Der Hund von Baskerville (1937)
(I watched and wrote this in mid-September -- I meant to do a chunk of HOUN liveblogs alongside okapi1895 -- but I got swamped, ugh, and am only now getting around to posting. SORRY OKAPI.)
Der Hund von Baskerville (1937), Bruno Güttner and Fritz Odemar
So, I scrubbed (video-speak for “skimmed”) the first chunk back when I was making the vid, but I don't otherwise know much about this one. However, scrubbing was enough to learn that:
But now I have subtitles, time, and nothing at stake: it’s not like this thing going to get ick all over a year’s work if this turns out to be Nazi propaganda made by war-criminals. So let’s do this.
We begin with a humongous old-timey book in Latin, along with a portrait of “Lord Hugh Baskerville, 1529-1565”. In the painting, Lord Hugh has a gorgeous harlequin Dane at his feet. We cut to… wow, this is a very polite party. This is not an Evil Bacchanalia of Rape: the music is all happy and plinky, some couples are having a good time pattern-dancing (I don’t know about pre-waltz dancing, sue me), a bunch of kids are happily playing tag between the tables. Just a pleasant Saturday-night all-ages hoe-down at the Hall, you know?
Lord Hugh is playing dice. He was having a good time until some asshole started whispering stories in his ear about his wife and the young man she’s talking to at the other side of the room. That beautiful dog from the painting is hanging out with Lady Baskerville, leaning heavily on her for more pets, as big dogs will do. It looks like it’s having a nice time.
Yep, the only one not having a nice time here is Lord Hugh.
Well, if he’s not having a good time, no one is going to have a good time.
Sword fight! Ranging up and down the staircases! …and the young suitor is dead. That didn’t take long.
Lord Hugh goes for double homicide, throttling his wife in front of the entire assembly. She still has enough air to get out her great, long backstory about what an asshole Lord Hugh is, and how she’d rather be dead than married to him one more day-
-and she gets her wish.
Which is when her not-as-loyal-as-it-might-be dog finally stirs itself from its down-stay and goes for Lord Hugh’s throat. You know, your mistress might still be alive, dog, if you were a bit quicker on the draw, I’m just saying. (I kinda get why the Supernatural Hounds of Vengeance always wait until after the crime has been committed to get a move on - I object, of course, but I do understand that it’s part of their job description - but you’d think her very own dog would stir itself more quickly. Especially since de-escalating fights is one of the things dogs do.)
And that’s the end of the Baskerville manuscript! Back to whoever is reading it!
I assume this is Sir Charles and Dr Mortimer? Sir Charles had been reading the manuscript, and Mortimer thinks he should stop scaring himself with that old thing, he’ll give himself a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, there are eerie noises on the moor. Sir Charles says that they follow him everywhere he goes; Mortimer points out that not everything is about Baskervilles (yeah, Sir Charles!), and those noises “follow” everyone who lives on the moor.
A pretty young woman is here to see Lord Baskerville! (Despite the modern dress, she arrives in a hansom, huh.) Goodness, she introduces herself right out as Beryl Vandeleur - this is going to simplify the plot enormously. And Charles recognizes Vandeleur as a family name! Sir Charles doesn’t want to see her, but she is very insistent. “Miss or Mrs?” Charles asks, but Barrymore doesn’t know. Ah, Charles is reluctant to see her because there’s a Vandeleur in prison. But he does eventually agree to see her, otherwise this plot would never get off the ground.
She’d like to sell the Vandeleur property (which are adjacent to the Baskerville lands) to Sir Charles; he’s not interested in buying the land, but he does want to buy her. (Ew.) She demurs and demurs about his invitation to stay the night (she couldn’t impose, this was only supposed to be a day-trip, she wants to be back in London tonight). Meanwhile, Barrymore discovers that the coachman is already unloading her luggage in the drive, because she was already planning on spending the night here. Barrymore does not think these two stories add up.
(BTW, Barrymore is youngish, cleanshaven, and moderately dishy. I’m getting the impression from IMDB that he was well-known name at some point: Fritz Rasp?)
Mr. Stapleton is announced. He is a welcome guest, unlike people named Vandeleur. A welcome guest, a longstanding friend of Sir Charles, and apparently also a raging misogynist?
Sir Charles: Beware of him! He’s an embittered woman-hater. He eats women down to their skin and hair.
Me: Ew.
