Bite Me!

Lawrence Talbot: "In half an hour the full moon will rise, and I'll turn into a wolf."

Lou Costello: "You and twenty million other guys."

Thus spake Lou Costello in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, 62 years ago, the last movie with the character of Lawrence Talbot, aka, The Wolfman, in it, until now that is, because Universal has given us a brand new remake of Curt Siodmak's beloved original 1941 horror fantasy classic, The Wolfman. I saw it this afternoon, and ...

I ...

LOVED IT!

To my amazement, Benicio Del Lobo made a perfectly good Larry Talbot, and let's face it: he's a much better actor than Creighton Chaney. No Oscars on Creighton's shelf. Not even a nomination. And it's not like you have to be good-looking to play a wolfman, which is fortunate, because he isn't.

I'd been wondering how Del Lobo could play a Welshman, but Universal fixed that problem. They moved the setting for the movie out of Wales and into England. Yes, Benicio Del Lobo is far more believable as an Englishman than as a Welshman. Actually, they did just what Curt Siodmak did when faced with the task of figuring out how Creighton Chaney, born in Oklahoma, could play a Welsh lord. They had him playing a prodigal son who left home young and had been living in America, where, in the new version, he's become a star-level Shakespearean actor. (Siodmak did not have Creighton play Larry Talbot as a star-level Shakespearean actor because, well, he'd have been laughed off the screen.) As it is, we see Del Lobo playing Hamlet, but wisely don't hear him. Che Hamlet would seem a tad odd on the London stage.

The movie has everything you could look for in a classic monster movie: a spooky, always-foggy forest, creepy moors, a village full of folks who hang out at the pub all day, just waiting for any excuse to become a torch-bearing mob (led by a rabble-rousing priest who habitually encourages mob rule!), and and a dark and sinister huge haunted castle, full of dust, cobwebs, stuffed animal heads, old secrets, a sinister Indian manservant, and clearly no maid, because the place hasn't been swept or dusted in centuries. Castle Dracula had better housekeeping, and I should know, as I not only lived there for a while, but I inherited it when Count Vlad Tepes died.

But before Universal ever made The Wolfman, they made a first attempt at a werewolf movie in 1935, with Werewolf of London. This new movie plays homage to that picture as well, by bringing Larry Talbot to London briefly, so he can run riot, going on a marvelous, funny-scary rampage in the very heart of the British capital itself.

This photo does however, reveal the movie's one glaring error. (If factual errors matter in a movie about a man who sprouts hair and fangs every month on the full moon, hair and fangs which, in the morning, retreat back into his head!) A caption at the start of the movie states categorically that the story takes place in 1891. But in this picture you can plainly see Tower Bridge, which wasn't finished until 1894. In 1891, they might have started construction, but this movie shows it fully completed, three years too early. (At that, it's better than Tim Burton's unfortunate film of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which has Sweeney sail into London in the 1840s past Tower Bridge, up and done, 50 years before it was built. Doesn't anyone do any research on films any more?)

And I have to give them credit. In this movie, the moon is only full one night a month. In the old wolfman movies the moon was usually full for an average of three nights a month, which would require the moon to halt in its orbit for three days, which would result in it crashing into the earth, which would be a catastrophe next to which, a little thing like a wolfman would be small pickings.

I must add that the decision to set this film in 1891, which is actually well before when the original movie is set (in so far as the period of the original The Wolfman can be detected. The car and the fashions suggest 1941, while the gypsy wagons, the lack of telephones, and the general air of ignorance suggests some time earlier. And if it is 1941 Wales, where's World War II?), helps with the atmosphere and the whole Universal-Hammer classic monster movie look and vibe. How boring it would have been to have updated it to the present. Talbot Castle looks so much spookier all lit with candles (None of this newfangled gaslight for weird old Sir John Talbot. Candles only!)

The make up devised for The Wolfman by Rick Baker honors Jack Pierce's original make-up design. Baker won an Oscar 30 years ago for making David Naughton into a werewolf for John Landis's An American Werewolf in London, and this is a much better movie. (It also turned David into an instant has-been. Can you name even one other movie he starred in, before or since?) Baker took his medicine too. He plays a small cameo role as the Wolfman's first victim.

