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On behalf of one of his clients, Sherlock Holmes (Gordon Telling) tries
to dissuade professional blackmailer Milverton (Nick Smith), a man he
positively detests, from publicising certain incriminating letters or at
least push for a much lower price, but Milverton shows no mercy - so
Holmes and Watson (Nathaniel Jamison-Root) break into his house one night
to retrieve the letters rather illegally. But first they are almost caught
by Milverton, then they witness one of his earlier victims (Jenny
Rehkugler) shooting him dead. After that they manage to get their hands on
the letters, then make a hasty escape. The next day, the inspector
(Henry Jamison-Root shows up on Sherlock Holmes' doorstep to ask for his
support in the case of the murdered blackmailer, but Holmes declines since
in his eyes the murder was justified. This movie was made on no
budget on amateur level - and for that it actually looks pretty good, the
directorial effort is very smooth and shows at least some inspiration, the
actors might not look all that convincing and are uniformly too young for
their roles, but at least they can act, and in terms of plot this is a
very literal adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's story, down to the
dialogue. Sticking too close to Doyle's story though is the major
problem of the film though: Numerous references are made to the film being
set in London, but due to budgetary reasons, it was very clearly not shot
in London or anywhere in England but in an US American village or suburb,
and many a location shot clearly show that, too. On top of that, there's
the stilted dialogue from Doyle's time - now the actors handle that
remarkably well, but it does sit remarkably unwell with the modern day
sets and locations. In all, it would have been a good idea to adapt the
film's plot to modern times USA, and it wouldn't have cost a cent more,
but even if it is, the whole thing isn't bad and shows promise. By
the way, this movie is not available in any shops but can be (legally)
downloaded for free here: http://www.archive.org/details/TheGreatBlackmailer.
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