Beryl is wary of him, but more in a don’t-blow-my-cover kind of way than a fearful-for-her-skin-and-hair kind of way. After a moment of startlement on his part, he acts like he doesn’t know her. He’s going through this whole rigmarole about being too near-sighted to see her without his glasses, and when he finds them, he examines her face from four inches away to see if she’s pretty or not. (Ew.) Lots of jocular you’re-ugly-no-you’re-ugly joshing between the gentlemen, which Barrymore interrupts by throwing Beryl’s luggage down the stairs. Um, yeah, dude, no one believes you that the suitcase “slipped”, although I haven’t the slightest idea what your motivation was. In any case, it breaks up the party, Beryl goes upstairs to change for dinner, and Stapleton… produces a gun, describing it as the “best way to get rid of a pretty woman.” Seriously? Charles is not particularly disturbed by this, but I am. Stapleton won’t stay for dinner: he used to like Baskerville Hall, but now it has girl-cooties. Mortimer thinks all this rabid woman-hating has been hilarious, and he leaves with Stapleton.
…well, I must say, we’re so far off the usual of course of things that I haven’t the slightest freaking idea where we’re headed.
btw, this is the first adapt where I’ve been viscerally aware that this is the very same room that the Hugo flashback happened. It never looks/feels like the same place to me, but here, the way they’ve dramatically used the staircase in both time periods, I’m all, “Whoah, this is the exact same room that Lady Baskerville and her lover were murdered in! This is like a ghost story!”
Meanwhile Barrymore rejoins us, coming back down the Ancient Staircase of Murder And Also Thrown Luggage.
Charles: Is our guest happy with her room?
Barrymore: The lady didn’t have the courtesy to share her opinion with me.
Snippy! And that’s just the beginning of it: Barrymore is in a snit. Charles wants dinner for two, “friendlier than usual,” with flowers.
Barrymore: With flowers!?
Charles: Yes, with flowers! Why are you repeating that?
Barrymore: I’m not repeating, milord, I just said, “With flowers.”
Clearly, Barrymore does. not. like. the lady.
Mortimer and Stapleton, both in foul-weather gear, staggering along in the wind, clutching each other for support against the storm, still discussing Beryl Vandeleur and her prettiness, and whether that’s the ultimate mark for or against her character. Y’know, you’re both raging misogynists. One of you is just more immediately scary than the other, that’s all.
Sirens! Prison break!
And back to the Hall! Sir Charles is micromanaging the shit out of Barrymore’s table-laying - Beryl gets to have a special pillow for her chair! - and Barrymore is biting his tongue this hard. Barrymore is finally sent off-screen to search for The Perfect Candelabra Of Seduction.
Which leaves Sir Charles in the awkward position of having to answer his own telephone, poor man. ~Mysterious~ and ~urgent~ and ~secret~ convo! Beryl is eavesdropping at the door. (Too bad she couldn’t find an extension.) Charles is very upset about something that is happening tonight - apparently he forgot to keep his calendar updated - and then the call drops. (Which, I abruptly remember, once upon a time was a legitimately bizarre and disturbing thing, it happened so rarely. Now I’ve got myself a bad case of pre-cellular nostalgia.) Sir Charles would have cussed out the operator there, if this had been a cussing kind of movie. As it was, he was pretty damn rude.
Sir Charles rushes out into the night. Beryl watches him go - oh, yum, but that’s a 1930s movie-star dress - and Barrymore comes back with the Seduction Candelabra, having missed all the excitement.
Happily, Frau Barrymore comes in to tell “Schmidt” that Sir Charles is in the garden! (Barrymore’s name is “Schmidt”? But people have been calling him Barrymore! And he’s credited as Barrymore, too. Is everyone running around under assumed names?) Barrymore runs runs runs for the door! Everyone follows! But before they all go out into the night, Barrymore dramatically stops them all and tells Beryl that she musn’t come out into the garden:
Beryl: Why not?
Barrymore: There are tripping hazards and booby traps.
…alrighty then! Frau Barrymore randomly tells Beryl that dogs aren’t allowed on the grounds, because of the Curse. I have no idea why Frau Barrymore is talking about dogs right now.
Our escaped convict collars Barrymore in the garden and calls in a marker from Jack-aka-Barrymore. I’m now wondering if the convict is ‘Schmidt’, and Frau Barrymore thought she was speaking privately to Barrymore, and then cut herself off because she wasn’t?