And what would The Wolfman be without the wizened old gypsy crone Maleva? You gotta have her, and they do, played by Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin's formerly-beautiful daughter, now reduced to playing old crones, and having fun doing it. She may not be as camp as Maria Ouspenskaya (Who, in the original The Wolfman, was supposed to be Bela Lugosi's mother, despite being five years younger than Lugosi. To her credit, she doesn't look it.), but Geraldine's still fun.

Even the famous silver-wolf's-head cane is back, if less important to the plot this time around. It's just as scary-looking too. No pentagrams in the new film though.

And yes, Siodmak's famous spot of doggerel is in the movie too. After all, you have to have:

Even a man who is pure in heart,

And says his prayers by night,

May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms,

And the Autumn moon is bright.


And the Wolfman still has a taste for pretty Gwen Conliffe, although as played (wonderfully I might add. If she'd played Irene Adler in the wretched new Sherlock Holmes film, it would have been better, though still lousy.) by Emily Blunt, she's no shrinking screamer.

Of course Sir Anthony Hopkins, now a seasoned veteran of horror movies, from Bram Stoker's Dracula to the Hannibal Lector movies, where he became one of the few actors ever to win an Oscar for playing a monster, steals every scene he's in, in Claude Rains's old role of Sir John Talbot. Of all the characters common to both films, Sir John is the most changed. He is nothing like the hard-headed rationalist Claude Rains played. In fact, he has more than a whiff of Dr. Lector to him.


The murders are shot with wit. Are they gory? Well yes, but the muted spooky colors they are using don't have bright reds that pop in your face, and you can enjoy the wit. There's a death in quicksand, not because of the quicksand, but occurring in it, which made me laugh twice at the wit. There's a hand still firing a gun when its arm is no longer attached to anything. Sir Anthony Sher (Not to be confused with Sir Anthony Hopkins. Lots of "Sir Anthonys" in this film), who plays an over-the-top evil insane asylum director who learned healthcare for the mentally-ill from Dr. DeSade, has a hilarious scene of pontificating pompously about Larry's "delusions" while not noticing the man turning into a wolfman behind him, nor the horror of his terrified audience. When he gets his, everyone cheers. My favorite witty shot was a close-up of dirty fingers playing the piano, and leaving bloody fingerprints on the ivory keys.

Of course, not everyone loves the new film. The attention-span deprived critic who reviewed it for Entertainment Weekly found the first half of the film slow-moving. What an idiot, who doesn't understand building mood and suspense. I loved every second of the movie.


And then there is the brain-addled tween who posted the following email on Universal Picture's website. (I have left her spelling, grammar, and phrasing as is):

"This movie was a complete waste and I feel that it offends ALL Twilight Fans around the world, that including myself. For one, it was a COMPLETE remaking of the Wolf Pack from the Twilight Saga: New Moon. It gives the werewolves a bad name and makes them look like some deformed mutation of a rabid dog. I actually started to like werewolves after seeing Jacob Black and all his awesomeness on the big screen at the movies. That was until I saw your crappy remake of what you call to be a 'were wolf'. I don't see how you live with yourself for making it the way you did. If I made this movie, I would be ashamed to even admit that I owned it. How can a werewolf be killed with a silver bullet? Better yet, have you saw the transformation of the man that is 'supposed' to be the wolf? He sits in some chair and his entire body turns in to some mutated freak. If you would watch the transformation of Jacob Black, (Taylor Lautner) he doesn't come close to looking as fake, cheap and or mutated as the wolf man. You tell me, who looks to be the better werewolf. Your stupid Wolf Movie didn't even make the top Movie for the charts; Valentines Day WITH TAYLOR FREAKIN' LAUTNER DID! Get that this is MY oppinion and I felt I wanted to express it because I saw that your email was on your site. I wanted to let you know this is what i thought of the wolf man that sucks. - Kayla"

There is something awesome and magnificent about stupidity and ignorance on that gigantic a level, not to mention Kayla's appalling taste. She must think that Mormon moron who wrote the atrocious Twilight books invented werewolves. She is clearly unaware that the new movie is a remake of an old movie. But to me, the gem is "It gives the werewolves a bad name." This stupid little fool is giving morons a bad name. Why am I convinced that Kayla is fat, and not a day over 13?

