The Hound of the Baskervilles— A Brilliantly Dressed-Up Scooby-Doo Plot
By Jane Nightshade
The earliest film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1887 novella, The Hound of the Baskervilles, that is listed in the Internet Movie Database is 1914's _Der Hund von Baskerville _(Rudolf Meinert) -- a German production. It certainly isn't the last. There are no less than thirty-three film and television adaptations documented in the database, including a cartoon parody entitled Pound of the Baskervilles, featuring the Disney chipmunks, Chip 'n Dale.
We can expect more iterations to come of the twisty Dartmoor murder mystery, as the popularity of Sherlock Holmes shows no signs of abating after more than 130 years of existence. Yet only a thimbleful of past onscreen adaptations of the Baskerville saga are counted as true classics by audiences and critics.
Among the Baskervilles adaptations that have achieved the rare status of classic is the 1959 Hammer Studios version, directed by Terence Fisher. Filmmakers as disparate as auteur Martin Scorsese and B-horrormeister Mick Garris (Masters of Horror/The Shining-1997) count themselves fans. As Garris relates in a video clip for the popular Trailers from Hell YouTube account, he was once offered a chance to direct an adaptation himself, but turned it down because he felt Hammer’s “very polished version would be hard to beat.” In 2013, Timeout London called it "the best Sherlock Holmes movie ever made."
By 1958, when Hammer started working on their adaptation of the story, the studio faced a stiff challenge to come up with a new take on the oft-told Sherlockian tale. In particular, the beloved 1939 Hollywood version, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson, was already an enduring classic and very popular in the public's eye. How did Hammer apply its own spin? Amp up the horror content to 11, of course.
The result is nearly a textbook lesson in the transformation of a somewhat staid, intellectual murder mystery into a horror movie —or at least, something approaching the genre. As Garris notes, the film heavily plays up the atmospheric Dartmoor location — spooky moors, treacherous bogs, howling beasts, mysterious lights, and thick fogs. But other horror touches are the result of the Hammer braintrust, including Fisher, producer Anthony Hinds, cinematographer Jack Asher, scriptwriter Peter Bryan, production designer Bernard Robinson, and special effects maestro Sydney Pearson.
First up in horror enhancements is the color. Hammer decided to shoot Baskervilles in lurid Eastmancolour, Kodak’s answer to Technicolor. This creates plenty of opportunities to showcase a certain amount of gore, especially in the fatal stabbing that opens the film. Notably, the film is also the first Sherlock Holmes screen production ever made in color. That alone gave Hammer's version the ability to stand out in a crowded field when it was released, as all previous productions had been in black and white.
Hammer not only went first with color for Baskervilles, it went big. The studio’s top cinematographer of the era, Asher, was known for his love of a vivid, almost surreal palette. With production designer Robinson (who designed Dracula and most of the other great early Hammer classics) in charge of the overall look of the film, Asher was presented with eye-popping sets and costumes. He gleefully makes full use of them. The lounge at Baskerville Hall, in particular, features an arresting array of crimson-and-gold upholstery (the set was redressed from one used in Dracula). The Baskervilles’ massive collection of silver plate also plays a prominent role, filling the screen with numerous gleaming highlights and reflections that must have taken all of Asher’s considerable talent to capture accurately on film.
**Every Excuse for Horror Exploited. **
Next, the Peter Bryan script works overtime to insert horror content wherever possible. Right from the start, there's the gory dramatization of the murder of a servant girl by Henry Baskerville's lecherous ancestor, Sir Hugo. This approach contrasts with previous versions, such as the Rathbone and Bruce production, where the origin story of the ancient murder that caused the Baskerville Curse is merely told, not shown.
Bryan also adds to the character list an eccentric local bishop who is a renowned collector of rare spiders. This character exists solely to enable a suspenseful scene where a large, hairy, tarantula climbs slowly up the arm of Henry Baskerville (played by Sir Christopher Lee).
Another character change involves the Baskervilles’ enigmatic neighbor, Beryl Stapleton. She is innocent and somewhat helpless in the book. Bryan's script changes her to Cecile Stapleton (Marla Landi), a half-Spanish, half-English vixen who is far more sinister than the original Doyle character. Landi gives it her all to make Cecile a truly formidable “suspicious character,” seductive and menacing at the same time. At times she even steals the picture out from under Cushing and Lee. Her character’s half-Spanish background provides an excuse for an exotic and color-saturated wardrobe, which Asher’s camera loves to pick out for dramatic effect, most especially in the scene where she runs across the dark moors in a vivid purple dress.
