Review of "The Hound of The Baskervilles" starring Stewart Granger At 4 AM on 31 August/1 September 1994, Chicago station WGN broadcast the 1972 TV movie "The Hound of the Baskervilles", officially listing the 73 minute movie to run for two hours, although it actually ran for 90 minutes, interspersed with lewd commercials for several sex chat lines, leaving the last half hour to a rerun of "The Jeffersons". This was a special moment for me, as I have been actively seeking to find a copy of this movie ever since I learned of its existence in Steinbrenner's reference book. From the brief description, I knew not to expect too much, but I was still interested in seeing how well the actors played, and how the story was handled. The movie stars Stewart Granger, with Bernard Fox as Watson, and is noted for having William Shatner in the role of Stapleton. Ordinarily, one might expect Shatner to pitch a memorable fit of overacting, but, as we will see, this version of the famous tale has been cut down so severely that there is hardly any time for Shatner, or any of the other characters, to make much of an impression at all. I should note that I spent the first half of the movie trying to figure out who Granger kept reminding me of. Granger's hair looked pure white from the front, though it took on a bit of gray from the side, and he had comically long and luxuriant sideburns. At first, I thought this presentation of a grizzled Holmes must be reminding me of Christopher Lee's appearance in the two late films comprising "The Golden Years of Sherlock Holmes". But finally, when Granger screwed up his face dramatically at one point, I realized that he looked just like John Thaw playing Inspector Morse. Having been originally produced for ABC, as the pilot for a possible series of late night mysteries, the film had what could be charitably described as a "limited" budget. I assume that it was shot entirely in America, on a Hollywood soundstage and backlot. The London scenes were without any landmarks, taking place on a cramped, cobbled area with a varied set of store fronts whose layout and lettering suggested an Old West setting; from time to time there were even buildings with Spanish-style red tile roofs. The later scenes in the village seemed to take place around the corner from London. I think I spotted another hint of cheapness when I compared two scenes that supposedly took place far apart. In London Holmes asked Watson to look something up in the Medical Registry, and later at Baskerville Hall, to check something in the Parish Registry. In both cases, Watson turned to shelves of what seemed the same set of "stunt" books. (I was in a bookstore once when a TV producer came in and said "we need about twenty feet of books please." The booksellers couldn't stop laughing about how they had finally gotten rid of their detested copies of Reader's Digest Condensed Books!) The method of dressing the actors gave me pause, as well. The general style of dress seemed to be to wear a suit coat, vest and pants of the same drab color. In a scene with Holmes, Watson, Mortimer and Sir Henry, we had four men, each wearing a different dull color, with Sir Henry's washed out blue suit the most unpleasant to look at. Holmes seemed to favor the color black, occasionally completing his dress with a black hat. Occasionally they must have run out of matching clothes, and then anything would do. Here Holmes was the worst offender, when he clapped on his bold tweed deerstalker while wearing another sedate suit. Watson occasionally wore a modern formless fisherman's hat, out of which I almost expected to see a variety of lures hanging. There were severe problems with English accents throughout the movie. Bernard Fox didn't have to worry. I actually don't know whether Stewart Granger came by his accent naturally or not; it did not strike me as forced or unpleasant. But many of the other characters didn't bother trying, indulged in "comic" Cockney overkill, or failed miserably to suggest English speech. Special mention must be made of Laura Lyons, who seemed to be under the delusion that English people speak just like us, except that they pronounce all the blank space between words and from time to time broaden a vowel sound at random. Her phony strained speech was difficult to bear. There were numerous unpleasant or unnecessary deviations from canonicity. Holmes and Watson are shown as living on the ground floor, for instance, rather than 17 steps up. This is not just wrong, it's stupid. It means that, in some shots of Baker Street, you see Holmes standing in his huge apartment, staring calmly out the windown, and then you see people walking by, mere inches away. It can hardly have been pleasant to have so little privacy! The opening scene of Dr Mortimer's visit was tampered with greatly. While we do get the business of Watson and Holmes trying to out-deduce each other by extracting information from the can Dr Mortimer has left, this is not followed by Dr Mortimer returning and reading the legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Instead, Holmes deduces from the title of one of Mortimer's publications that he would be interested in a special lecture being given at the museum, and therefore, he must be there right now. So he drags Watson along, who protests "But how will you recognize him?" Holmes stands outside as the lecture ends, and points out Mortimer as the man who is limping. He knew Mortimer would be limping because the bottom of the cane "was more worn on one side than the other"! Which makes one ask, how could the doctor possibly have forgotten his cane if he needs it so badly? Instead of returning to Baker Street, the trio repair to a restaurant. The Legend, alas, isn't read out, and it isn't explained. Instead, we get a few sentences about how Baskervilles have been dying unnaturally since 1762, which is wrong by more than a