The Hound Of The Baskervilles

Dogging The Law

The Hound Of
The Baskervilles
USA 1939 Directed by Sidney Lanfield
20th Century Fox Blu Ray Zone B

Well the time is upon me. I finally get caught up on a rewatch of the classic (and best) series of Sherlock Holmes films on a lovely set of Blu Ray transfers from, judging from this first one in the series, some pretty good prints. Rather than get the expensive, five disc US version I plumped for the Italian/German 7 disc release (since nobody has seen fit to make these available on Blu Ray in the country where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the original stories, lived... as yet, for some unfathomable reason). Both sets have all 14 films with the only real difference, from what I can make out since this Italian edition can be easily set for English language, with or without English subtitles in its menus, seems to be that the Italian set is £30 cheaper than the US set and that’s not including any import fees.

And what a film this is. The Hound Of The Baskervilles is the first of the original run featuring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who were so popular as Holmes and Dr. Watson that they also played them for a number of years on the radio too. This was the first of two Sherlock Holmes films made and released by 20th Century Fox in 1939, the same year that Basil Rathbone and some of the cast of this one shot Son Of Frankenstein for Universal, which I believe was filmed just before this one (and which you can find reviewed by me here). I won’t go over the plot here again because so many people know it (or if they don’t, they don’t want it spoiled) but it takes a few liberties with Conan Doyles original novel (I think I’m right in remembering this was the longest Holmes story he wrote, novel length, as a kind of flashback story in between killing him off in the stories and then, later, snatching him back from death for more money spinning tales).  

Joining the winning team of Rathbone and Bruce (easily my personal favourite Holmes and Watson) was Richard Greene (future TV Robin Hood, star of Sword Of Sherwood Forest, reviewed here and who got top billing above Rathbone), Lionel Atwill, John Carradine, Wendy Barrie (who was in a fair few films in The Saint and The Falcon series) and, of course, Mary Gordon as Holmes’ housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, who would stay with the series along with the two male stars when it made the transition, after the first two films. The transition being that, after the two Fox films, which were both set in Victorian times like Conan Doyle’s original stories were, there was a gap of three years before Universal hired the three actors for a continuation of the series, this time contemporising them so that Holmes' adventures were updated for a 1940s wartime setting.

This one is pretty great and it’s wonderful looking back on these fantastic performers and character actors playing in a well oiled mechanism of a film. The direction and camerawork both look great for the roughly 4:3 aspect ratio of the time and, as evidenced by these quite good Blu Ray transfers (so far), all filmed in a very crisp black and white. There’s also a nice sequence near the start, where Atwill’s character is reading from a manuscript to fill in Holmes on the legend of the film’s titular Hound. The flashback is presented as a live action sequences of events but, it’s depicted as a little vignette superimposed into the centre of the manuscript, with the edges of the pages and the text, some overlapping, at the edge of the action. So, yeah, a nice touch.

Rathbone is absolutely amazing as Holmes, not quite emotionless and certainly he injects the required air of authority into the character for sure. And then there’s Watson, as played by Nigel Bruce. This guy is fantastic but I notice he’s not quite as bumbly and stupid as I remembered him to be in these. Maybe that comes later with the transition to the Universal scripts but here, he certainly does take the initiative and seems much smarter than he perhaps ended up as, later in the run. Although he certainly doesn’t penetrate Holmes disguise as the old peddler, hawking his wares around the vicinity of the Grimpen Mire. But you know what? That’s okay because, one of the things I remember very clearly and, it’s certainly the case here, is that unless you are seriously looking for it, the audience isn’t going to easily penetrate Rathbone’s disguises in these films. I remember being fooled quite a lot as a kid when I first watched these (at 5.40pm in the evening, week days on BBC2 in the early to mid 1970s, if memory serves) and looking at them now, if I didn’t half remember them, I would certainly be fooled again. Rathbone is hard to spot as he makes his voice gravelly and stoops behind a fake beard and moustache. It’s great make up and works much better than a lot of the stuff you see actors trying in modern movies, it has to be said.

The sets are fantastic too... especially the outdoor sets which try very hard... and succeed... at looking very much like the Moors on which half the action takes place. You can still tell it’s a big studio set but, certainly, it’s much more lavish and believable than, say, the sets used to stand in as exterior locations that Universal were using for their horror movies at the time. These really work and there are certainly no tell tale creases in the sky as people go about their business.

And, yeah, just a treat of a movie. I won’t say much else about it because you should discover these for yourself, if you don’t already know them but, certainly, The Hound Of The Baskervilles is the first in a classic run of much loved and popular films which should be on every film enthusiast’s radar. Definitely one to check out if you’ve not seen it.