Established in 1982 in Sydney, New South Wales, the Australian animation studio Burbank Films specialised in rather dour and dreary adaptations of classic novels. Charles Dickens seemed to be the company’s go-to author in their earliest days, the company turning out no fewer than eight adaptations in their first four years (A Christmas Carol (1982), Oliver Twist (1982), David Copperfield (1983), Great Expectations (1983), A Tale of Two Cities (1984), The Old Curiosity Shop (1984), Nicholas Nickleby (1985) and The Pickwick Papers (1985)). Sandwiched between these were a quartet of Sherlock Holmes adaptations made in 1983, tackling each of the four Holmes novels, Sherlock Holmes and a Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes and the Baskerville Curse, Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of Four and Sherlock Holmes and the Valley of Fear all featuring Peter O’Toole as the voice of Holmes and Earle Cross as Watson.
Because the films – which vary in length from around 47 minutes to 67, were aimed firmly at children many of the darker elements, particularly those in Baskerville and Sign of Four, are either stripped out altogether or significantly toned down (though in fairness their version of the hound itself is actually rather scary in its brief appearances) and all of them are marred by terrible, inexpressive animation and a flatness in the voice acting, as though all involved could see how disappointing they were going to turn out and hardly made any effort with them. No directors are credited on any of the four films – perhaps they were simply too embarrassed to put their names to them?
Appropriately, A Study in Scarlet was the first of the set but bizarrely writer John King decides to omit the first section of the story in which Watson meets Holmes for the first time. Instead we’re just plunged straight into the mystery, with the two already sharing lodgings at 221B Baker Street, and we even get to see the lengthy flashback to events in America that removes Holmes and Watson from the plot for a great chunk of the narrative. A Study in Scarlet was never, I must confess, my favourite Holmes story but Conan Doyle managed to make it a lot snappier and more exciting than the turgid plod we get here. The animation is strictly from the 80s made-for-television school, limited and lifeless with poor character design and dull backgrounds, and even O’Toole is unable to inject much excitement into the proceedings.
The desire to adapt The Hound of the Baskervilles is an understandable one – it’s the Holmes’ story that most non-fans will at least be acquainted with if only through the many film and television adaptations and the horror elements are appealing just in themselves. But this version, emasculated of all of the darker moments, is dreadful – there’s no atmosphere, O’Toole, the only reason to sit through these things, is absent from most of the film and there’s absolutely no understanding of place at all. It’s unlikely that anyone involved with the production had ever been to Dartmoor which is, for the most part, presented here as a rather bucolic place and not the dark and dismal wasteland that it should be. Fair play though to whoever it is that’s voicing Barrymore (apart from O’Toole – here credited as “the world’s greatest detective” – no actors are credited with their characters) who affects a fairly decent Yorkshire accent, marking him out from the generic voice performances elsewhere. Whoever is playing the coroner on the other hand seems to have thought he was booked to appear in a comedy…
Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of Four is simply bland. It’s not the most exciting of Holmes adventures to begin with and this version is instantly forgettable. It’s difficult to imagine to imagine any child – and these films are surely aimed at a younger audience – being inspired to pick up a book of Holmes stories having watched this, or indeed any of the others in the series. Much the same is true of Sherlock Holmes and the Valley of Fear, the last in the sequence and one of the less frequently adapted Holmes stories. Like its predecessors it’s flat and uninvolving and does nothing to convey the excitement and complexity that make the Holmes stories such rewarding reads.
There’s a sense that by The Valley of Fear, even Burbank themselves were growing tired of their Conan Doyle adaptations. The following year they returned to Dickens before moving on to adapt literary classics from other authors in the latter half of the 80s. Production was prolific until 1989 when the company suddenly went quiet, re-emerging two yeas later as Burbank Animation Studios under new management. Their MO was pretty much the same as before and they continued cranking out cheap adaptations until at least 2002. Their current website rather disingenuously suggests that it was established in 1991 and seems rather keen to forget these earlier productions though from what we’ve seen of the post-1991 takeover films, they’re that not that much better than the Holmes adaptations. As of March 2019, the site’s “currently in development” page is conspicuously empty.
The EOFFTV Review 