Returning to a role he essayed so memorably in Hammer's 1959 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Peter Cushing is a commanding Sherlock Holmes: a man of few words, often attentive only to inner voices, his steely integrity matched by an uncompromising sternness. John Mills is an able, affable Dr Watson and the pair of them deserve a story rather better than John Elder's shaggy dog tale about a German prince missing in England shortly before the Great War. Whenever Cushing's ascetic detective is centre-stage, all is not lost, though you may feel compelled to turn down Malcolm Williamson's somewhat intrusive score.

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