Sherlock Holmes - Il mastino di Baskerville

This is a fairly pleasant television movie, but nothin spectacular either.

For those familiar with Sherlock Holmes and this famous story, the ending is known from the beginning. For those who haven't read the book, the plot has some nice twists and changes along the way, before coming to the inevitable ending with Holmes saving the day.

If you like low budget murder mystery's give this one a look, but don't expect a gripping version of this story.

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.

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.

In London, Sherlock Holmes (Matt Frewer) and Dr. Watson (Kenneth Welsh) are visited by the countryside Dr. Mortimer (Gordon Masten). He tells that Sir Baskerville has officially died of heart attack; however there are rumors and he believes that he was murdered by the notorious devil hound. Dr. Mortimer asks whether Sherlock Holmes would accept to investigate the case and also provide protection against the curse to the heir Sir Henry Baskerville (Jason London). Dr. Watson travels with Dr. Mortimer to meet Sir Henry and protect him while Holmes stays in London. Will they resolve the case?

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" is a Canadian version of the famous novel of the same title made for television. The high quality cinematography and the good screenplay are partially wasted with the unbearable arrogance of Sherlock Holmes performed by Matt Frewer, the worst Sherlock Holmes ever. Jason London is also miscast but his performance is satisfactory. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Demônio do Pântano" ("Demon of the Swamp")