and
The Appropriate Tune: 'Hounds of Love' by Kate Bush
Now that the obligations are out of the way, it’s now time to get into the gimmick of this year’s Marathon: Book Club Month! For the rest of the month, every film is going to be based on a written work, primarily short stories and novels but there’ll probably be adaptations of other forms of the written word popping up here and there. And what better way to kick things off than with one of the most famous literary figures in the whole of Western civilization? Maybe if we had some whiskey and mozzarella sticks, but this ain’t a T.G.I. Friday’s buddy, this is blog country.
Released in 1939, The Hound of the Baskervilles was directed by Sidney Lanfield, written by Ernest Pascal and produced by Gene Markey and Daryl F. Zanuck, based on the 1902 novel of the same name by Arthur Conan Doyle. The year is 1889. Sir Charles Baskerville has died, heart failure wouldn’t you know, and Henry Baskerville (Richard Greene) is set to inherit the Baskerville estate, located in the middle of Dartmoor in Devonshire. Trouble is, a lot of people believe that Charles’ death wasn’t simply heart failure, but a heart attack brought about by pure, unbridled fear. Fear of the Hound of the Baskervilles, a ghastly canine said to haunt the moors of Dartmoor, and to bring death to all who bear the Baskerville name. In order to ensure that doesn’t happen to Henry, close family friend Dr. Mortimer (Lionel Atwill) enlists the aid of that most famous of detectives, Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) to discover the truth of things. In this case however, the truth may turn out deadlier than fiction.
As the out-and-out ‘spooky’ story of the Holmes canon one might expect the film version of Baskervilles to reflect that, and that is indeed the case. Whether it’s the damp streets of Victorian London or the barren, almost alien wastes of Dartmoor, wherein Baskerville Hall looms on the horizon cold and menacing, this is a world of gloom and mold wrapped in a fancy coat. That Fox was trying to replicate the Gothic horror atmosphere that Universal had utilized to great success is speculation but would hardly be surprising, and to their credit they pull off an impressive facsimile. I’ve looked at the entire list of Universal Monster Movies and for a second I still thought that the Holmes movies were part of them. Probably the gratuitous amount of Lionel Atwill, the man was the oregano of genre films.
The golden years of Holmes’ life under the eye of Arthur Conan Doyle coincided with the birth of film as a medium for storytelling, and of those early men who portrayed the detective Basil Rathbone is above and away the most famous. Looking at him in this film, the slicked hair, the aquiline nose, he looks exactly as you’d imagine Holmes himself to be (and like how Sidney Paget drew him), and the way Rathbone carries himself you could believe he's the smartest guy in the room. Personally I think he’s written as too personable; Holmes to me, which essentially means as he was portrayed by Jeremy Brett, is best when written as an aloof and occasionally acerbic man who takes on cases out of curiosity more so than any moral compulsion. This Holmes by contrast is firmly entrenched in the hero role, and while I’m sure that was useful when they made Holmes into a franchise player, but personally I find him to be rather bland because of it.
This film was also one of the pushers of the ‘dumb Watson’ trope in the Sherlock pop culture consciousness, which is a pet peeve of mine. Of course one of the conceits of the series is that Watson is in awe of Holmes’ deductive powers, but it’s also the case that he was a capable medical practitioner and writer (the Holmes stories are written as if he’s transcribing them after all), a fact that doesn’t seem to gel with Nigel Bruce’s portrayal of the character as this bumbling buffoon. One of the sins of writing smart characters I’ve heard is writing the characters around them as idiots to make them seen more capable, and Watson is the most egregious example of this sin.
Therein lies the major issue with this version Hound of the Baskervilles -- that the most interesting character of the movie, Holmes, is missing for a good chunk of it, leaving us to flounder with the Watson the Lesser and the rest of the cast, who are bog standard 30’s actor. Richard Greene is the kind of paint-by-numbers leading man types that were infesting the industry at the time, a Zeppo with less charisma, and his relationship with Beryl Stapleton is toothless at best. It’s fun to see Lionel Atwill and John Carradine much in the same way that nerds like picking out references in superhero movies, but they don’t contribute much.
I also have my doubts on how well it presents the mystery separate from the original story, although to be fair it’s been years since I’ve read it. We get some clues right at the beginning, then there’s the gulf where they try to make us care about Henry and Beryl, then the end where we just find out who the killer is and they wrap things up like they were having a celluloid shortage. We do have a ‘laying out the crime’ scene of a sort, but the film doesn’t lay out these clues for the audience, so when it’s revealed the reaction is ‘ooh…ok.’ Which is my reaction to this entire movie.
The Hound of the Baskervilles does not get the recommendation. While the visuals were on point, as an adaptation I think the charm of Sherlock Holmes was lost in translation, and given the ubiquitous nature of Doyle’s character I can’t think of a reason to watch it unless you have a keen interest in the Rathbone Holmes movies. Just read the book, or if you have a phobia of fonts watch the adaptation of Baskervilles starring Jeremy Brett as Sherlock, that’s arguably the better option. Grab yourself a nice frothing syringe of cocaine and have a chill evening.
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