BEFORE: Wendy Barrie, who played Jane Seymour in "The Private Lives of Henry VIII", carries over tonight, to the first of 14 Sherlock Holmes films. I think this is the only one based on a real Arthur Conan Doyle story, but I could be wrong. I read all the Sherlock Holmes that I could find when I was a college student, but I never saw any of the older films with Basil Rathbone. But I've been collecting them over the years, and finally about a year or two ago, I got the last one.
It's working them into my schedule that was a total bitch - it's my own fault for making so many constricting rules about actor linking. But I finally found a way to get here - I'll try hard to resist calling this part of the chain "March Mystery Madness" or something like that.
THE PLOT: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate the legend of a supernatural hound, a beast that may be stalking a young heir on the fog-shrouded moorland that makes up his estate.
AFTER: I noticed that many of the actors in "The Private Life of Henry VIII" also made appearances in early Alfred Hitchcock films - and also Elsa Lanchester was famous for her appearance in "The Bride of Frankenstein". Tonight at least 1 actor appeared in a Hitchcock film, and at least two appeared in Frankenstein film. I wonder if Baskerville Manor also appeared as a Gothic castle in prior films from the "Frankenstein" series.
This one's got it all - if this were a tournament for mysteries, it would surely be tough to beat. It's got a tough-to-prove murder made to look like an accident, a spooky dog whose howls can be heard across the foggy moor, an old lady that conducts seances to speak with the spirit world, and best of all, Sherlock Holmes hides in disguise to conduct his investigation, and uses misdirection to force the killer to make a move.
The original novel by Conan Doyle was much more intricate, like in how it pointed out that the escaped convict lurking in the area was attacked by the hound because of the clothes he was wearing (which used to belong to Henry Baskerville) and when viewed in retrospect, after being explained by Sherlock Holmes, these things tend to make a lot of sense. But not if you omit details like this film the film, once you do that there's no real reason for the convict character to even be there, except to function as a red herring of sorts. But on the whole it's too bad they had to dumb down the original story just to make a movie.
"The Hound of the Baskervilles" was the third Holmes novel, and was the detective's first appearance after a long absence, having been apparently killed off in the short story "The Adventure of the Final Problem", part of the "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" book. I don't know if Doyle was the first author to bring back his main character from the dead, but that happens so often in comic books now that I can't take any superhero's death seriously. (They ALWAYS come back - something to keep in mind this spring when you see "Avengers: Infinity War".) It's too bad they couldn't have started the film series with an adaptation of "A Study in Scarlet", but I guess I see why they went with the spookier, more visually interesting story about a killer dog.
NITPICK POINT: Near the end of the film, Holmes focuses on a family portrait, and blocks part of it off to compare the eyes and nose to that of another man in the room. In the long-shot the subject of the portrait is seen from the left and is facing a little to the right - but when the camera cuts to a close-up of the painting, seen head-on, the subject is facing to the left. The nose clearly slopes down to the left in the close-up, in order to match the footage of the other man in the room. But cutting to a close-up of the painting shouldn't make the nose change direction - the close-up appears to be of a completely different painting.
Also starring Basil Rathbone (last seen in "The Adventures of Robin Hood"), Nigel Bruce (last seen in "Suspicion"), Richard Greene, Lionel Atwill (last seen in "House of Frankenstein"), John Carradine (ditto), Beryl Mercer (last seen in "The Public Enemy"), Morton Lowry, Ralph Forbes (last seen in "The Three Musketeers" (1935)), Barlowe Borland, E.E. Clive, Eily Malyon, Lionel Pape, Nigel De Brulier, Mary Gordon, Ian Maclaren.
RATING: 6 out of 10 hansom cabs
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