Storm! Barking dogs! More storm! Screams! Beryl strikes a pose in the wind! The Candleabra of Seduction blows out in a sudden gust! Beryl bravely rushes out into the storm to risk tripping hazards and booby traps!
And Sir Charles is dead. BTW, we’re at the 20-minute mark of a 75-minute movie, and we haven’t yet seen Holmes and Watson. I’m understanding now why Beryl and the Baskervilles have top billing.
Sir Charles’ obit is super-short, but conveniently in screen-readable 24pt type. (The adjacent articles are in teensy unreadable 12pt.) Among other things, he was an honorary member of the “Colonial Society of British-African-Friends” (I am enjoying the likely-erroneous implication that he was a Quaker). The whole obit is in German except for one word: “of”, as in “Lord Charles Baskerville of Burgess Hill”. I assume that not translating “of” to “von” is based on the way “von” isn’t translated to English when it’s part of someone’s German title-and-name? Never mind, I’m easily distracted.
Beryl is still at the hall, despite her host being dead. She’s wearing mourning, and is using a cane when people are watching. Time to read the will! OMGOSH SIR CHARLES HAD A SECRET NEPHEW. He’s an engineer! He lives in Paris! His name is Henry Rogers! Everyone is very shocked.
And here is Sir Henry! HE WEARS A BERET. He chain-smokes! I’m hugely distracted by all the motor traffic out the back window of Mortimer’s and Henry’s cab: that is a very late-1930s streetscape. Apparently Dartmoor is just. that. rural that they’re still using hansom cabs, because all the traffic in London has fossil-fuel engines.
Mortimer’s become a believer in the Hound. So much so, that he went to see Sherlock Holmes about it! Are we really not going to get to see Mortimer’s first meeting with Holmes? Oh, I see, he went to visit him, but Holmes wasn’t there; he and Henry will go together a little later. But first we must do the letter at the Northumberland. (The letter was mailed from Charing Cross? Which is ‘two hours from Baskerville’?) btw, someone worked REALLY hard on that letter: every single character was cut out individually. Henry thinks these threatening-letter shenanigans are hilarious.
Twenty-six minutes into the movie, and here we are at Baker Street! FINALLY.
Mrs. Hudson is VERY upset that Mr. Holmes hasn’t been home in two days, and pops across the hall to bother Dr. Watson about it. Watson is too busy inspecting ash samples to worry about Mr. Holmes’ absence. He has ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN different kinds of ash there, and Mrs. Hudson is very inconsiderately making drafts! Watson is smoking two cigarettes at a time for his ash project; meanwhile, the guy next to him has been smoking the cigars. (…is that supposed to be Billy? He’s a handsome young man of twenty-or-so, and also very informally dressed - his collar is unbuttoned! - and I have no idea who he is supposed to be.) Watson and Pretty Boy are both feeling ill, they’ve been smoking so much. Mrs. Hudson thinks Watson is “ruining that young man,” and I’m still curious as to who he’s supposed to be? Watson tries to conscript Mrs. Hudson into carrying her weight with the ash project: no one is allowed to just stand around not smoking, get with it!
Holmes is home! (You know, I assumed that was Mrs. Hudson earlier, but her name is Mrs. Garben?) Holmes is wearing what appears to be a long leather trench coat over a turtleneck and baggy, baggy trousers that buckle below the knee.
Also, we don’t get to see his face. At all. Not one tiny little bit. He has his back to the camera the whole time he’s in the front hall; when he enters the sitting room he turns his face away from the camera; and now he’s sitting in a high wingback chair with its back to the camera. You can just see a hand and his crossed legs beyond the back of the chair. The staging all through here is exacly like he’s a SHADOWY SUPERVILLIAN or something.
So, Holmes is just back from finishing up the Vatican cameos case, he notices Dr. Mortimer’s walking stick - and yeah, they are still not showing us Holmes’ face. We only get a close-up of Holmes’ hands on the stick… THERE. FINALLY. Slow pan up to… da-da-da-DUM, HIS FACE. Yeah, I have no idea why they were being so dramatic about that. Whatever I was supposed to be getting from all that build-up is completely lost on me.
Holmes deducing the stick, Watson quizzing him on the deductions… Huh, Holmes eliminates “judge” for Mortimer’s profession and decides on “(medical) doctor” - I presume judges in Germany use the same title medical doctors do? They’re making much of Mortimer’s Very Large Dog. No medium-sized spaniels here!
