The Crucifer of Blood is a 1991 TV movie based on the play of the same name by Paul Giovanni, who wrote the screenplay along with Fraser C. Heston, who directed the picture. The play and film are an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four.
Charlton Heston, the father of Fraser Heston, plays Sherlock Holmes, a role he first played in a Los Angeles production of Giovanni's play. Richard Johnson co-stars as Dr. Watson and Simon Cowell plays Inspector Lestrade.
The film was made in England by British Lion and Turner Films for cable television, and was first broadcast on TNT on November 14, 1991.
Plot
A beautiful young woman asks Holmes to help her father, a former army captain and hopeless opium addict break free of the curse surrounding a treasure stolen decades ago, when he was stationed in The Raj.
Cast
Charlton Heston as Sherlock Holmes
Richard Johnson as Dr. Watson
Edward Fox as Alistair St. Claire
Susannah Harker as Irene St. Claire
Simon Cowell as Inspector Lestrade
Production
The play, directed by the author, premiered in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre in the Los Angeles Music Center on December 5, 1980, and ran through January 17, 1981. Charlton Heston played Sherlock Holmes and Jeremy Brett, who later became one of the most famous portrayers of the Victorian consulting detective, played Dr. Watson.
Frasier Heston had written the script for 1980 movie The Mountain Men that had starred Charlton Heston, and had produced his father's TV adaptation of A Man For All Seasons (1988). He directed his father as Long John Silver in an adaptation of Treasure Island for TNT the year before helming The Crucifer of Blood.