The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) on Netflix
PG19761h 53mAdventureComedyCrime
Watson believes cocaine has made his friend Sherlock Holmes delusional about Professor James Moriarty. With Mycroft, he tricks Holmes into traveling to Vienna, into the care of Sigmund Freud.
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- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.6/105,710 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes76%
Trailer
Plot summary
John H. Watson thinks his friend Sherlock Holmes has been unhinged by cocaine, above all in his fixation on the mathematician Professor James Moriarty. Moriarty himself calls on Watson to complain of being hounded, and mentions that he once tutored Holmes and his brother Mycroft until what he calls the tragedy. Told that Holmes never speaks of his boyhood, Moriarty refuses to say more and goes. Watson reads an article on addiction by Sigmund Freud, then brings Mycroft in on a plan: Holmes is tricked into traveling to Vienna and placed under Freud's care. Holmes, who had set a trail of vanilla scent for Moriarty, follows it with Watson and the bloodhound Toby by cab and train, arriving at Freud's office. Once there he acknowledges his habit and begins treatment, with Freud using hypnosis against the withdrawal symptoms.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Composer Bernard Herrmann was hired to write the score for the film but died of a heart attack soon after, and was replaced by John Addison, who had scored Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain after Herrmann's own score for that film was rejected.
- Stephen Sondheim wrote a song for the film, "The Madame's Song", which was later recorded as "I Never Do Anything Twice" on the Side By Side By Sondheim cast recording.
- Writer Nicholas Meyer pushed for Alan Arkin as Freud, and he and director Herbert Ross cast Robert Duvall as Watson "in revolt" against Nigel Bruce's "Colonel Blimp"-type portrayal, wanting to show the intelligence Watson had never been given on screen.
- Writer Nicholas Meyer said he often fought with director Herbert Ross because Ross was too faithful to Meyer's novel, since he believed the script would not be cinematic enough if it stuck too closely to the source.
- Nicholas Meyer wrote the novel behind the film during a Writers Guild of America strike, and discussed how his psychiatrist father and his fandom of Holmes' creator Arthur Conan Doyle fed the idea.
