The Hound of the
Baskervilles
Director: Barry Crane
Year: 1972
Rating: 4.0
Good God, how many of these have been made.
And why do I feel I have to watch them all. A mystery of life. I saw this
one mentioned by a FB friend with a link to it on YouTube. A really lousy
quality video. Come on. If you are going to upload it to YouTube, put up
a decent copy. But at least it has an interesting if peculiar cast. Stewart
Granger plays Sherlock Holmes. Granger who plays every role exactly the same
and does so here as well. Whether Allan Quatermain or Beau Brummell or Old
Surehand, he acts just the same. But he was reasonably popular. As his Watson
is Bernard Fox who seems so familiar, but I can't recall from where. Then
two weird choices, Anthony Zerbe is the doctor who initially visits Holmes
to tell him of the curse of the Baskervilles. His entire performance is a
suspicious sneer that Zerbe mastered in years of TV villains. The filmmakers
were trying to point the audience to him as a possible guilty party except
everyone knows who that is if they are over ten. And finally, as Stapleton
is frigging William Shatner who had done nothing but Star Trek at this point.
You know, that obscure sci-fi series that vanished into a black hole. He
is as bland as pumpkin pie. Of course, I love pumpkin pie so not really a
good metaphor.
It is a TV movie that runs 70 minutes - it had hopes of being part of a series
of revolving detectives - it has all the basic plot points but hands them
out like candy at Halloween - boom boom boom. The Hound in shorthand. Astonishingly
cheap looking as if made in a basement. Baskerville Hall is a photo that
they show a few times. The Moors look like a left over Star Trek set. The
Hound is a basic dog. Not too surprising, this wasn't picked up. Too bad,
Granger and Fox would have been fine for a TV series but damn, put some money
into the budget. A shoddy affair.
