Sherlock Holmes - Der Hund von Baskerville

This certainly wasn't the best screen adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles that I've ever seen, but it was okay. I want to know why on earth they cast an American/Canadian actor as Holmes rather than a British one. I mean, really, it's Max Headroom, for crying out loud! And wasn't he also the jock father in Honey I Shrunk the Kids? Why would the director ever even consider him to play Holmes? He wasn't that great. He overacted even more than is expected in a TV movie. And his fake British accent was horrible.

I didn't like how they had Holmes and Watson's relationship portrayed either. The literary Holmes was cold, calculating, and even arrogant at times, yes, but he wasn't deliberately a jerk. This guy was. And the way Watson got an attitude with him afterwards (which, in all honesty, is completely understandable after this Holmes' behavior) made it hard to understand why these two men would be such great "friends" and roomies if Holmes was really such a jerk and Watson resented it so much.

And that poor dog. What did they do to its eyes to make them red like that? I hope it was just CG-ed to make them look like that, because it was obviously a real dog. And what kind of dog was that? It looked smaller than my medium-sized Chow Chow. I mean, I was expecting this big, bear-like Newfoundland mix or something and it was just this scrawny little mutt. It was kind of disappointing. Poor dog.

Other than that, and the obligatory cutting of half the story (which can be understood, as it's a Hallmark TV movie), this movie was fair. It's worth the $8 DVD what has four other Sherlock Holmes movies on it as well, good for a rainy afternoon with nothing better to do. Other than that... Eh, like I said, it was fair.

I cannot agree with most of the comments here. Any film version of a Holmes story is going to be a problem - why pick on this one? After all, something of the rather pointed (sometimes uncomfortable) sarcasm of the literary Holmes comes through. No performance is seriously bad in this film; Frewer comes over well, so do the rest. I sometimes wonder if affection for certain film portrayals rather overrides the accuracy of the story - this one was not the worst by a long shot. Utter accuracy is not probable in the film world, so we should, I think, not be all too picky. Even so, the flavour of the stories is one which no director has ever captured, I admit. This film goes some way towards rectifying the matter.

Not a travesty, this version of Conan-Doyle's most famous and most filmed novella opens in accordance with the printed version, with Matt Frewer as the world's first and only consulting detective, pacing around the room and dramatically throwing off hypotheses about the nature of the recent visitor who has left his walking stick behind. At that, the film limits the number of conclusions drawn by Holmes. (Eg., the breed of DOG that carried the walking stick for its master.)

All of this is attended by Kenneth Welsh as the skeptical Dr. Watson. I hate saying this because I wish all filmic preparations of the canon well. But if there is something tic-y and overripe about Frewer's portrayal of Holmes, there is something impassive and vacant about Welsh's Dr. Watson. He's barely there. Ever.

The movie follows the narrative fairly closely at first, even introducing us to Miss Laura Lyons, typist, whose role is given some importance. She's almost always deleted. The story leaves Conan-Doyle behind at the climax. He may still be struggling in one of those bottomless bogs in the Great Grimpin Mire for all we know. I won't describe it except to say that the hound isn't too terrifying.

The departures from the original narrative do some damage to the film as a whole. Too bad. Grenada TV's version, from the series with Jeremy Britt, is frankly better.

The Canadian TV film 'Hound of the Baskervilles' is by no means all that great of a movie. It is pretty much on par with most other TV movies, but for different reasons. Usually the way to tell a movie made for television apart from those that received theatrical releases lies with the production values. Not so in this case. The production values, especially the atmospheric direction and good performances by Jason London, Matt Frewer and Kenneth Welsh warrant a viewing all on their own, the problems here are with the weak script. It allows little character development and the pacing is all wrong. It doesn't get around to the action until the end, and by then a good portion of the audience would have lost interest in the movie.

Good photography, good music, good acting, bad script. Not a great film, but it's worth watching once, especially if you're a fan of the character of Sherlock Holmes, or any of the actors

It only took a couple minutes of watching Frewer as Holmes to make me stop watching this film. Holmes is supposed to be arrogant of course, but never before have a seen a Holmes that was snide and belittling of Watson. It was too bad, because the production looked well done. But this version of Holmes was too much for me to take, and I turned it off.