I was hanging out with werewolves long before Kayla was born. Is it my fault that my mere presence makes wolves out of any straight man?

Of course, I shot a cameo for the new The Wolfman, playing Benicio's glamorous stage co-star, but they cut me from the finished film. Something about "too many monsters for one movie." Also, there were some complaints that I was scaring the werewolves.


I just hope the picture is enough of a success that Universal will go ahead and greenlight the inevitable sequel: a remake of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, though the original would be close to impossible to touch.


You can read more about the original The Wolfman and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman in Little Dougie's silly little book: The Q Guide to Classic Monster Movies. Meanwhile, for more first-rate entertainment, Lost continues to be amazing in its final season.


And I'm still recapping Survivor over at The Huffington Post. The most recent column is titled Never Wear Feathers in Your Hair. There will be a new one next Friday, and on Monday, look for my annual review of the Oscar Awards Ceremonies there as well.

Until then, cheers darlings.

Happy Barry Day.

It's Barry Humphries's birthday, one of my favorite days of the year, when we celebrate the birth of one of my favorite people, a man who has brought more laughter and joy into the world than just about anybody else. Make no mistake; Barry is a comic genius every bit the equal of W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton,and all The Marx Brothers combined.

Here he is 9 years ago in Los Angeles with Little Dougie, to whom he has always shown more kindness than I bother with. That's right, he's even nice to people whom you don't need to be nice to. (What a waste of niceness.) Incidentally, the big yellow book Barry is holding is a copy of the manuscript of my autobiography, My Lush Life, which he was taking to Dame Edna to read for the lovely cover blurb she wrote for it.

When he was here in Los Angeles last June, Barry told me he had stopped having birthdays, and was now no longer aging. I lived that way for years, until I noticed that while I was staying young in person, I was aging in my movies. Every year my image in my old films got older and older, and looking ever more debauched and dissolute. I blame our cinematographer at PMS Films, Dorian Gray. Once I started letting my real self age, my movie images returned to their original youthful freshness.

Anyway, though Barry was born in 1934, he's not the age that would imply. In fact, he may even be younger than Little Dougie now, who is staring 60 in the face in just a little over three months. So while this adorable picture of Little Barry was shot back around the time Bride of Frankenstein was shot, Barry is still terribly youthful and energetic, so much so that he is, at this moment, rehearsing a new stage show, to open later this month on Broadway, unfortunately co-starring Michael Feinstein, an overpraised wanna-be whom Barry needs about as much as a snake needs a shoehorn.

We should make Barry's birthday a national holiday, when we celebrate comedy in all it's glory, because face it, after sex and booze, comedy is what makes Life worth living. We probably won't though, since Barry is not an American, more's the pity for us.

Technically, he's not a Brit, or as he calls them, Poms, either; he's Australian, but as that's considered part of the "British Empire" (a formerly-worldwide, now-defunct organization of conquest and racism), the Brits felt able to confer upon him the honor Commander of the British Empire, so he is now Dr. Barry John Humphries CBE. In an email he sent me following the announcement of this honor, he wrote: "It was a shock, but a very nice one, and my fellow Australians are now treating me with a new and grudging respect which I have no doubt will turn to a most un-republican adulation when, in a couple of years, the Queen reveals her plans for my further ennoblement."

But Barry is not a prophet without honor in his own country. He was recently honored on Australian postage stamps, seen here cancelled in Moonee Ponds, a Melbourne suburb which is Dame Edna's home town.

As part of that same celebration of Dame Edna's Golden Anniversary, Dame Edna was put on a 50 cent Australian coin. We're all in this to make money, but Barry has become money. And just like me, he has to share his money with a Queen, as you can see on Barry's coin's obverse side. No matter how many times you flip this coin, it always comes up "heads."