And here is Mortimer, with the Leather-Bound Tome of the Baskerville Curse that Sir Charles was reading back at the beginning. It’s titled “Chronik and History of the Baskervilles and their family.” Hm, it might be completely arbitrary which words are in English and which in German.
Watson is mostly doing all the interviewing, but Holmes makes a gesture to Watson that he doesn’t want Mortimer to know that they know that he has a large dog. (That was much more clearly conveyed on film than in that sentence.) Watson neatly changes the direction of his questioning, mid-sentence.
Holmes doesn’t know which newspaper the letter was cut from, but Mrs. Garben does. Watson is displeased by her impudence.
Holmes just called that pretty young man “Corporal” and sent him around to all the hotels to check for letters. I’m wondering if this character is who the credits are referring to as “Sherlock Holmes’ secretary”? Look, he was just sent on Cartwright’s job; I’m going to call him Cartwright from here on out.
And now they’re discussing the odds that “Miss Henry” would have come into the inheritence if “the direct heir” -- i.e., Sir Henry -- hadn’t surfaced. Who is Miss Henry? Are they talking about Beryl Vandeleur? From context, it sounds like it? Ah, the reason she was hanging on at the Hall is because she “hurt her foot” and couldn’t leave. Watson is doing quite a lot of the questioning here - there’s no sense that Holmes is the proper detective and Watson is only the assistant. Every once in a while Holmes will give Watson a cue about what to say or withhold, or Holmes will ask a question or two himself, but Watson is doing almost all of the active parts of the interviewing, while Holmes lurks about in the background, not saying much.
Cartwright is back!
Cartwright: Mr. Holmes, there was a letter for Lord Henry Baskerville in all the hotels you gave me. But they didn’t give them to me.
Watson: I can imagine. You don’t look like a lord.
Cartwright: Why not?
Watson: Look in the mirror.
Cartwright: Well, how does a lord look?
Watson: Like me.
Hah! Frankly, Cartwright looks like someone’s pretty young side-piece. Especially with the way he’s the only man on screen who goes around with his shirt half-open.
Sir Henry calls Dr. Mortimer at Baker Street to report the Saga of the Missing Shoes. Holmes has a second earpiece on his phone that he can use to listen in, hee. :-D
…and Watson is sent alone to Baskerville Hall!
Today’s demonstration of the dangers of the moor is not a drowning, screaming pony, but a drowning policeman who had been searching for the convict. Happily, Policeman Two and Policemen Three are quick thinkers and good with a lasso, and Police Horse saves the day!
And here is Stapleton and his butterfly net.
Stapleton: Greetings to you, Mr. Watson.
Watson: How do you know me?
Stapleton: Firstly, I saw your picture recently in a newspaper. And secondly, your right shoulder is somewhat scuffed. That indicates that you always fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Sherlock Holmes. And thirdly, your name is on your suitcase.
Huh, I see you’re not having any vision trouble today, Stapleton! Odd that Mortimer doesn’t notice. But I am enjoying the suggestion that Holmes and Watson spend so much time shoulder-to-shoulder that they’ve both got wear-spots in their jackets from it.
Back at the Hall, Beryl is STILL in residence - longest overnight guest ever! - although no longer using a cane. Watson cuts off Sir Henry’s introduction, and introduces himself as “Joe Parker.” Because Beryl Vandeleur is the ONLY ONE in this movie isn’t running around under an assumed name, I guess.
…and Watson has just forgotten what false name he gave. Not smooth, Watson. Pretty sure Beryl just made you there.
Stapleton privately tells Barrymore that he’ll stay for dinner after all, and the two of them have a little confab about how they think Beryl is after the Baskerville fortune, and they must protect Sir Henry from her.
Meanwhile Beryl is helping Sir Henry unpack? …did she just get herself hired on at the hall as a maid? All righty then.
Back at Baker Street, Holmes is playing the violin while Cartwright searches through atlases for caves on the moor. Would Mr. Holmes be interested in a neolithic hut, instead? Yes, Mr. Holmes is very interested in a neolithic hut instead!
Watson is smoking in bed and sees the convict signalling out on the moor. Quick, get your slippers, Watson!
