Too bad 1959’s The Hound of the Baskervilles marked Peter Cushing’s one and only time to play Sherlock Holmes on the big screen, because he does a great job at it. And too bad Hound is the only Holmes adaptation undertaken by Hammer Films, because this had franchise potential written all over it.
After a 10-minute prologue that doesn’t even involve Holmes or Dr. Watson, detailing the curse of the well-to-do Baskerville family, the movie gets going with the plot, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle originally presented it: With Sir Charles Baskerville dead of fright, his nephew, Henry (Christopher Lee), inherits his estate on the moors, and Holmes and Watson (André Morell, The Mummy’s Shroud) suspect he may suffer the same fate as his uncle.
They have good reason to suspect as much, because out of his boot pops a big ol’ tarantula that immediately starts making its way toward a frozen-in-shock Henry’s face. Watson accompanies Henry to Baskerville Hall, where the sounds of the hound — a beast rumored to have killed many a man over the decades — pervade the night sky.
Not a believer in the supernatural, Holmes aims to get to the bottom of it, and naturally, he does. Only this time, Doyle’s story comes infused with spiders, scorpions, sacrifices and a suspenseful third-act descent into a dangerous mine shaft. Although the film by Hammer regular Terence Fisher (Horror of Dracula) is overly talky at times, it’s well-made in that unmistakable Hammer tradition, brimming with color and Gothic atmosphere, even on obvious sets. —Rod Lott