hundred years. What's sad is that we have missed a chance to build suspense and atmosphere, and to have a clear explanation for why someone is resurrecting an old story to frighten the Baskervilles. The next big deviation occurs when Holmes accompanies Watson to Dartmoor, instead of sending him ahead as his emissary. It's hard to be too severe here; in the book, the separation of the two characters is an excuse for Watson to send Holmes long letters describing his adventures, which, in contrast to straight narrative, draw us into the immediacy of the mystery. But you can't read letters out loud in a movie; more importantly, it's hard to have a Sherlock Holmes film where Holmes spends a third of the movie off screen. A noncanonical hunchback wanders into the story as a ludicrous and ham-handed red-herring. Perhaps the plot was already a bit of a hodge-podge back when Doyle wrote it up, but for anyone who cares about Sherlock Holmes, the introduction of such pointless variations, to the detriment of the original story, makes enjoyment difficult. One of the poorest moments came with the death of Seldon. As in the book, Holmes and Watson spot someone walking across the moor. They take him to be Sir Henry, because they can see his clothes. They call out to him, he runs away and ... slips down a hillside and dies. Once again, the film has taken a high point of excitement and replaced it with bathos. Surely, the filmmakers could not have preferred a death by slipping; surely the script must have had Seldon properly chased down by the hound and attacked; I can only assume that time or money ran out, and some poor fool stayed up late in the cutting room trying to paste together a sensible sequence of events when the key scene had never been filmed. The laughable result includes a senseless followup scene, where Holmes and Watson walk up to the body, and after identifying it, Holmes says "But of course the intended victim was Sir Charles". In the absence of a pursuing hound, are we to assume the slippery hillside was laying in wait for victims? Throughout the production there was a sense of being rushed. Segments of the story were simply told rather than acted out. The most serious such case occurred near the end of the movie, as matters are coming to a head. Holmes and Watson leave Baskerville Hall, declaring in front of Stapleton that Sir Henry is safe, because they know that Seldon and Barrymore (!) were behind the plot. (Of course, nobody bothers to pretend to arrest Barrymore, or fill him in on the plot. Are we supposed to fill these gaps in for the producers?) On the train, Holmes then tells Watson that he has told Sir Henry to go to dinner at Stapleton's house and then to walk back home alone. The very next scene shows Baskerville walking home; there's no dinner scene to heighten the tension. Even the final climax of the film is bungled. This occurs when the hound is thwarted from attacking Baskerville, and goes off in search of Stapleton. We hear no baying, no frantic running, no music. Stapleton is actually seen standing nearby with no sign of the dog. The dog jumps out, Stapleton grabs it, they fall into the muck, he waves his hand and is gone. In deference to an American TV audience who might be expecting an 1890's version of "Kojak" or "Columbo", a few efforts were made to "punch up" the material. When Sir Henry's "tail" spots Holmes, he signals the cabbie to drive on. We are then treated to a ludicrous Victorian version of the usual high speed car chase. Given that a horse-drawn cab is involved, the results are scarcely exciting. Holmes and Watson try to head the cab off by running up an alley. The speeding cab does the usual tricks of nearly running people down, lurching around corners, and so on, with the chase coming to a deflated end when Holmes is blocked from further pursuit after the cab causes a pile of barrels to spill off a cart. (This event, in turn, is so clumsily staged that you can see the carter push the barrels to get them started falling!). A second action-packed highlight occurs as Holmes and Watson are approaching Baskerville Hall in a carriage. They happen to come across the police, who are tracking down the three (!) escaped convicts. While Holmes and Watson look on, the police corner one of the convicts behind a large rock, and of course, police and escapee begin merrily firing pistols at each other, filling up the screen with noise and smoke. Presumably aiming for the vulgar sense of humor of a television audience, there were distasteful stabs at humor, generally with Watson being the victim. While Bernard Fox generally played Watson straight, there were scenes at the beginning and end of the movie in which he played Watson as a fool, and blathered on in the tiresome "Amazing, Holmes" manner. The most unpleasant incident came at the very end of the movie. Holmes hands Watson a test tube of chemicals and then informs him that it contains nitroglycerin, relishing the sight of Watson squirming in fear and discomfort. All in all, I am glad to have tracked down and watched this show; the Stewart Granger version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" had long been on my list of productions, but while others had been tracked down, and there had even been time for many other shows to be added to the list and found, that one show proved maddeningly elusive. Thus, simply to finally sit in front of the television and see it produced in me a sensation of gratifying completion. On the other hand, one has to say that this production had, in every component, an aspect of cheapness, resulting in an "entertainment" that in large part subtracted from the legacy of Sherlock Holmes, rather than having anything to add. In summary, if you have any affection for Sherlock Holmes, this would be a good movie to watch if you needed a laugh, and had plenty of drink available to wash it all down. John Burkardt