First of all,you have the great Wilder as director;
big,lavish budget translates into a handsomely mounted production !
Acting is superb;
Music extraordinary.
The novelties such as Loch Ness work well.
The spy angle is really quite satisfying...
all in all,a tribute to one of the great iconic fictional characters of ALL Time ~
Agreed. I've watched it several times over the years and it gets better and better.
My accountant says, "1 + 1, 40% of the time, equals divorce".
Vintage Holmes : gets better with added viewing;
...sad for legendary Wilder who probably was crimped in his future films as 10 mill was a ton of money back in the DAY
Thanks for your comments, but the sudience back then did not think so, they stayed away, and it was a huge bomb. It does get better with time, but still seems a rather strange and unusual "take" on the famous fictional detective,and seems to be mostly just for Wilder fans primally. When PBS revived the stories on TV a few years later, with Jeremy Britt in the lead, they seemed to take a cue from this film, but he played it a tad more masculine, and the sexual innuendo was never there. That is the way people want Holmes, they don't want to know his secret sexual inclinations (or lack of them). Wilder carried the innuendo way to far, bored or offended the audience, and perhaps it reflected on his own ambivalent personality as well.
RSGRE