough name and it fits with the other two Holmes siblings as odd enough but also slightly sophisticated. The name comes from an alias that Holmes used in a short story written by Conan Doyle. Both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are characters in this film but they are mostly in the background, with one big exception. There is a very amusing scene where Holmes and Watson are supposedly leaving London, which is why Sigerson is stepping in for him. It is a subterfuge, and the manner in which it is accomplished is very amusing.

Madeline Kahn was a national treasure who left us far too soon, but not before contributing to some of the greatest comedies of all time. In this film she is the romantic female lead,  and her character seems to be a variation of  Brigid O'Shaughnessy, from "The Maltese Falcon", you can never trust anything she says, and from the beginning Sigerson knows it. Kahn performs several dance hall songs from the era the film is set, the 1890s, and she has a great singing voice and can do the singing in a comic manner that is required. 

Marty Feldman also left us much to early and here he plays a combination of a Dr. Watson/Inspector Lestrade character. The comic bit that they create for him is that he has photographic hearing and sometimes gets stuck in repeating back information and needs a little push like a record that is skipping. As the comic foil to Wilder's Sigerson, the two of them are well matched clowns who carry off both some verbal humor and some slapstick. 

There are some great visual jokes, like the duel on top of hansom cabs and the sets behind the scenes of the opera they participate in. Dom Deluise hams it up as a conspirator in the plan by the well known nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty. Leo McKern is the professor with a case of Tourette's syndrome. There is a sword fight near the end  and there was a  "Chekhov's Gun" set up early on. Wilder was in fact proficient in sword play having trained in fencing during his time in a theatrical school.  

This is ultimately a pretty sweet film although it has some distasteful moments. All of that will be forgiven when the Kangaroo Hop comes along. Enjoy.