The Holy Grail of missing footage...

The U.K. DVD of this film only contains the release version - so let us move on.

The U.S. DVD has additional features. There is a piece featuring Christopher Lee which is nice - and another piece featuring the original editor which is quite revealing (although it does go on a bit - and his mic was WAY too far from his mouth).

And there are also some nice stills from the shoot.

But the most important part of the disk is/are the famous "deleted scenes".

The movie was originally planned as a "road-show" movie or "mega-movie". I.e., in the days of PROGRAMMES (an "A" movie, a "B" movie, a short, a cartoon, a news-reel, a serial - plus the usual ads and trailers) they made BIG movies that were the length of a double-bill - with an interval in the middle. Films like "The Great Escape", "The Sound Of Music", "It's A Mad (x4) World" etc.

However, by the time THIS film was completed - late '69 - TV had taken over from film programmes, so Mirish TRUNKATED the movie. It was originally over 3 hours long, with a prologue, four sections and a flashback.

But after pruning, only ONE of the shorter sequences and the MAIN sequence remained. Just 2 hours 5 minutes.

And although they saved ONE of the deleted sections - "The Naked Honeymooners" - some bonehead lost the soundtrack. On this DVD, it is shown, with subtitles glommed from the script.

Ironically, the only thing saved from the rest of the footage WAS the soundtrack! So the guys who compiled this DVD did their best, by using pages from the script showing stage directions - and a number of stills from the original shoot.

People have been looking for a complete print of this film for 20 years (as hinted at in the title of this piece) but to no avail. However, until one surfaces, these features give a good insight into what we are missing.

Also, you get the release print - which is STILL one of the greatest Holmes movies ever made. Hollywood's obsession with remakes will probably result in it being given a new treatment soon. One tip, Hollywood - Alan Rickman.