Hello there! I thought I'd dive into this blog with a little brain attic archaeology. I've endeavored to make interesting to someone who is not me, and hope I succeeded. I gratefully accept any notes and responses! ~ K
I'm six or seven years old, it's well past my bedtime , and I'm sitting on the lid of a clothes hamper, peeking through the crack in my bedroom door. Not the most glamourous meeting, but I wouldn't know it for many years anyway.
I was a pretty sheltered child, but I always wanted to see what my parents watched after I was put to bed at night, even if it gave me nightmares. My bedroom door was situated looking directly out into the living room and the TV screen, and if I was absolutely quiet, I could position myself and squint through the slightly open door at forbidden grown-up television. Now, their viewing habits were fairly tame by anyone's standards - Hallmark and Lifetime being their usual - and rural Upper Michigan, where I grew up, had pretty basic cable, so most of the time this was something like a true ghost stories show, Gothic horror movies from two decades ago, or reruns of the Twilight Zone - for better or worse, these things shaped me: my nightmares and my inspirations.
"A ghastly face staring in the window" grew into a fear of my young life. It possibly had something to do with the classic Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," which is a little hokey by today's standards, but to an impressionable young girl, pulling back the curtain to reveal the grotesque, almost clownish face inches from your own was absolutely terrifying. I was always afraid of what might be lurking the dark on the other side of a pane of glass, not so much because it could hurt me, but the horrifying, unexpected visage that both terrified and obsessed me - as much as it scared me shitless, I couldn't resist the urge to look. So, no matter how much ice water shot through my veins, I always had to put my eye back to the crack in the door.
And so, I couldn't look away from the horrible rictus grin of the corpse, the blurry, monstrous face at the window, or get the death grimace of the tropical poison out of my head. I was too young to understand, but I was watching the Sign of [the] Four.
Recently I went on a quest to find this series Sherlock Holmes TV movies I'd half-seen as a child, and after some digging, identified the Canadian productions, shown on A&E in the states, with Matt Frewer and as Holmes and Kenneth Walsh as Watson.* Watching them again as an adult was a hallucinatory experience, as was coming back to the images that seemed so nightmarish to a young girl. However I had to acknowledge the especially ghoulish imagery emphasizing the faces of the actors (and rather realistic fake corpse) that made such an impression; in that respect, this production of the Sign of Four (to use the production title) was searing and Gothic. Besides the wavery scare of Small's face peering in at Major Sholto, the concept of the South American poison which kills while pulling its victims' face into a hideous grin is a horrifying psychological concept. It was made all the more terrifying to see its result in a beautifully detailed prop body of Bartholomew Sholto; the decision to craft a very realistic corpse rather than have the actor attempt to hold the pose and death grimace was a good one, and the body looked all the more scary for its slightly unrealistic "waxy" look and absolute stillness that is difficult for an actor playing a dead person to capture. The horror-mask like grin and staring eyes are still chilling. Most awful perhaps was the performance of Edward Yankie as John Small, whose grotesque appearance was frightening enough, revealing his story of betrayal and revenge while slowly stiffening from the deadly progress of his own poison, until he becomes another grinning corpse. Obviously some artistic license was taken with the storyline, especially in the last act, with a lot of fumbling with a limited number of antidotes. However it was emotionally effective if not canon - the prospect of Watson meeting the same fate was by then absolutely frightening and heart-breaking. To this day, I'm a little sensitive to unexpected wild, grinning faces, more so than the stock horror "unhinged jaw" face, and the like.
It wasn't just the horror that made an impression on me, luckily; it was my introduction to Mr. Holmes. Matt Frewer has the distinction of being my first image of Holmes; though Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing were not far behind, you never forget your first Sherlock, do you? Obviously the plot of the Sign of Four was rather complex for a seven year old to grasp, but besides being scared shitless, I also clearly remember being impressed by this great detective (I think I already know Sherlock Holmes in concept, though from where might take hypnotic regression) who moved about this horror with ease and energy, and bravely hunted the man with the grotesque face to bring him to justice. More than that, I saw friendship and compassion - alongside the rictus grin, somehow, I always remembered the look of horror on Holmes's face when Watson has been shot by the poison dart. This lodged in my subconscious, reinforcing the idea that Holmes and Watson have a complicated and sometimes cold and adversarial relationship, but the deep friendship that exists between them comes out in rare moments. (In that respect, I think this adaptation's divergence from the canon was true in spirit.)
As it turns out, I also saw this version of the Hound of the Baskervilles at a young age (though it didn't scare me for some reason) but not the other 2 in this series (A Royal Scandal, which combines elements of A Scandal in Bohemia and The Bruce-Partington Plans, and the completely original, and may I say brilliant, Case of the Whitechapel Vampire). Both were my genesis of Holmes's character, in Matt Frewer's gangly, snarky, if sometimes overly "flamboyant" portrayal, that nevertheless was a good balance of tenacity, courage, and quirkiness. I still find this Canadian actor to be a good physical likeness, and perhaps one of the closest to ACD's original intent - I certainly incorporated my memory of Frewer's unique frame, the type of extremely tall and thin that has to "fold up," into my mental image of Holmes (though perhaps not Frewer's meat-cleaver cheekbones, which are nonetheless impressive). Kenneth Walsh as Watson was perfectly charming, with a sardonic edge to the long-suffering Watson archetype that was especially apt, comedic but self-possessed rather than bumbling.
*The Hound of the Baskervilles (2000), The Sign of Four (2001), The Royal Scandal (2001), The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire (2002)
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