So celebrate Barry with some comedy today or tonight. It would be nice if it were some of Barry's, if you have one or more of his DVDs lying about. (I certainly do), but if you don't, try an old WC Fields movie, or a Marx Brothers picture, or even a network repeat of Modern Family, just please, actual comedy, not crap with Will Ferrall or Adam Sandler, or something vulgar from Judd Apatow's factory, and for Heaven's sake, not the Winter Olympics, although there's not much danger of that. Whoever watches the Winter Olympics? (Actually, judging by the weather in Vancouver, it's practically The Summer Olympics anyway. The way things are going, they're going to be skiing on dirt.)


Speaking about aging, Barry and I may be ageless, but my public, I am informed, are not. Here's one of my most ardent long-time fans perusing My Lush Life, a great way to spend your life, or even your afterlife. His eyes aren't so good anymore, which is the reason for the magnifying glass. I haven't brought out a large print edition.

The pennies trickle in. Little Dougie takes his cut. (Somehow, although all he did was take down my words, he got his name put on the cover, title page, and copyright page, as the author. Imagine!) And if he isn't bad enough, here's my agent, down in my money bin, helping himself to his cut, and then some.

Well, how much do I need? As long as I have enough to pay my chauffeur Skelator to drive me to a liquor store, and can pay for my little beverages, I'm fine. Especially if, when I get home, and Eduardo, my gardener's son, has finished pruning my bush, I can enjoy some comedy from Barry Humphries: Life is good.


Check out my new posting on Survivor: Heroes vs Villains: Hi Y'all over on The Huffington Post.

Till then, Cheers darlings.

I Lost My Heart on LOST!

It's St. Valentino's Day, although I knew Rudy, and believe me, he was no saint. He also wasn't Rudy Nureyev, so please ignore Ken Russell's silly movie about him.

There's no mystery about whom my Valentine is this year. If you check out my Huffington Post column: Survivor: Heroes vs Villains: Sugar's Lumps, you will quickly perceive that "Hero" James Clement is my Valentine this year. He's dreamy!

If you were to look at my notes for that column (which would involve breaking into my home. Really not worth it. And my Great Dane Baskerville might eat you, or hump you. He weighs over 200 pounds. When he wants to hump you, you get humped! What a good doggie!), you'd find scribbled in the margins: "Mrs. James Clement, James and Tallulah Clement, Tallulah Clytemnestra Morehead, Knight, Thalberg Tepes Karloff Towers Herkert Borgnine Bronze Rockwood Van Owen Clement." (I hope I haven't left off too many last names. If you were ever married to me, and your last name was absent from that list, shoot me an email.)

Little Dougie is on this "Facebook" gadget, whatever that is. I have my face on a book too, namely my book (My Lush Life), but Little Dougie tells me it's some sort of Internet thingie, and for Valentino's Day, all those sappy people in relationships, in order to keep rubbing everyone else's nose in their being shackled together and desperately pretending that it's bliss, insisted that everyone put up profile shots of themselves with their "partners," like everyone on earth follows their boring life pattern. Why can't they just go to dinner somewhere and annoy waiters? Waiters at least get a tip for putting up with them. Anyway, Little Dougie put up this picture for his Valentine's Facebook profile photo, and then politely suggested that the lovey-dovey couples (in other words, couples where the woman, or the controlling-bottom, is still buying the bullshit the man, or the butt-whipped top, is shoveling out to keep her off of his back) go be pretend-happy somewhere else.

Of course, Hugh is from Australia, so Little Dougie had to do some compensating for the Northern Hemisphere. Here's how the picture looked originally.

Frankly, this day shouldn't belong to Rudolph Valentino at all. It's the birthday of Jack Benny and Thelma Ritter, who are far more worth celebrating than the sham which is "Romantic Love," but which is really just a pitch to sell greeting cards, candy, and flowers, and to keep women in firm control of their "partners" (i.e., their de-balled men.). So let's hear it for Thelma & Jack. (It's also the birthday of our friend Little Kent Levine, who turned 60 today, barely half my age, but it's the age staring Little Dougie in the face come his birthday in May. See how Kent feels about it by a trip over to his flog: By Kent Levine.)

