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The Hound
of the Baskervilles (1939, DVD)

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The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection with Basil Rathbone (1939–46, DVD)

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The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hound of the Baskervilles has been a favourite of producers since the early days of film. There are too many adaptations in too many languages to cover them all but here are a few noteworthy efforts.

Great Holmes, poor Hound
Until recently Sherlockian purists have proclaimed the best Holmes to have been played by Arthur Wontner in a 1930s series of films that are little known today. Wontner's Holmes was laid back and anti-social, like Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes. His sidekick Watson was played as a dapper, intelligent chap, usually by actor Ian Fleming (not to be confused with the James Bond author.)

However, their 1937 British film Murder at the Baskervilles is not related to Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles. Rather it's based on Doyle's story "Silver Blaze", under which name it is also sometimes known. In this film adaptation though, the story supposedly takes place twenty years after the Hound case and Sir Henry Baskerville has invited Holmes and Watson for a return visit. While there, the duo find themselves involved in the racehorse-stealing affair outlined in "Silver Blaze". Confusing the storyline even further is that arch-villain Moriarty, who in the books has already been eliminated, is brought in as the brains behind the crime.

Murder at the Baskervilles is the fifth and last Holmes film starring Wontner and possibly the weakest. However, it is also the one you're most likely to find at the video store or on television and, despite the frustrating plot for Sherlockian purists, it is worth catching to see how Wontner laid down the template for all would-be Holmeses to follow.

Best Hound so far
Wontner's Holmes was quickly supplanted in the public mind by the lead in the most famous Hound of the Baskervilles, the atmospheric 1939 Hollywood movie.

This popular film stars the masterful Basil Rathbone as a masterful Holmes and the entertaining Nigel Bruce as his sidekick Watson. Here, Rathbone began a long association with the character that some consider the greatest ever. And Bruce is not as bumbling or comical a Watson as he became in later films. Hound kicked off a long series of Rathbone-Bruce collaborations in Sherlockian mysteries, fourteen films in all, not to mention over two hundred radio shows.

Relatively true to the novel, with only a few liberties taken to make the experience more cinematic, their Hound is also the best of the Rathbone-Bruce series—very good for its time and still holding up today.

Not-so-scary Hound from horrormeisters
The 1959 British remake of The Hound of the Baskervilles, with Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars) as Holmes, André Morell as Watson and Christopher Lee (Saruman in Lord of the Rings) as Baskerville, was less successful at the box office but has grown in reputation since then. Cushing is not as imposing as Rathbone as the detective, being smaller and finer featured, but he possesses a flinty intelligence that works well. He later played Holmes on television in the 1960s and in 1984. Morell is a more capable, albeit dull, Watson. Lee has little to work with here, with scenes of mainly awkward romance and dull-witted victimization: when all your relatives have met gruesome ends and your own murder is threatened, why would you continually wander onto the moors alone at night?

Interestingly Cushing and Lee, fine actors as they were, had started making classic horror films together around this time under director Terence Fisher for the British company Hammer Films, the same team that produced Hound of the Baskervilles. They'd all done a ripping Curse of Frankenstein two years earlier, a great Dracula the year before, and a decent version of The Mummy the same year as Hound. Odd then that Hound seems too light and sunny. Only the night scenes on the moor carry the requisite mood of doom. Overall, a good but not great Hound.

Faithful Hound, faithful Watson
The greatest The Hound of the Baskervilles yet may be the one that came in the middle of Jeremy Brett's run as Holmes in the series that ran on television in the 1980s and 1990s (see The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), although this is controversial. Some feel it is one of Brett's weaker turns as Holmes while others call it his best. Perhaps this is because, as in the book, Holmes is not at centre stage for about half the story.

The load is carried by actor Edward Hardwick, the second and more laidback Watson in this television series. He may be the closest ever to the quietly intelligent but self-effacing Watson that Doyle envisioned. This 105-minute film is full of mystery, atmosphere, fine acting and compelling drama.

Whether it's better for its time than the 1939 Rathbone version was for its time, or the 1959 Cushing version was for its time is hard to say. But it may be the best available for all time, if you know what I mean.

There have been many other good adaptations of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and many, many more poor ones. But once you've sampled the serious versions, you might want to get a few laughs from the 1978 The Hound of the Baskervilles send-up with comic actors Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as Holmes and Watson.

— Eric