Well, that was a disaster. Watson and Sir Henry get their signals crossed and miss each other in the dark hallway, with the result that Watson is stalking Barrymore while Sir Henry is stalking Watson. And Sir Henry catches Watson a good one right across the jaw, too, ouch. Worse, when Watson tries to get Sir Henry to go on their Midnight Convict-Hunting Escapade, Sir Henry refuses to go - he wants to wait to go convict hunting in the morning.
(Which might keep them both from drowning in the mire, okay, but wouldn’t it make more sense to chase the guy who’s making the signal while you can see the signal? I think Sir Henry just doesn’t want to put shoes on.)
For this Watson, breakfast is an opportunity to interrogate everyone in the house. The paperboy just rolled on Beryl: she bought TEN copies of the Times the other day! (Why did she need ten copies when she was building those warning notes one character at a time? Surely there are enough letters in a single issue of the Times to build ten copies of the warning letter, if you only need a particular character and not a particular word? wev, don’t think about it.) And just in case there was any doubt about what she was doing with those ten copies of the Times, she asked the paper boy to deliver some glue, too.
Sir Henry goes for an early morning ride with Beryl, and they hear shots fired! She whips his horse for him, they ride away real fast, and when they finally come to a stop again she tells him straight out that someone is trying to kill him, and that’s why she sent him all those warning letters at the hotels.
And here is a big happy harlequin Dane having a happy run on the moor! It’s Mortimer’s dog, and it wants to sniff and smell and chase all the things! Maybe get some pets, too! Good doggie! I sincerely hope you survive the movie.
Stapleton has a song about cooking fish for breakfast. He doesn’t want to interrupt his singing and fish-cooking to help Watson search for Henry and Beryl, but Watson is welcome to go use the telescope on the roof.
But they won't be seen from the roof, because Henry and Beryl have already gone back to the Hall, where they’re having a “hooray, we lived!” drink, and- Oh, Sir Henry, no. He explains that “Mr. Parker” is actually “Dr. Watson,” and even explains that he’s that Dr. Watson, the one that runs with Sherlock Holmes. Beryl is very, very, very not pleased.
Stapleton has a song for everything. Now he’s singing sarcastic songs about men who are too busy putting their eyes to telescopes to eat some nice fish. (There is a dirty joke there, but I'm not making it.) Watson doesn’t care about sarcastic come-eat-some-fish songs! He’s spotted a man on the moor!
…and apparently he’s going to wait for dark to go search for the man on the moor? What is it with everyone spotting someone out there, and then waiting twelve hours to do anything about going and finding them?
Going and finding ~whoever~ is out there requires a planning session between Watson, Henry, and Stapleton - Stapleton is showing Watson and Sir Henry the various safe paths across the moor. Well, this is better than the usual case of dude-hold-my-beer midnight shenanigans? All right, fine, I suppose it makes sense to not go in the instant, if you’re going to make a well-planned campaign of it. Oh, dear, over the course of planning, Watson shows Stapleton the warning letters Henry received in London and lets it drop that Beryl wrote them. Watson, if you just put a target on Beryl’s back, I shall be very, very cross with you.
Frau Barrymore is VERY upset about the men going out on the moor together. She wants to go with them to protect them; Barrymore locks her in a room so that she can’t. That felt incredibly random, but I suppose she's worried about Selden?
Barrymore: Let happen what will happen!
Mrs. Barrymore: There will be a disaster and we are at fault. There will be a disaster!
And now Beryl is sneaking out of the castle. She heard some of the planning earlier, which makes this is the most not-secret secret midnight expedition ever. She passes by some shrubbery, and someone hidden in it grabs her hand and desperately tries to talk her out of… something. She’s unmoved. She knows she might die tonight while doing this unspecified thing, but she’s going to do it anyway.
You know, given the number of trigger-happy people wandering around the moor tonight, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if half the cast ends up dead by accident. I’m half-expecing a Hamlet-esque kill count before we’re done with all this, the way they're going.
Meanwhile, Barrymore is going up into the tower to signal Selden again. All the various parties see him signalling; most shrug and go back to what they were doing, but Beryl goes back in to confront him. And here’s where the audience is finally told about Barrymore and his brother-in-law the convict. Beryl hears from Barrymore that everyone is out on the moor tonight. She doesn’t want to be left out, so she goes back out again.
omg, Holmes is the worst at hiding out on the moor! Sir Henry and Watson are wandering around trying to find the convict, and they instead spot Holmes’ fire! I am agog at the not-hindingness of that. And then they get the jump on Holmes - actually apprehend him when he enters his hideout! - because it turns out he had no idea that they were lying in wait for him?
