Rhapsodies

For this week’s selection I thought I’d take a break and watch something fun and lightweight, Specifically, I went with some Sherlock Holmes parodies.

The first film on my list The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother starring Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, and Madeline Kahn, as the title says, is the story of Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother. No, not Mycroft, his other brother Sigerson.
Holmes and Watson are on Holiday and contact Sigerson to continue the hunt for Professor Moriarty (Leo McKern) Actually they’re using him as a decoy but he doesn’t know that. From there we have a Sigerson and his partner Sgt. Orville Sacker (Feldman) going on a series of wild goose chases. Until they save the day almost by accident.
This was a fun piece of fluff with Wilder doing very well in his first leading role.

For my next film I watched a short BBC production, The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It, starring John Cleese.
It is the present day (1977) and When a blatant caricature of Henry Kissinger is assassinated, world leaders realize that the world is threatened by a descendant of Professor Moriarty. To deal with this the leaders of the free world summon the direct descendant of Sherlock Holmes(Cleese) and Dr. Watson. Can two complete incompetents save civilization as we know it?
This was really, really stupid, but it was the good kind of stupid. It’s great to see a young Cleese hamming it up, and if you’re expecting anything resembling a coherent plot you’ve got the wrong address.