My darling James Clement is a gravedigger, a profession he chose because he likes working with people. I know most people think of Death as a bad thing, but if it means meeting James, well, it can't be all bad. He was certainly worth a quick trip to nearby Samoa.

Sadly, visiting the Heroes camp to fondle James also meant running into the insufferable Cirie. I hope that my columns on The Huffington Post will be soon chronicling her ouster. Check them out weekly to find out.

Fortunately, a visit to the Heroes camp does not risk running into Sore-Loser Russell, whose ego is larger than K-Fed's chins, or Ex-Coach Wade, whom I have dubbed "Voldetool," the most full-of-himself egotistical gasbag on earth. It's quite a crew, but why run on about them here, when I'm running on about them there?

Frankly, for viewing pleasure, there's a different TV show about folks marooned on a South Pacific island that I vastly prefer, although unfortunately, this is its last season.

Everyone of taste loves Lost. Even The Simpsons.

You see, last season they set off an H-Bomb (like you do) to reset time and undo the first five seasons of the show. This plot ploy inspired NBC to set off their own H-Bomb, to try to undo The Jay Leno Show, but it didn't work, because The Jay Leno Show was a bigger bomb than the H-Bomb.


Anyway, it did reset history, but it also didn't, so all the castaways of Oceanic Flight 815 have landed safely in Los Angeles, but they're also still on The Island in 2007, where The Smoke Monster is disguised as Locke, who is dead - well - dead-ish. There the castaways are hiding in a Masonic temple, where they've met Fu Manchu, a doctor who treats infections by giving you death pills (not much repeat business, I imagine), Hurley is now the leader, Jacob is dead, except for when he isn't, and does macarme tapistries under a big statue that isn't there anymore (Sayid was bothered by the fact that the statue only had four toes. You see, it's a statue of the Egyptian goddess Tawaret, who apparently usually has three toes.), and Richard Alpert still won't give me the name of his plastic surgeon. Even Dorian Gray was saying, "Doesn't that man ever age?" So, all that's clear, isn't it?

They've promised to end the show this season, answering all our questions. That means look for the Harlem Globe-Trotters to show up in the final episode.


We seem to have two mutually-exclusive storylines going on. How can they reconcile this without the help of Doctor Who? Wait! That must be it! The Doctor just regenerated. Maybe he's The Smoke Monster! My brain hurts. I need vodka. Fortunately, I have some. Cheers.


I have dropped in on The Island from time to time. I get around. Albeit, that hobbit got a bit startled to find me peering into his porthole. Or was it his starboard hole? Well, one of his holes anyway. It was towards the rear; maybe it was his aft-hole. (It was, after all, on his poop-deck.)

Here I am trekking all over the place with The Locke Monster, Ben, Sun, Richard Alpert, and some Others. I was trying to get Richard to give me his surgeon's name, but all he would say was: "All your questions will be answered by the finale." I stuck close to Sun because we were both looking for the same thing: Gin, though she doesn't know how to spell it. No wonder the skipper was so puzzled. Bob Denver was just alarmed to see me, as we haven't run into each other since we toured together in A Streetcar Named Desire. Bob was the sexiest Stanley Kowalski anyone had ever seen - that afternoon.

I'm an old hand at hanging out on Mysterious Islands. I was billed as "The Panther Woman" in this 1933 thriller by error. The publicist, when he saw me, was trying to say "Pants her!" the perv. (Like I ever needed to be coerced into dropping my panties.) But the silly man had a terrible lisp.

