Product Details

• Actors: Jeremy Brett
• Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MPI Home Video
• VHS Release Date: December 15, 1994
• Run Time: 50 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301611756
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,571 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

One of the most ingenious of the Sherlock Holmes stories, The Man with the Twisted Lip presents the famous detective with one of his strangest cases. A gentleman named Neville St. Clair (Clive Francis) is missing, after having been briefly seen (looking quite agitated) by his wife (Eleanor David) in an upstairs window of a disreputable pub. Upon investigating, Mrs. St. Clair can only find traces of blood in the location; later, her husband's coat, mysteriously stuffed with pennies, turns up on a mud bank. Police have detained a notorious street beggar on suspicion of foul play, but Holmes (Jeremy Brett) and Dr. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) believe there is more to the case than meets the eye. This highly enjoyable installment from the long-running Granada Television series is satisfying from beginning to end, with a witty conclusion and unexpected moral about class pressures. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars See two handsome actors make themselves thoroughly hideous!, October 19, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Return of Sherlock Holmes: Man With the Twisted Lip [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This story always seemed to me to be the most preposterous of tales. A rich man masquerading as a beggar?

Then I read of a medical student doing precisely the same thing in New York City in 1999. Bravo, Dr. Doyle. I might even start believing in fairies now...

Jeremy Brett has a ball in this episode. He gets to hang around an opium den in the character of a crazed loafer, and he and Edward Hardwicke bring some nice comic touches to the Holmes/Watson relationship. It is trying, sometimes, being woken at 2 a.m. by a roommate who is shaking your foot and insisting you have to go somewhere, NOW...

The supporting cast is excellent as usual and there is a great feel for the grubby, nasty alleyways of London's East End. This is Victorian England as it was, not as historical filmmakers would have it.

I can't understand why they changed the script slightly from the story; in the original, Mrs. St. Clair seems to have some rather personal designs on our hero. In this show, she's a tower of moral certitude. I suppose someone in the show had to be.

Listen for some of the fine banter between Holmes and Watson, especially during their carriage ride.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointment, August 13, 2000

By 

"laddie5" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Return of Sherlock Holmes: Man With the Twisted Lip [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Despite being based on one of Conan Doyle's better stories, this is one of the duds of the Granada series: poorly photographed and staged, and lacking the story's crisp drama. The solution of the mystery is particularly limp.