Der Hund von Baskerville

This film obviously takes its casting from the portrayals of Holmes and Watson by Rathbone and Bruce, rather than from the book. Richardson is smarmy, jovial and cheery, with none of Rathbone's cold precision and sharpness. Churchill is more idiotic as Watson than even Nigel Bruce could manage. An insipid and clueless Inspector LeStrade is added for no other reason, apparently, than the writer's feeling that a Holmes story needed him.

The sets looked good. Some of the additional characters are quite well done (with the exception of the butler and his wife, who sleepwalk through their lines.)

This film pales next to almost any of the other film adaptations of Hound. The best is the Rathbone/Bruce version. The Hammer films version gives us Peter Cushing as an excellent Holmes surrounded by those lovely Hammer sets.

The 1988 Jeremy Brett TV film suffers from being filmed on a TV budget, but gives us what is probably the most faithful rendition of Holmes and Watson, with Watson coming off as Holmes' strong right hand, rather than as a buffoon. Watch any and/or all of these, but only watch this version if you have run out of other versions to watch.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is, of course, the Sherlock Holmes mystery where Holmes goes undercover for the whole middle part. He is always lurking just offstage, but in this 1983 production we especially miss, for an awful lot of the film, the marvelous voice and presence of Ian Richardson. If like me, you tracked down this mystery solely to get more of the virtuoso Richardson, whose acting highlighted the BBC House of Cards trilogy, this gap will disappoint you, although we are compensated by the great Denholm Elliott as the country doctor who comes to Baker Street to fetch Holmes. These are the acting highlights: Martin Shaw as the young American Baskerville heir seems to be thrusting his way through on sheer goodwill--he is likable enough that you wish that for his own sake, Sir Henry would heed the many warning signs, head back to London and take acting lessons. Meanwhile, stuck in small parts as the mansion's head servants are Eleanor Bron and Edward Judd --now there's a pair who could have made a great Holmes and Watson on their own. There is just enough good stuff here to carry you through—cinematographer Ronnie Taylor makes the scenes on the open moors in daytime epic in scope, and the night scenes amid the boggy, fog-shrouded moraine around the remote mansion are often scary. In the grand climax, a chase by black silhouettes against bottomless fog is staged and filmed with great skill. On the other hand, too often this "Hound" offers the standard Masterpiece Theatre stuff of lamplit Victorian parlours, tame-looking city streets and city folk hobnobbing with the rustic locals, and seems pretty generic considering the acting and storytelling talents elsewhere on display.

Having seen the Rathbone, Cushing and Brett versions, I settled down to watch this expecting a run-of-the-mill, made for TV "quickie" which would be instantly forgettable and just "yet another" rendition of a tale all too frequently told. I was very pleasantly surprised to find a very good production with excellent direction, ensuring that it whisks along at an excellent pace and that the viewer's attention never flags. Some parts of Richardson's portrayal of Holmes do not gel, (especially the ludicrous 'gypsey' scenes), but, overall, I think he does a first rate job and, in my view, exceeds the value of the performances by Rathbone and Cushing, which, while very good in their own day, are now hopelessly dated, (to the point of caricature in the case of Rathbone and virtually ALL of the supporting players in the 1939 version!)Good supporting roles also from Martin Shaw as Baskerville and David Churchill as an entirely credible Watson, avoiding the buffoonery of the Rathbone version but also not the "over-compensation" of the Hardwick portrayal in the Brett version. This latter version, (as with the complete ITV series starring Brett, (which must rate as THE "definitive" version of the Holmes stories on screen, (whether large or small)), must probably maintain its status as the "best" version I have seen to date, BUT the Richardson one is only just behind and, as already said, in terms of overall pace and energy probably exceeds it! A pity we did not see Richardson don the deer stalker more often!

"Without the curse of the imagination there would be no horror." ~Sherlock Holmes (1983). This quote sums up the story of The Hound of the Baskervilles perfectly. The horror is in the imagination of the characters about a ghostly hound killing people on the moors. It's up to Sherlock and Watson to crack this mysterious case.

This isn't a bad version of the tale - pretty good overall. I quite like Ian Richardson as Holmes though not quite the Holmes of the books.

If you run across this film I recommend watching if you like mysteries.

7/10.

Quite a solid rendition of the quintessential Sherlock Holmes case as TV movies go, though clearly still not a patch on either the 1939 Fox or 1959 Hammer big-screen versions. I liked Ian Richardson better here than in the same year's THE SIGN OF FOUR – perhaps because his tendency to go over-the-top gets channeled this time around through Holmes' own penchant for disguise! Even the rapport with Dr. Watson (a different actor from his subsequent effort) seems to be more congenial – if still basically a comic foil a' la Nigel Bruce. Again, the rest of the cast list is peppered with established performers: Martin Shaw (amusingly decked-out in Texan attire!), Nicholas Clay (in the proverbial dual role at the core of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tale), Denholm Elliott (playing a different role to the one he had had in the 1978 spoof), Ronald Lacey (as Inspector Lestrade), Brian Blessed (though his gruffness borders on caricature!), Connie Booth (Mrs. John Cleese!), Edward Judd (nearly unrecognizable) and Eleanor Bron. The titular creature, too, with its constantly radiant eyes and at, one point, his entire frame appears to glow, was presumably envisaged as the typical movie monster (let us not forget there were at least two 'hell hound' movies some years previously – one of which I should be checking out soon, incidentally – while the Stephen King adaptation CUJO was released the same year). That said, director Hickox was well-versed in this sort of thing, and he handles proceedings with customary professionalism (albeit, understandably, on a small scale). This is now the seventh version of the tale that I have watched – 1939, 1959, 1968, 1972, 1978 and 2002 – and, for what it is worth, there are still a few out there which I would not mind checking out in the long run...