Anyway, I first got invited to The Island back in 1977, when Sawyer was "LeFleur" of The Dharma Initiative. He reads a lot, and a copy of my award-dodging autobiography fell through a time-wormhole (They have them all over the place on that island. Time wormholes, not copies of my book.), much the same way he did, and so he read my book 23 years before I wrote it, and got totally turned on by me (The usual response) and invited me to visit him on The Island, though he asked me not to mention the invitation to someone named "Juliette." Darling, I've been avoiding wives and girl friends since before Richard Alpert was the age he looks. Le Fleur was welcome to whip out his stamen and pollinate me anytime!

The visit had one labor-saving aspect that helped out Little Dougie and myself quite a bit when it came time actually to write my book. I simply took Sawyer's copy (though not until he'd finished reading it, of course) back home with me, and when it came time to write it ten years ago, we didn't have to. It was already written. I just handed it to my publishers and they printed it. In fact, it was never written at all. It came into existence entirely through time paradox. H.G. Wells, who wrote my 1933 island movie, did the same thing. He never wrote any of his books. He just traveled ahead in his time machine, bought some cheap paperbacks of his complete works, took them back to Victorian London, and released each one on the date on the copyright page.


Time Paradoxes: what time-savers they are. With no writing to do, I had plenty of time to spend just shagging Sawyer's brains out.

Like you wouldn't do the same thing. I'm hoping they hit another good time paradox on Lost this season, so I can skip ahead and snag my future Huffington Post Survivor-recap columns. Then, instead of spending every Thursday night sitting here, watching that tiresome show, and touching myself inappropriately every time James is shirtless, I could devote that time to drinking and shagging. Then every day is Valentino's Day!

Cheers darlings.

Sheerhunk Holmos

Sherlock Holmes had to be called in recently, on The Case of the Missing Movie Star. Where was Tallulah Morehead? Why hasn't she made any flog entries here in over a month and a half? As usual, I hadn't a clue. So I consulted the world-famous Baker Street Sleuth to help me track me down. "Where the hell am I?" I begged him to find out.

The trail began at The Huffington Post, of course, where I had been flogging instead of here merely because of the vastly-larger readership. (No kidding. Those people are huge!) What did Holmes find? Dozens of dead bodies! Over 100 corpses, all neatly laid out in my most-recent HuffPo column: Dead folks 2009: The Missed and the Not-Missed, which, if you haven't read it, you can by clicking on its title.

But where was I now? Drinking at Morehead Heights? Substituting at The Polanski Day Care Center in Paris? That Island on Lost, stuck in 1977, like Jermaine Jackson? No, it turned out I was all tied up at Disneyland, where Sherlock's old friend Mickey, aka, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, had tried to get me out of the way using a ploy lifted from The Perils of Pauly Shore. Fortunately Sherlock was able to rescue me in the nick of time. As it happens, those trains never go much over two miles an hour.

I had been jerked around a lot, through time and space, first by The Doctor, as the 10th Doctor came to an end, first by drinking The Waters of Mars, which I could have told him was bad idea. Water is always a lousy drink. I'm much more interested in The Vodka of Mars. Then came their big two-parter, The End of Time. Well any actress who can't bring time to a standstill isn't worth the pay of her plastic surgeon. What the hell was Claire Bloom doing on Doctor Who? I love her and I love the show, but who's next? Peter O'Toole? And who knew James Bond was actually Rassilon of the Time Lords? So that's why James Bond keeps changing his faces. He's regenerating, and his current regeneration as Daniel Craig is one of his best.

Well, Captain Jack Harkness can yank me around any time.

Of course, when it comes to being yanked about through time, little can compare with Lost. I strongly suspect that The Island is just a huge Tardis, and that Jacob is a Time Lord too. Watch. When Season 6 begins, you'll find Jacob recovering from being murdered by Ben Linus by regenerating into someone brand new. Mark my words.

Anyway, I was invited to attend The Lost Supper, held on a lovely wing from Ajira Flight 316. It was in celebration of The Risen Locke, although, as our mutual friend Jeff Swanson has pointed out, he didn't even bother with doing the Big Arms. And besides, is The Risen Locke anyone to celebrate? Anyway, visiting The Island for the supper had some very weird effects on me, as a close examination of this photo reveals.

Frankly, I'd have preferred one of my all-male private pool parties, but there was another mystery still to solve.

