The Hound of the Baskervilles

A misguided attempt to present a comic parody of the Conan Doyle tale, with Peter Cook as Sherlock Holmes and Dudley Moore as Dr Watson. Moore also plays Holmes' mother (!) and in this guise, is possibly the best thing in the film. Otherwise there is a spoof of the spinning head in The Exorcist, Denholm Elliot and a constantly urinating dog, and lame excuses for ‘jokes' and ‘funny situations' which really – aren't.

Although it has one or two moments which provoke a smile, the original source material isn't such that it survives being tweaked to this extent. Perhaps not the point, but the rest of the inspiration for this turkey must have been written on the back of a postage stamp. Skip this and watch Bedazzled and Not Only … But Also instead.

Hound of the Baskervilles, The (1978)

BOMB (out of 4)

As a fan of bad movies I quite often find myself trying to track down and locate some of the worst films ever made. Sometimes these bad movies turn out to be entertaining but sometimes they turn out to be so bad that I often wonder why no one was seeing how bad the dailies were and didn't try to pull the plug. That's what I felt here. This story has been told countless times and since it's the most popular perhaps that's why everyone involved decided to shoot it. We have Peter Cook playing Holmes and Dudley Moore playing Watson but it really doesn't matter because I think anyone could have been in the roles and things would have been bad no matter what. Cook, Moore and director Morrissey wrote the screenplay her and I can't help but picture the three of them sitting around, passing a joint and laughing their heads off at what they were writing. That's the only thing I can think of that would make any of them feel as if they had anything working in this screenplay. The movie gets off to a horrendous start and it doesn't improve any and in the end I couldn't help but scratch my head and wonder why no one put a bullet in this sucker before it could hit theaters. The deadliest sin a comedy can make is that it's not funny and this movie makes the unforgivable sin of not having a single laugh. For the most part we have various characters acting gay and this appears to be the only joke going. Everyone acts extremely strange and that includes Holmes who we first see as some sort of sissy and I guess the screenwriters through this would be hilarious. The rest of the jokes are just downright flat and it almost seems like no effort was made to make any of them funny. For the life of me I couldn't understand how anyone could find this mess entertaining and most of the blame is right on the screenplay. As far as the performances go they're just as bad as the writing. The film ends with many bizarre jokes including an extremely bad spoof of THE EXORCIST that comes out of no where and seems out of place. I tried to think of at least one nice thing to say about this film but couldn't think of one as even the titles are boring and the music (by Moore) is pathetic. A complete disaster this one is and I'm sure you can safely call this the worst Holmes movie in history.

I have thousands of films in my library. This includes hundreds of Laserdiscs, VHS tapes, and thousands of DVDs and BLURAYs. Much to my wife's displeasure I NEVER fail to watch anything from start to finish - I feel I owe it to the filmmaker to give them a fair chance by seeing it through. As a result I watch a lot of films alone for the second half (or more). This was the ONLY exception I ever made. I had no more cringes left to cringe after about 40 minutes. I just could not take it any more. I kept hoping it would improve but it never did in the 40 or so minutes we endured. We are big fans of Cook and Moore - their "Bedazzled" is genius. I don't know how this went so far off the rails - great source material ripe for humor - two great British comic actors - but it's just painful to watch. Spare yourself the agony.

Painful. Wincing. Shameful. Just a few quick words to summarize my experience sitting through what looked to be a promising parody by a couple of generally very funny and talented men - Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. This film starts off badly and then bottoms out within the first ten minutes. The rest of the film really became an onerous chore to sit through and only and I mean ONLY was saved by the promise of seeing some great British character actors and funny men/ladies in bit parts. Unfortunately watching Hugh Griffith, Prunella Scales, Terry-Thomas, and oh so ever did I feel sorry for someone Joan Greenwood embarrass themselves with witless, nonsensical, unfunny material did little to improve matters at all. Peter Cook plays Sherlock Holmes and really misses the character entirely, but he need not fear because Dudley Moore as Watson with a hideous Scottish brogue is even worse. The jokes are stale for the most part - missing hugely. There is a terrible Exorcist sequence that made me just want to fast-forward the rest of the film. but like a trooper I sat through till the end and was relieved when it finally finished. The story has the basic structure of the Doyle novel intact with some obvious changes meant to be funny. And some of the changes would have been funny maybe if a little more had been done with the material. I am not saying there is nothing funny in the film. There are a few bright spots. Dudley Moore with a chihuahua and Denholm Elliot was a decent comedic scene until it just went on and on. And I also liked the sequence with Cook and Moore as a one-legged man trying for a position as a runner on the moors for Holmes. That was, for me at least, easily the funniest scene in the entire film. The rest is a mismatch of things that just didn't work for me at all. Maybe a bit more respect for the material would have rendered this more amusing. Maybe some more realistic characterizations and less broad, really broad, and embarrassingly broad portrayals by Cook and Moore and Griffith as a man with a young girlfriend with the bust of a popular stripper and who enjoys throwing chunks of meat on the moors, Joan Greenwood, yes, Joan Greenwood, vomiting pea soup with spinning head, and Kenneth Williams really going over the top- even for him - toning it down a bit and making their characters a bit more believable might have helped. The script though is woefully lacking even for a farce like this. Director Paul Morrissey show little talent here and it is a real pity when you have such huge talents to work with. Penelope Keith is wonderful in a brief cameo as a bordello hostess(sultry too). Spike Milligan has a fine brief cameo as a policeman. Terry-Thomas is Terry-Thomas in a final bow as that which he basically made his career playing, a cad. This was his last meaningful screen role - a pity for Thomas fans but at least you get an older vintage Thomas nevertheless. More than anything else I was just surprised at the low level of intellect, given a title like The Hound of the Baskervilles, required, nay, even expected, to enjoy this moronic, sophomoric tripe. A real pity as I said.

Following the rudimentary outline of Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes tale, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore concoct a feast of comical whimsy. Or so they would have sold this weak film to its producers. As it is, it is a threadbare piece of work all too briefly lightened with flashes of genius(I laughed out loud when Dud encounters his double in the post office). We have bits of Pete'n'Dud's earlier stage material (ie 'i've nothing against your right leg, and neither have you') which were much funnier (because they were much fresher) in their original versions. Newer material seemed thin and drawn out. The accents that Cook and Moore avail themselves of (Jewish and Welsh) are funny to begin with, but soon pall. Likewise, the piddling dog is hilarious but dragged on for so long that the viewer starts to become annoyed and forget that he ever found it amusing. The music is a major drag. Dudley is an accomplished pianist, but his soundtrack in the manner of an old silent film accompanist falls as flat as the rest of the film.