This 1-hour English mystery film spoof has a lot of brilliant moments, but also a lot of average moments. The latter are probably due to the small budget of a production for regional television.
The overall plot is zany but coherent, even though it serves primarily as a means to hold various funny scenes together. I am not sure why some reviewers seem to find it confusing.
The plot starts when someone kills Henry Kissinger, sorry, Gropinger, through the simple expedient of stealing his diary, leading him to address an Arabic crowd with "Shalom! Mazeltov!" The last surviving relative of Sherlock Holmes' classical adversary Professor Moriarty claims responsibility for the crime and announces the intent to end civilization as we know it.
This naturally leads to representatives of the police forces of the 5 continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia) to meet in London, decide not to do anything, and mostly get killed off one by one during their meetings. And to the last relative of Sherlock Holmes being called in. Played by John Cleese, today's Mr Holmes has his office in 221B Baker Street. He works together with the senile but bionically enhanced last relative of Dr Watson, played by Arthur Lowe. Their housekeeper Mrs Hudson is played by John Cleese's then wife Connie Booth, also of Monty Python fame.
Due to the incompetence of Holmes and Watson, the perfectly disguised Moriarty manages to kill all the most famous TV detectives as well as James Bond. But who is Moriarty really? And will Holmes and Watson manage to save civilization as we know it (= US hegemony?), after all?
The humour is generally even more over the top than in
Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969). It includes some immensely quotable lines. In some ways it reminds me of Douglas Fairbanks' short silent Sherlock Holmes parody
The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916), which managed to be even more extreme in a similar direction.
If it weren't for various deficiencies due to an evidently hurried production, I would probably rate this film a 9 or 10. As it is, I think it deserves a rating somewhere between 7 and 8 if you like British humour (as I do).