There was a big-release movie this Christmas, unfortunately made by Guy Ritchie rather than by someone good, but it was see it or get stuck joining James Cameron in the middle of his over-produced 3-D acid trip, already in progress. Thank you, no.


Ritchie's film was deceptively titled Sherlock Holmes, and sure enough, it was a very deep mystery. The mystery was, where the hell was Sherlock Holmes? How can you title a movie "Sherlock Holmes" and then not even have Sherlock Holmes in it?

Oh, there was a character they called Sherlock Holmes, but he wasn't Sherlock Holmes, not by a long shot. In fact, it was Ironman. I can only surmise that Professor Moriarty was hot on Sherlock's trail, so he got Ironman and Alfie to pretend, quite unconvincingly, to be himself and Dr. Watson. I mean honestly. Ironman is Robert Downey Jr, who couldn't possibly play Sherlock Holmes, as he is too short, too weird, and too American. And as for Jude Law as Dr. Watson: I adore young Law, but a hot, hunky Watson is ridiculous, although at least he is English.

Obviously, there was only one man to solve The Case of the Absent Sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. I consulted with Sherlock at Baker Street, and off he went, hot on his own trail. Here he is, searching a poster advertising the bogus film for a clue as to what became of himself, but there was no trace of Sherlock Holmes to be found there.

Many have been the actors to have played Sherlock Holmes, but Robert Downey Jr is not one of them. Whoever the hell he was playing, some sort of drugged-out cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones, he wasn't Sherlock Holmes. Just playing him gay isn't enough.

Who do we see here? Well, there is Downey and Law, playing whoever the hell they were playing, and darling Peter Cushing and Nigel Stock as Holmes and Watson in a charming old BBC Holmes series from 1968, the remains of which were just released on DVD, and which is vastly better than this Guy Ritchie trash.


Then we have Jeremy Brett and David Burke from the famed Granada TV series from the 1980s. That was Sherlock Holmes done to perfection, done so well in fact, that I can't think why anyone would even bother to do him again.

Then we have Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Basil is often considered the definitive Sherlock Holmes, and he was certainly perfect in the role. Nigel Bruce was great fun in his comic interpretation of Watson, although he made Watson into such a notoriously dim bulb that you wondered how he ever got through medical school. The lingering result of Bruce's portrayal is that now every time someone plays Watson as a normal, reasonably intelligent man, it's considered a revolutionary new approach to the part. It's the great cliche of Holmes dramatization criticism, declaring each new Watson to "finally" be being played as intelligent. It's a pretty vapid comment to make, and every review of this Sherlock Holmes film repeats it, as though Jude Law were the first actor to play Watson as not an idiot, rather than about the 30th. It's been over 60 years since Nigel Bruce last played Watson, but this unimaginative comment is still made anew each and every time. Oh and by the way, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is recorded on film in 1930 calling Watson "rather stupid." Just saying.

The first two Rathbone Holmes movies, made at 20th Century Fox, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, are pretty good. The remaining 12 Holmes films with Rathbone & Bruce, made at Universal, are all pretty bad. Not as bad as Guy Ritchie's movie, but pretty bad.

Then we have Sir Christopher Lee as Holmes and Patrick MacNee as Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes: The Golden Years, two TV movies about a geriatric Holmes solving crimes in his retirement. They are fun, but flawed, and no one could accuse Sir Christopher of being too short or too American. Lee has also played Mycroft Holmes and Sir Henry Baskerville. He may have played the Hound of Hell as well.

And then we have - Wait a minute! Little Dougie, is that you? What are you doing up there? And who is that playing your Watson? Your old partner John Fugiel? Oh. I never met John, who died in 1987, but I'm told he was a wonderfully funny man. But Dougie, Sherlock Holmes never had a beard, other than Irene Adler, that is.

Of course, Peter Cushing and Sir Christopher Lee were often partners-in-film, so their both playing Sherlock Holmes must have been quite a conflict. Here we see Lee putting an end to this conflict the direct way.

