BK, forewarning and disclaimer: I HATE HANDS OF A MURDERER! Let's start with the title which was really Napoleon of Crime, since it dealt with Moriarty. It was originally written for the Ian Richardson series I did, but when that ended prematurely, it never got made...much to everyone's regret because it was lauded as the best script of the bunch...and it was. Alas, years later when CBS bought it, it was still considered the best of the bunch. I did one minor rewrite where I introduced the Baker Street Irregulars into a scene. I believe Kerry McCluggage of CBS said of the script: "If it ain't broke, why fix it?" But once the wrong director was hired...somebody named Stuart Orme (instead of Clive Donner who is the guy the producers wanted).
He got this bug about setting the whole thing in 1914 instead of the 1880's. His concessions to this time period were seeing an early vintage automobile in one scene and a voice-over that mentioned it was 1914, everything else looked liked 1880's...except we now had a major character who had been horribly mutilated in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Because so much of his face was covered, this was a red herring device where he is impersonated by another man. This whole impersonation device was dropped and the other character dispensed with (Colonel Sebastian Moran...Moriarty's second),so the reveal of the character's hidden face at the end doesn't work at all and the guy looks to be only forty...1914...Sepoy Mutiny of 1857...you do the math. Also one great scene was inexplicable inverted to a section later in the film that made no sense whatsoever, the whole thing became illogical hash.
I was never told any tampering by anonymous hands had taken place until I saw the cut. Then the budget substituted things: A fight between Moriarty and Holmes in a runaway coach on a seaside cliff...where the coach plunges over the edge and Moriarty is presumed drowned and lost at sea, became a runaway coach going down a modest incline into what looks like a pond into which Moriarty apparently disappears. Utter silliness!
Then there was the casting of a Bombastic, barrell-chested Edward Woodward as Holmes and a somnabulistic John Hillerman as Watson (with a goatee yet!), both of whom proudly announced in a TV guide interview that neither had read a Holmes story in their life. Anthony Andrews was cast as a young Moriarty but still gives the most bravura performance in the movie.
But it was originally a terrific script, brought down by bad direction and indifferent leads. One critic did refer to the "snap-crackle-pop sharpness of the script"...what was left of it...Sad, sad, sad.