Holmes’ excuse for not telling Watson sooner that he was coming up to Dartmoor: “Because I only found out this evening that the man on the moor is an escaped prisoner.” …and what, exactly, does that explain? And it seems to have escaped Sir Henry’s notice that there’s been a massive manhunt going on all this time? The information flow in this film is so weird, in terms of who knows what when. They’ve been telling us-the-audience nearly everything straight out as it happens, but various parties are coming into various bits of knowledge at weird times and all out of sync with each other, and I’m starting to lose track of who does and doesn’t know a thing.
Meanwhile, Selden dies, as he always does.
Aw, Holmes has charged Sir Henry with making sure that Selden gets a decent burial. After all, as he says, “what happened to him was meant for you.” And Sir Henry actually comforts the Barrymores, instead of acting betrayed! And Barrymore demands justice for his brother-in-law: “When will this criminal be caught?” He doesn’t mean Selden, of course, but whoever has been setting the Hound loose and thus killed Selden. I don’t know that I’ve seen one of these adapts demand justice for Selden like this before.
And Holmes takes the time (at last! shouldn’t you have done this earlier??) to impress on Sir Henry that it’s dangerous to leave the Hall and go wandering around the moor. I note that this is usually the point in the narrative that Holmes is trying to convince Sir Henry of the exact opposite, to wit, that he should be taking a solitary moonlit walk across the moor, I know I said before that it would be as much as your life was worth but don’t worry about it, it’ll be fine. Anyway, Holmes leads off in the “don’t go across the moor, the Hound is out there looking for you” warnings by explaining about the Hound tracking Sir Henry’s scent, and Watson elaborates on the theme by explaining about the shoes - and we cut away to Barrymore just as he realizes that the discarded clothing he took to Selden got the man killed. Poor Barrymore. :-(
This Watson is really fast on the uptake - Holmes asks who the portrait is of, and Watson is right there with how it looks like Stapleton. Watson doesn’t think strategically, though - this is the second? third? time that Holmes has had to interrupt him from blurting everything he knows in front of everyone.
Everyone goes charging up to Beryl’s room to interrogate her. (Yes, it’s still the middle of the night.) She’s not there, but among her things is a letter of complaint from the telephone operator that Sir Charles yelled at way back at the beginning of the film, ten minutes before his death. Everyone troops off to the post office together. (Which I assume is also the switchboard?) Well, everyone but Sir Henry. Sir Henry wants to go, but Holmes and Watson won’t let him, because too dangerous.
Sooooo of course Sir Henry goes and calls up his new best friend Stapleton. The poor switchboard operator has to get out of bed because MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT PHONE CALL, and OH does she have opinions about Baskerville Hall and its inconsiderate tendency toward late-night phone calls! Sir Henry tells Stapleton everything, because Stapleton knows all the best routes across the moor, and surely he’d want to help? But Sir Henry can hear - I assume that’s Beryl? - crying for help, and so Sir Henry hangs up and goes running off to Merripit House by himself, without telling a soul where he’s going. GOOD THING that Holmes and Watson are on their way to talk to the telephone operator who just connected that call.
And Watson takes the lead on sweet-talking her, because she is Just That Pissed about all things Baskerville, and Barrymore was getting nowhere with her. Holmes and Watson really do have the job divided up so that Watson does nearly all of the social parts, and Holmes just asks a pointed question or two - or signals for Watson to take a different tack - and Watson adjusts on the fly.
Everyone is off to Merripit House. Sir Henry is being chased by the Hound, but good man, he climbs a ladder to get away from it! (How many times have I yelled at Sir Henry to climb a tree in one of these?) Unfortunately, when he gets up to the first story window, he gets a punch in the nose from Stapleton, knocking him back down the ladder. Fortunately for Sir Henry, however, Holmes and Watson arrive in time to shoot the dog. Stapleton flees, but Holmes, Watson, and Sir Henry opt to let him go in favor of rescuing Beryl: good job, I approve. It takes them AGES to find her; she’s locked in a cabinet.
