This afternoon I watched the 1959 Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing classic The Hound of the Baskervilles based on the legendary Sherlock Holmes book.
Having read the book a couple of times (most recently about 6 years ago I think) I remembered many if not all of the details of the plot. There were some minor changes between the book and the film (Stapleton's wife posed as his daughter, not his sister, there's a drunk bishop for some reason, Sir Henry being in South Africa instead of Ontario, completely removing the Lady Lyons subplot, replacing the London hotel shenanigans with a spider attack), but in general the story remains the same.
Here's the basic plot synopsis:
- A visitor arrives at Baker Street needing Holmes' help to save the new master of Baskerville Hall
- Holmes sends Watson to go to Devonshire with Sir Henry as he's "clearly too busy"
- Watson takes an agonizingly long time dealing with red herrings and extraneous filler
- Holmes miraculously turns out to have been secretly been around the whole time and knew who the killer was since the beginning but was simply dicking around and wasting time
- They fail, but it turns out they didn't because the victim of the first murder was a case of mistaken identity
- They succeed in saving Sir Henry from the crazed dog that really did exist
The actor who played Watson did an okay job, and seeing as how this particular story is basically Watson's, I think they made a mistake in not casting somebody more charismatic, but perhaps they thought Peter Cushing's Holmes needed to be contrasted against him. Cushing did a great job with Holmes, but what you're left with watching this film is how insanely boring Christopher Lee is when he's not evil. You keep waiting for him to be evil and he isn't.
I just really can't get over how much unnecessary filler is in this story. I'm not going to blame the film, since it's a sin from the actual book. I understand its considered a classic but it's maddeningly long. As Douglas Adams once wrote in one of his Hitchhikers books, you can stretch descriptions out and lengthen your novel but your readers will never forgive you.
It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere You don't, in short, want to know.As you're going through that second and third act of the movie, much like in the book, I'm half screaming at Holmes what on earth are you waiting for? The movie, unlike the book, doesn't at least end with another scene of Holmes explaining the details that we already should have known. After the hound was dead and Sir Henry wasn't, the movie has one minute of Holmes and Watson in their smoking room having a thematic discussion and then boom! credits!
