The Adventure of the Creeping Man

"The Creeping Man" starring Jeremy Brent starts with a gorilla being let out of his cage at the zoo. Something heads towards a house, while the dog barks. Edith Presbury faints after seeing a gorilla shadow in her window. The next morning, Professor Presbury is going over his lecture on Darwin with Edith's fiancé, Jack. Edith is told her vision was a "dream" by her father, who leaves her in Jack's care. Edith threatens to call off her engagement, because her fiancé "doubts [her] word." Sherlock Holmes gets a letter from Jack and he writes a note to Watson, telling him to "come at once." Jack visits them, telling him to call off the case. We see two men unloading a crate in an alley. Edith tells her father his fiancée, Alice doesn't like orchids, so he sends her red roses. Holmes and Watson visits the Presbury estate at eleven, right after the Professor has left. Edith tells them her window was ajar, but the door was locked. There is ivy growing under the window. The professor returns abruptly and calls Holmes a "common detective" before kicking him out. The dogs growls at the professor and Holmes notices the dog is chained for "safety." Jack visits Holmes during breakfast and they discuss the "altered" dog, Roy. Holmes tells Jack, Edith is in "grave danger." While the professor is gone, they find "E. Dorak" in his signatures on his desk. Holmes sits in on the professor's lecture. Watson tries to visit Dorak's Emporium's alley, but two men with a knife threaten him to get "out." Inspector Lestrado tells Holmes he is being accused of "unjustified harassment" by the professor. Watson visits Holmes and tells him the Emporium has a "beyond smell able" animal smell. During the night, Jack witness a gorilla shadow on the staircase. Holmes and Watson visit the zoo and Holmes finds hair and a cigarette by the gorilla's cage. Alice calls off her engagement to the professor, telling him he is "too old." Holmes and Watson break into the store and find the missing monkeys. They lock the owners in the cage until the police arrive. Holmes goes over the dates of the packages arriving. They find the professor in a tree, acting like a gorilla, who goes to Alice's window. The dog escapes and attack the professor. Holmes believes the professor was injecting himself with animal extract.



I watched "The Creeping Man" starring Jeremy Brent. I would give the film a rating of three out of four stars. I thought it was good adaptation of the novel, but there were special effect I had issues with. At first, I thought this case seemed like a waste of Holmes's time, but it turned out to be pretty interesting. I though the gorilla shadows on the window and the staircase were very realistic, but could have been made to make more believable. If I saw that in window, I would not faint from the fright of it. I like how the film shows what happened, instead of just talking about the events like Sherlock Holmes does in the books. I thought the dog they got to play Roy was pretty convincing as an angry dog with his fangs. I liked how they showed Holmes sticking his cigarette in his egg at breakfast and in the monkey music box, as well as his investigation of the gorilla cage. The scenes showed Holmes's sense of humor. Some of the actors in the film were too similar looking, so I couldn't tell if I was seeing the same man or different actors in a dark scene. I thought the professor acting as monkey could have been a bit more realistic and terrifying. His acting seemed silly, not threatening in the least. The zoo looked pretty rundown and they could have made the cages grander. They used the same cages for the alley and the zoo, which felt cheap. I thought the scene with the dates of the packages seemed unnecessary. I wished they would have used more close up scenes of the power of the gorillas, and the professor imitating their behavior. I though the scene with the monkey music box was pretty funny at the end.



"The Adventure of the Creeping Man" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle starts with Watson flashing back to receiving a note from Holmes, twenty years ago, telling him, "Come at once if convenient- if inconvenient come all the same." When Watson arrives, Holmes tells Watson he is thinking of writing a monograph "upon the use of dogs in the work of the detective." Holmes wants to write about dogs because he believes " a dog reflects the family life. Snarling people have snarling dogs." Holmes tells Watson, the case of the strange behavior of Professor Presbury and the trouble he is having with his dog, Roy, wanting to bite him. Professor Presbury, a widower with one daughter, became engaged to Alice Morphy, the daughter of his colleague and started acting strangely after their age difference "stood in the way." Holmes has Mr. Bennett, Presbury's assistant and the fiancée of Edith Presbury, tell Watson about Presbury's trip to Prague and the box he brought back. Ever since, he came back he has been acting like a different person and the dog has been attacking him. Edith tells them of waking up to the dog barking and how she saw her father's face in her window, which is on the second floor. Holmes and Watson go to interview the Professor, but he refuses to answer their questions. He does however allow them to search Edith's window. Mr. Bennett tells them of a signature of "Dorak" in the professor's blotting paper. They witness the professor swinging on the tree branches. Holmes sends a telegram to Mercer, and he replies Dorak, is a "suave person, Bohemian, elderly. Keeps large general store." Holmes deduces that "every nine days the professor takes some strong drug which has a passing but highly poisonous effect. His naturally violent nature is intensified by it." He believes Dorak is supplying him the drug. They watch as Presbury comes out one night in his nightgown and acts like a gorilla, climbing trees and the ivy, toward Edith's room and throwing gravel at Roy. The collar becomes loose on the dog and he attacks the professors. Watson has to stop a hemorrhage from his carotid artery caused by the dog's teeth. They find needles in the box containing extract from an anthropoid called a Langur.



The book and film versions of "The Creeping Man" were pretty similar in plot and theme, with a few differences. The film shows us the events where the book just simply has Holmes telling Watson of the events, which I believe is a better way of storytelling. It is always better to see events firsthand rather than hearing about them. Edith Presbury is made to be more a main and three dimensional character in the film, where she has little scenes in the book. Seeing Edith Presbury faint and her strained interactions with Alice, Mr. Bennett, and her father made her more realistic and believable. She just seemed like she was a passing character in the story. In the film, it would have been nice to see Alice and the professor interact more often, than just the break up scene. Monkey and gorilla were added in the film to give us a sense of reality from where the extract was coming from. In the book, the extract is shipped in from another country by a Langur, which is only mentioned once. Having the gorilla shaped shadows instead of the professor's face in the window and staircase, added suspense to the story. Not having the professor exhibit his strange behavior, as acting like the gorilla, until the climax of the film was better, than having them observe him twice before the ending of the book. It made his behavior more shocking at the revelation of the culprit than having us just get used to it as normal. The Bohemian box which held the needles is a relative staple in the story and mentioned well throughout, where as in the film, it doesn't come into play until the final scene and we don't get the back story of where he got it.