The Hound of the Baskervilles

1983 "Holmes and Watson's most chilling case... an age-old curse... a ravenous monster..."
6.6| 1h40m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 03 November 1983 Released
Producted By: Mapleton Films
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Sherlock Holmes comes to the aid of his friend Henry Baskerville, who is under a family curse and menaced by a demonic dog that prowls the bogs near his estate and murders people.

Genre

Horror, Crime, Mystery

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Director

Douglas Hickox

Production Companies

Mapleton Films

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The Hound of the Baskervilles Audience Reviews

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Thunderdodger Without doubt the best incarnation of this often repeated Sherlock Holmes story. Later versions don't come close to this one. Very well filmed, dark & suspenseful with well chosen locations & well thought out set pieces, particularly the hound chases & the final showdown in the mire. Sets are very well designed & filmed for a picture of this era, real effort has gone into this part of it - it actually looks like the outdoor scenes are really outdoors!Ian Richardson excels as Holmes & Martin Shaw is an excellent Henry Baskerville. The supporting roles are also very well cast, with an excellent British line up of players, Denholm Elliot making a fine Dr. Mortimer & Brian Blessed a memorable Geoffrey Lyons.I would also recommend watching "The Sign of Four", which was made around the same time with Ian Richardson again playing Holmes. Shame that "Study in Scarlet" & "Valley of Fear" were not made as part of the same series.
klingon-attack I won't deny this is my favourite Sherlock Holmes yarn. I must have read the story a dozen times and I own 10 film versions of it. IMO this is one of the best. True, they didn't quite stick to the story at times but in contrast to some other productions they did with the crucial parts of it. Although you can make a point of it that a film is quite a different art form and it is thus no offence to alter the storyline of a novel when adapting it to a movie I am somewhat sensitive when it comes to Sherlock Holmes adaptations. Although Richardson is in this movie not the epitome of my idea of Holmes he did a good job. As did everyone else of the cast. Another thing that struck me was that this is by far the scariest version of the HOUND I've seen. All in all it even surpasses the Brett version even though Brett generally did a better job at playing Holmes.
csrothwec Having seen the Rathbone, Cushing and Brett versions, I settled down to watch this expecting a run-of-the-mill, made for TV "quickie" which would be instantly forgettable and just "yet another" rendition of a tale all too frequently told. I was very pleasantly surprised to find a very good production with excellent direction, ensuring that it whisks along at an excellent pace and that the viewer's attention never flags. Some parts of Richardson's portrayal of Holmes do not gel, (especially the ludicrous 'gypsey' scenes), but, overall, I think he does a first rate job and, in my view, exceeds the value of the performances by Rathbone and Cushing, which, while very good in their own day, are now hopelessly dated, (to the point of caricature in the case of Rathbone and virtually ALL of the supporting players in the 1939 version!)Good supporting roles also from Martin Shaw as Baskerville and David Churchill as an entirely credible Watson, avoiding the buffoonery of the Rathbone version but also not the "over-compensation" of the Hardwick portrayal in the Brett version. This latter version, (as with the complete ITV series starring Brett, (which must rate as THE "definitive" version of the Holmes stories on screen, (whether large or small)), must probably maintain its status as the "best" version I have seen to date, BUT the Richardson one is only just behind and, as already said, in terms of overall pace and energy probably exceeds it! A pity we did not see Richardson don the deer stalker more often!
tedg Spoilers herein.How funny! At root, the Holmes stories are about introspective situation. They were written at a time (Darwin, Freud)when science was beginning a fifty year period as being something that people actually strove toward. They thought that they would be better if they incorporated a scientific approach - meaning in this case logical, introspective, aware - then life would be richer.That's true, but the exceeding purity of deduction seems to be what has stuck to these stories by most moderns. They've lost the notion that Holmes was acutely situated in his environment.That said, the 'Hound' was Doyle's most developed situation (merely because it was the longest story). The whole idea was to emphasize the bog, the isolation, the strange. Now, I don't need every Holmes to be Basil Rathbone, but the tone of this version is straight out of seventies pop culture. It is colorful and light and choppy in a trendy sort of way. Its not even aware of its own situation. What a disaster.Incidentally, they did carry over from the older films the odd notion that Watson is a bumbling idiot instead of an observer less astute than the master. That, I suppose, is a tenet of old British film-making (the goof, usually a cop), but it never works for Holmes and is more out of place in this story.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.