In 1965 Sherlock Holmes found himself facing off against a mysterious and notorious killer for the first time. Jack the Ripper.
Three prostitutes have murdered in gruesome fashion with no clues to the killer other than the press call him Jack the Ripper. Soon after a mysterious package arrives for Sherlock Holmes (John Neville). It’s a case of surgical tools with scalpel missing. With the help of Dr. Watson (Donald Houston) Holmes starts looking into the case.
The surgical case leads to the Duke of Shires (Barry Jones). It seems the case belongs to the Duke’s oldest son Michael (John Cairney) who has caused the family some shame by marrying a prostitute named Angela (Adrienne Corri). Michael’s brother Lord Carfax (John Fraser) has been paying blackmail to keep everything quiet. Michael has been working with Dr. Murray (Anthony Quayle) in Whitechapel. It’s up to Holmes and Watson to figure out how all this ties to the murders.
While Murder By Decree did it better in 1979, A Study in Terror did it first. The film wasn’t a box office hit but it did gain a following and influence many Sherlock Holmes stories to come. Neville and Houston are excellent as Holmes and Watson and the movie is pretty good. Mill Creek just released the film on Blu-ray and it looks pretty good and the price is right.
