The Hound of the Baskervilles
       
Director: Paul Morrissey
Year: 1978
Rating: 3.0
Much to my horror, I discovered yet another version of The Hound of the Baskerville. I have lost count of how many I have seen, but certainly too many. Worse, this is a spoof of the book or the other films. For me, a spoof is a lowly form of comedy, slightly above farce. It is fine for five-minute skits, but an entire film of it is like sitting on barbed wire. This was like eating barbed wire. Painfully bad, but my Holmes Mania forced me to watch it till the idiotic ending. What is almost tragic is the talent involved in making this monstrosity. At the top of the bill are Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. They had been a very successful comedy team on British TV during the 1960s with what are considered classic characters and conversations. I have never seen any of them, but I would have to assume that they were more amusing than this was. They also wrote the script for this along with the director and so must take credit for this film. Also, in the cast are the noteworthy Denholm Elliot, Terry-Thomas, Hugh Griffith, Joan Greenwood, Kenneth Williams (from the carry One series), Prunella Scales (Faulty Towers) and Spike Milligan. A buffet of talent. All wasted.

 

I expect the director must also take some of the blame and the question must have been asked after it failed miserably critically and commercially, why on earth would you hire Paul Morrissey to direct a commercial comedy. Yes, that Paul Morrissey of Andy Warhol fame.  Everyone overplays their parts like braying donkeys with hard-to-understand accents. Cook plays Sherlock like a pompous dilettante, Moore is an even dimmer dimwitted Watson than normal. It follows the book very sort of. Terry-Thomas comes to them and tells them of the Legend of the Hound and that the new Baskerville has arrived and the old one murdered. Holmes is too tired to take it on and so sends Watson to take control - as he goes off for a massage with three elderly women who could play the witches n MacBeth.

 

It is basically a series of skits tied together. Baskerville Hall is run by the butler and maid like a for profit center and Watson and Baskerville have to stay together in a room, ankle deep in water living on cheese and bread. Holmes goes to see his mother who is a phony spiritualist - she is played by Moore. Later Moore also plays a one-legged man applying for a job as Holme's runner. All as funny as a thorn in your sock. Two scenes did make me laugh. I have to admit it. In one Watson meets Stapleton the next-door neighbor on the moor and Stapleton is carrying his beloved Chihuahuas with him and they urinate on Watson from head to toe and no one seems to mind. The other scene involves Stapleton's sister (Joan Greenwood) who tells Watson of her satisfying sex with the Hound and then does a Linda Blair from The Exorcist with buckets of vomit. 



I can't comprehend these folks looking at this film after it was finished and thinking, damn this is funny. I wanted to turn it off from about the five-minute mark, but I persevered for Sherlock. There have been many interpretations of Holmes and Watson in film - some wonderful and some dreadful (Holmes and Watson comes to mind), as a young man and an old man, as flesh and blood and as animation, as crazy or comical - but none of them felt like someone was squeezing my testicles with pliers as this one did. Up on YouTube in poor quality if you dare.