"The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1959)

This will never be my favorite adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles by A. Conan Doyle (so, fear not, Jeremy Brett!), but it also will never be my least-favorite (sorry, Basil Rathbone).  I enjoy this one pretty well, enough to own a copy of it and have watched it more than once.  

The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of my top five favorite books of all time.  I reread it this October for the umpteenth time, and it was an absolute delight, as usual.  So, I will freely admit that rewatching this 1959 version so soon after having read the book may have made me a little less enthusiastic about this version than I was in the past.  But it also made me really appreciate some aspects of this version, particularly the casting for Sir Henry Baskerville.

The story in a nutshell is this: Sherlock Holmes (Peter Cushing) is consulted about whether or not Sir Henry Baskerville (Christopher Lee) should move to Baskerville Hall, which he just inherited when a relative died under mysterious circumstances.  Holmes delegates the job to Dr. Watson (Andre Morell), who heads out to Baskerville Hall with Sir Henry, determined to figure out if the last Baskerville's death was as mysterious as it seems.

I don't particularly like Peter Cushing's portrayal of Holmes, as he spends an awful lot of time berating Watson and making shrill proclamations.  And Andre Morell's portrayal of Watson is adequate, but kind of bores me.  The real highlight of this movie, for me is Sir Christopher Lee.  He plays Sir Henry as intelligent, shrewd, curious, and secretly passionate.  Sir Henry in the book is fairly brash and bold, which is A. Conan Doyle's assumption about anyone who has lived in North America, but Lee doesn't take the "make lots of loud announcements about your own courage" route that could feel like the obvious choice.  Instead, he gives us a Sir Henry who has a lot of strong feelings and opinions, but is self-controlled and keeps a firm hold on himself... most of the time.

The first time we really see this come to the fore is when a deadly tarantula crawls all over Sir Henry and he must keep absolutely still to keep from startling it and making it bite him.  Now, if you have ever read the book this is based on, you will know that there are ZERO tarantulas in the book.  This movie is a Hammer Films production, and that means it needs to be scary and creepy and thrilling and weird, and the filmmakers seem to have decided that a giant, glowing, spectral hound was not scary, creepy, thrilling, or weird enough, so they tossed in all this nonsense with deadly tarantulas.  I happen to loathe spiders and be a total arachnophobe, so I have to close my eyes for most of this scene, but I have watched enough of it between my fingers to know that Christopher Lee plays Sir Henry as being terrified, but also having the supreme self-control needed to not scream like a two-year-old girl and flail madly about, which is certainly what I would have done in his position.  That's really great character development, because we are eventually going to see Sir Henry confronted by events that he can't quite control himself so well about, and that will make us see how deeply he's moved by them.

By the way, that will not be his encounter with the spectral hound that haunts his family and scares them into dying, or rips out their throats, etc.  No, no, what causes Sir Henry to lose his composure is an alluring girl (Marla Landi).  She is a real piece of work, half the time coming on to Sir Henry in the most obvious ways possible, and half the time behaving like the sight of him makes her want to puke.  No wonder he eventually is so frustrated by her hot-and-cold nonsense that he can barely restrain himself from just grabbing her and holding her still so he can kiss her back after she unexpectedly kisses him and then switches moods and slinks away from him.  The look on his face that says "I am sick and tired of constantly having to lock away what I think and feel" hits me hard.  

If you like somewhat lurid horror movies from the 1950s, with lots of "oh no!" vibes and jump scares, and you aren't too picky about your adaptations of classic books (for instance, this one wanders off in the last act and has this huge section that takes place in an abandoned mine and involves a cave-in, and then totally changes up who the villain actually is), this version of this classic story is pretty fun.

This has been my contribution to the Hammer-Amicus Blogathon IV hosted by Cinematic Catharsis and Realweegiemidget Reviews.

If you like blogathons, check back tomorrow for an announcement about one I'll be co-hosting soon!