This is Holmes Christmas story, where a thief steals a priceless stone from a rich woman, and, to avoid suspicion, feeds it to a goose in a pen. Unfortunately, that goose falls into the hands of a man with a police record and he is arrested. This is pretty much true to the original story and moves quickly. I enjoyed Holmes' occasional outbursts.
3 Reviews
Last episode for Cushing's Holmes
kevinolzak6 May 2009
The Christmas broadcast of "The Blue Carbuncle" (Dec. 23, 1968, completed on the 16th) brought this 16 episode season of Holmes adventures to a close, with the detective trying to avoid recovering the title object, a stolen gem belonging to Lady Morcar (Madge Ryan), until it practically falls in his lap after being swallowed by an edible goose: "it laid an egg after it was dead!" The holiday festivities feature prominently in the story, providing the motivation for the rather surprising denouement, which finds our fabled detective 'compounding a felony' for a good cause. As always, Peter Cushing is a delight, in his largest role in any of the surviving episodes; his performances hardly showed any signs of the hurried schedule rejected by previous Holmes Douglas Wilmer. Alas, he would go on to play the role only once more in the 1984 telefilm "The Masks of Death," opposite Sir John Mills (his co-star in 1954's "The End of the Affair") as a warm and serious Watson.
The exoticism of this old London is funny
Dr_Coulardeau18 August 2010
Warning: Spoilers
The blue Carbuncle is another story entirely. Here Conan Doyle, Sir if you please Sir thank you, is settling his accounts with the aristocracy and at the same time with some mediocre intellectual, or what he calls an intellectual. The noble lady is a guano pack of macaroni in the middle of a three thousand old China service dish from some Chinese Emperor. She stinks and radiates high heavens her down-treading and forbidding hatred for those who are not at her entire service without asking the slightest question and for her no one is worth not serving her. Every instant of hers and her blue carbuncle, that was recently laid as an egg by a big Christmas poultry, become on the screen poisonous arrows thrown at this blind aristocracy that is not even selfish since for them there is no one else but them. How can they in anyway look down upon people who do not exist. Then you have the top servants of these aristocrats managing the service institution these noble people haunt. Those are selfish because they want to appropriate something that is not theirs but by having some innocent accused in their place. With these Sherlock Holmes is obnoxious with condescension. And finally there are the little honest ones Sherlock Holmes likes so much and the reward for the carbuncle will go to one of these though this reward is worth what they earn in ten or fifteen years. And they will go on working like every other day because working is their life and money is more a hindrance than a comfort.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
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