Sherlock Holmes Screen Spotlight: Gene Wilder’s Parody ‘The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother’
Gene Wilder wrote, directed and starred in the amiable parody The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, playing an overconfident Holmes who’s always stuck in his brother’s shadow.
It’s common knowledge that Sherlock Holmes has a brother — his name is Mycroft, and he’s often depicted as smarter and savvier than his single-minded detective sibling. Gene Wilder’s 1975 film The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother isn’t about Mycroft, though. It’s about a newly invented younger brother to Sherlock and Mycroft named Sigerson, whose designation as the more intelligent Holmes exists entirely within his own mind.
In The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, Wilder does for Sherlock Holmes what he and collaborator Mel Brooks did for Victor Frankenstein in the previous year’s hit Young Frankenstein. Played by Douglas Wilmer, Sherlock himself shows up relatively briefly, alongside the trusty Dr. John Watson (Thorley Walters). But Sigerson is the main character, and like Wilder’s Frederick Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein, he’s both resentful and envious of the reputation associated with his famous name.
Sigerson derisively refers to Sherlock as “sheer luck” and fancies himself the better detective, and much of the comedy arises from his general ineptitude. Not that anyone in this movie, including Sherlock himself, seems to really know what they’re doing, but Sigerson is inordinately confident about every wrong decision he makes. Somehow, his blunders are exactly what’s needed to solve a highly sensitive case.
When Sherlock is hired to recover a classified document stolen from Queen Victoria, he determines that he’s too high-profile to handle such a delicate case, and he needs someone lesser-known to fly under the radar. Thus he enlists Scotland Yard Sgt. Orville Stanley Sacker (Marty Feldman) to pass the information along to Sigerson, while Sherlock and Watson keep watch from a distance.
Wilmer and Walters previously played their respective roles in other non-comedic Holmes productions, but they get to have a little fun here, as Sherlock and Watson dress in drag and later disguise themselves as street musicians. The primary focus remains on Sigerson and the oddball characters he encounters, including Sacker (who has “photographic hearing” that functions like a record player) and music hall singer Jenny Hill (Madeline Kahn), who’s caught up in the middle of the case.
Writer-director Wilder recruits his Young Frankenstein co-stars Feldman and Kahn for a reunion that includes similarly wacky musical numbers and plenty of puns, although The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother isn’t as dense with jokes as a Brooks film. It’s also less rigorous a pastiche, aiming for general silliness rather than mimicking any specific Holmes movie. Wilder, Feldman and Kahn clearly work well together, and they throw themselves into their ridiculous roles, making these absurd characters easy to root for.
There isn’t much to the mystery here, and Sigerson probably couldn’t solve a complex case anyway. The villains include Leo McKern as a hyperactive version of Professor Moriarty (who amusingly has trouble with basic math) and Dom DeLuise as a loan shark who is also an opera singer. They’re more laughable than threatening, although Wilder stages a couple of surprisingly effective fight scenes, including a battle atop moving horse-drawn carriages and a fencing-based final showdown between Sigerson and Moriarty.
The main appeal of The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother is its exuberant, amiable tone, which demonstrates Wilder’s clear affection for Holmes lore along with his affinity for goofy humor. That humor never undermines the legacy of Sherlock Holmes or creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, instead finding an adjacent outlet for a gentle, entertaining takedown of the pompous complexity of classic detective stories.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for the Boston Globe, Vulture, Tom’s Guide, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.