Bryan also introduces a nail-biting scene where Andre Morell as Dr. Watson falls into quicksand and is only pulled out at the last minute, and another scene where Holmes (Peter Cushing) appears to have been crushed in a mine cave-in. The fate of Cecile, sprinting across the moors while garbed in her purple dress, offers a more permanent brand of horror.
Perhaps the creepiest character of all is the titular hound that "haunts" the Baskerville family. Obviously there was no CGI at the time. Instead, it's a large, living greyhound made to appear otherworldly by wearing a demonic mask. The mask was created by Margaret Robinson, Bernard Robinson's artist wife. A noted painter and art instructor, Margaret, who passed away in 2016 at age 96, also made masks and puppets for other Hammer productions, including Dracula, The Mummy, and The Curse of the Werewolf.
According to Robinson, originally there were two similar dogs examined for the part of the Hound, one of which belonged to Barbara Woodhouse, the celebrated television dog trainer. In addition to providing the dog, Woodhouse quirkily wanted to serve as Christopher Lee’s double in long shots (but was turned down), as Margaret Robinson recalls in the book H_ammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography,_ by Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio. Woodhouse's dog, however, was rejected, as it was too well-behaved; the dog selected was known for being a biter.
"I made the mask out of rabbit fur, and the dog wouldn't allow anyone else to put the mask on him. He was a lovely dog -- to me, at least!" Robinson remembers. When the script called for Lee to be attacked by the mask-wearing hound, Robinson reveals that a duplicate set was made in miniature and a small boy was hired as a stand-in to act the part of Christopher Lee. The selected dog, named Colonel, nearly mauled the boy, who was rescued by a crew member.
**The Premier Hammer Cast. **
Last but certainly not least, the main cast adds a lot to the horror cred of this film, employing Hammer's premier acting duo of Lee and Cushing, fresh from the highly popular Dracula and other late 50s hits they made together. The Italian-born Marla Landi appeared regularly in thriller and sci-fi television series such as The Invisible Man, Danger Man, and One Step Beyond. She also starred with Lee in Hammer's _The Pirates of Blood River _(John Gilling -- 1961). As for Morell, he is probably best-known to horror fans as Professor Quartermass in the original television production of Nigel Kneale's _Quartermass and the Pit (Rudolph Cartier -- 1958). _
By 1959, Cushing and Lee were established horror stars; over the next three decades, they made twenty-odd films together. Cushing would return to the Holmes role in 1968, when he starred in a 16-part BBC series based on Conan Doyle’s best stories (including another round of the Baskervilles), and in a 1984 TV movie, _Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (_directed by Roy Ward Baker). His portrayal of Holmes ranks with the best, easily the equal of Rathbone and Jeremy Brett. "Cushing’s innate combination of intelligence and imperiousness meant that Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation was a comfortable fit for him…" notes the British Film Institute (BFI).
He provided his own costumes for the role, based on the celebrated Sydney Paget illustrations from The Strand Magazine, right down to Holmes's "mouse-colored" dressing gown, which Cushing personally burned with a few cigarette holes for authenticity. He fought Hinds' efforts to "modernize" Holmes by shearing the detective of his famous deerstalker cap. "I told them you might as well play (Lord) Nelson without a patch over his eye!" Baskervilles was intended as the first of a series of Holmes films starring Cushing, but these plans were shelved when the film did poorly at the box office.
As for Lee, he relished playing a victim instead of a villain as Sir Henry Baskerville, as well as having a chance at filming romantic scenes with the beautiful Landi (he was unmarried at the time). His performance is fairly understated but solid, and his height and aristocratic bearing make him believable as the scion of an ancient noble house. His best scene is the celebrated tarantula one, which calls for him to remain still while a large, deadly-looking spider crawls up his arm toward his neck (tarantula bites are actually not that dangerous to humans). According to commentary that Lee recorded for the DVD release of the film, the fearful expressions and sweating he exhibits in the tarantula scene aren’t acting, but the result of his life-long fear of spiders. Lee would later go on to play Sherlock Holmes himself in Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (Terence Fisher -- 1962), and would also play Holmes' brother Mycroft in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Wilder -- 1970).