So what did Guy Ritchie, a man with taste so bad he actually was married to Madonna for a while, decide Sherlock Holmes should be? A drugged-out American muscle hunk and action hero, whose idea of unwinding was a slow-motion boxing bout at Victorian Fight Club. Now Holmes in the stories did box, but Dr. Watson never wrote about Victorian Fight Club. "You see, my dear Watson, the first rule of Victorian Fight Club is you don't write about Victorian Fight Club."


Why oh why did Basil Rathbone never show the abs?

So I was off to foggy London - or is it faggy London? - well, whenever I'm in London, it's always foggy, or I am - to try and track down Sherlock Holmes.

So, eliminating Lee and Downey, what are left of The Stately Holmes of England?

Little Dougie, why are you still there? Again with the beard, and may I remind you that you're every bit as American as Robert Downey Jr? What do you have in common with Sherlock Holmes? Well let's see. You both have inflated opinions of your own intelligence. Check. You've both used cocaine in the long-ago past, albeit you never injected it. Check. And you're both gay. Check. That's pretty much about it. Hmmm. Maybe you would be better in the role than Downey. Hard to be worse.


Understand, I'm not saying Downey is not a good actor. He's a terrific actor. He's just horribly miscast as Sherlock Holmes. After all, Basil Rathbone would have been a lousy Ironman. And I wouldn't have wanted to see Peter Cushing's Chaplin.


What's this photo? Oh good grief. It's Little Dougie out on Dartmoor in Devonshire, the setting for The Hound of the Baskervilles, hunting for the Hound of Hell himself. Dougie, that case was solved over a century ago. Move on.

Jeremy Brett, the best Sherlock Holmes ever, had something else in common with Sir Christopher Lee: they both played Count Dracula. Little Dougie actually saw Brett play Dracula onstage at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles a bit over 30 years ago. He says he was very good.

I avoid dramatic interpretations of Dracula myself. It's simple really. Count Dracula is actually just a mild fictionalization, libelization really, of Vlad Tepes, my third ex-husband, the most-tragic love of my love. The memories are far too painful for me to bear. We were wed but for a single night. I --- I --- Never mind. I can't go on.

The novels, movies, and plays about Dracula always portray my darling as some sort of literally-bloodthirsty monster. What nonsense! He was a caring, loving, bloodthirsty monster. Whenever I think of him, I can only wonder what our unlife would have been like if his fatal sun allergy hadn't burned him up the morning after we wed. He was so much more than just the World's Oldest Mouseketeer.

I tried giving Brett some tips on how to play Vlad more accurately and fairly, but Jeremy could be a tad - well - let's say self-sufficient. But he could flap that big cape so well, he got a severe case of Dracula Elbow.

Basil Rathbone never played Dracula, but like another great Holmes, Peter Cushing, he did play Dr. Frankenstein. In his case, Baron Wolf Von Frankenstein of Universal's Son of Frankenstein, shot at the exact same time (no joke) as his first Holmes movie, so he was playing Sherlock Holmes at 20th Century Fox one day, and stitching together my fifth ex-husband, Boris Karloff, over at Universal the next. With a work schedule like that, the man needed to unwind. Fortunately, for a man who figured out how to bestow Life artificially, inventing television early was a snap.

Sadly for fans of Sherlock Holmes, this wretched new movie has made a pile of money, and Robert Downey Jr. is clearing his schedule to further his bogus characterization of "Sherlock Holmes" in another terrible movie. We can only hope it will end like this last picture, with Downey's fake Holmes killed off, so we can return to the actual Sherlock Holmes that Doyle wrote about, that these other actors played so well (except Little Dougie), and which has worked so very, very well for 130 years. Maybe then, Guy Ritchie will stop fixing what isn't broken. Guy is welcome to jump into the Riechenbach Falls himself. He's done Holmes more harm than Professor Moriarty ever did.


Up what canal should Guy Ritchie stuff his lousy new movie?


Alimentary, my dear Watson.

Cheers darlings. (Look for my review of The Golden Glob Awards in The Huff Po the morning after the show.)