**Top-Ranked Fisher Film. **
Of course, even the best horror cast wouldn't be optimal without a top-grade horror director, and Terence Fisher admirably fills the bill. While Hammer employed other great horrormeisters like Freddie Francis and the wonderful Roy Ward Baker, Fisher's directing was the template for "the Hammer style" of filmmaking. The majority of Hammer's most venerable classics are Fisher films; in addition to Dracula, they include _The Mummy (1959), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and The Curse of the Werewolf (1961). _
Fisher admirably takes on the tricky task of relaying what I like to call a “Scooby-Doo” plot — a mystery or crime story that masquerades as a supernatural tale. Another famous example of the genre would be Alfred Hitchcock's revered _Vertigo _(1957). With a Scooby-Doo plot, there’s always a rational explanation at the end for ghostly occurrences; usually it's an elaborate set-up by a miscreant trying to get away with a crime, as regularly occurred in episodes of the popular 70s children's cartoon. The trickiness in handling a Scooby-Doo film comes from knowing just how far to push the supernatural-appearing elements before losing the more skeptical audience members. More than most, Hammer’s version keeps the viewer guessing nearly to the end about whether or not the hound is a demonic spirit or just a hungry stray dog used to mask a greedy, murderous plot.
Critics usually rank _The Hound of the Baskervilles _among Fisher's top ten works. The Nerdist film site declares: "It brings out the horrific elements of the mystery concerning a cursed family’s last heir and the ghostly dog that haunts him," ranking the film at number four of Fisher's extensive filmography. The site further notes that, "Fisher directs it like a straight horror film, but with the wit and charm that Holmes and Watson deserve."
(Sidebar:)
**Other Noted Productions of The Hound of the Baskervilles or Related to It **
1937 - Entitled Murder at the Baskervilles, this black-and-white film features early Holmes star Arthur Wontner as Holmes and Ian Fleming (not that Ian Fleming) as Watson. Can be found for free online and on disc. Although it features some of the same characters as The Hound of the Baskervilles, it’s actually an adaptation of the Holmes short story, Silver Blaze.
1939 - The Hollywood black-and-white classic starring the beloved duo of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson. Considered the best of all iterations by many cinephiles. Can be found streaming for free online and it’s also on disc
1972 - Quirky US television movie notable for William Shatner’s hammy guest role as Sir Hugo Baskerville/George Stapleton. Stewart Granger and Bernard Fox play Holmes and Watson. Free copies can be found online and it’s also on disc.
1978 - Comedy film version starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as Holmes and Watson. Notable for featuring many British comedy stars of the mid-late 20th Century, including the legendary Terry-Thomas and Denholm Elliot. A box-office bomb and critical failure. Can be found for free online.
1981 - A Soviet-Russian television production. An English-subtitled copy can be found streaming at Soviet Movies Online; there’s also a disc that’s hard to find. Considered one of the most faithful adaptations of the book, it is a segment of a Holmes series entitled The Baker Street Dozens.
1982 - Highly regarded BBC miniseries starring Tom Baker as Holmes and Terence Rigby as Watson. Can be found for free online and is also available on disc.
1983 - A British-made television movie, directed by Douglas Hickox, starring Ian Richardson as Holmes and Donald Churchill as Watson. Denholm Elliot appears as Dr. Mortimer, his second appearance in a Baskerville film. Can be found online.
1988 - An extremely well-made television film by Granada Television that features Jeremy Brett as Holmes and Edward Hardewick as Watson. Considered by some critics to be the definitive version of the book. Streaming and on disc.
**Sources: **
_IMdB.com _https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052905/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
_British Film Institute: Peter Cushing: 10 Essential Films _https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/peter-cushing-10-essential-films
_TCM: The Hound of the Baskervilles: _https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/22875/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles#overview
The Nerdist: Top 7 Films by Hammer Maestro Terence Fisher https://archive.nerdist.com/directors-cuts-top-7-films-by-hammers-maestro-terence-fisher/
KQEK: Commentary on the DVD: https://kqek.com/mobile/?p=14042