Meanwhile, someone has gone after Stapleton… Is that Barrymore? I think that’s Barrymore. The fight on the back of the speeding wagon doesn’t go so well for Barrymore, and he’s thrown off. But then Stapleton accidentally drives straight into the Mire, so I guess that worked out okay for Barrymore after all. Stapleton dies, while Barrymore watches.
And back at Baker Street, Holmes is playing the violin while Watson moralizes about pretty women. Pretty Young Cartwright Who Doesn’t Button His Shirt brings in a letter. Holmes smells it, then puts it aside unopened: he has deduced that it’s an engagement announcement, because that was Miss Vandeleur’s perfume. And Watson moralizes some more about the incomprehensibility of women, because I don’t even know why.
THE END.
…so there was definitely some stuff I missed along the way (who was in the shrubbery with Beryl near the end? what was the urgent phone call about back at the beginning? who is Schmidt?) but that was a fascinating take on the Holmes-Watson partnership. There were at least two Deutsche Hunde before this film (1914 and 1929), and more generally, a solid nexus of Deutsche Holmes adaptations made before WWII. (You know how over the last half-century, there's been a solid Russian fanbase, enough to fund a body of Russian-language productions? From what I can tell, that same thing was happening in Germany before WWII.) Anyway, I am now hugely curious about that body of German adaptations look like. Is this one an outlier from the rest in how it portrays Holmes and Watson, or is this what Holmes and Watson looked like to pre-WWII Germans?
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Der Hund von Baskerville (1937), Bruno Güttner and Fritz Odemar
So, I scrubbed (video-speak for “skimmed”) the first chunk back when I was making the vid, but I don't otherwise know much about this one. However, scrubbing was enough to learn that:
- it’s a non-standard treatment of HOUN,
- it’s filmed in modern dress (as everything was in this era),
- Holmes wears a turtleneck as a matter of course (!!!), and
- Watson lies far enough outside the general run of Watsons that he’s difficult to recognize.
But now I have subtitles, time, and nothing at stake: it’s not like this thing going to get ick all over a year’s work if this turns out to be Nazi propaganda made by war-criminals. So let’s do this.
We begin with a humongous old-timey book in Latin, along with a portrait of “Lord Hugh Baskerville, 1529-1565”. In the painting, Lord Hugh has a gorgeous harlequin Dane at his feet. We cut to… wow, this is a very polite party. This is not an Evil Bacchanalia of Rape: the music is all happy and plinky, some couples are having a good time pattern-dancing (I don’t know about pre-waltz dancing, sue me), a bunch of kids are happily playing tag between the tables. Just a pleasant Saturday-night all-ages hoe-down at the Hall, you know?
Lord Hugh is playing dice. He was having a good time until some asshole started whispering stories in his ear about his wife and the young man she’s talking to at the other side of the room. That beautiful dog from the painting is hanging out with Lady Baskerville, leaning heavily on her for more pets, as big dogs will do. It looks like it’s having a nice time.
Yep, the only one not having a nice time here is Lord Hugh.
Well, if he’s not having a good time, no one is going to have a good time.
Sword fight! Ranging up and down the staircases! …and the young suitor is dead. That didn’t take long.
Lord Hugh goes for double homicide, throttling his wife in front of the entire assembly. She still has enough air to get out her great, long backstory about what an asshole Lord Hugh is, and how she’d rather be dead than married to him one more day-
-and she gets her wish.
Which is when her not-as-loyal-as-it-might-be dog finally stirs itself from its down-stay and goes for Lord Hugh’s throat. You know, your mistress might still be alive, dog, if you were a bit quicker on the draw, I’m just saying. (I kinda get why the Supernatural Hounds of Vengeance always wait until after the crime has been committed to get a move on - I object, of course, but I do understand that it’s part of their job description - but you’d think her very own dog would stir itself more quickly. Especially since de-escalating fights is one of the things dogs do.)
And that’s the end of the Baskerville manuscript! Back to whoever is reading it!
I assume this is Sir Charles and Dr Mortimer? Sir Charles had been reading the manuscript, and Mortimer thinks he should stop scaring himself with that old thing, he’ll give himself a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, there are eerie noises on the moor. Sir Charles says that they follow him everywhere he goes; Mortimer points out that not everything is about Baskervilles (yeah, Sir Charles!), and those noises “follow” everyone who lives on the moor.
A pretty young woman is here to see Lord Baskerville! (Despite the modern dress, she arrives in a hansom, huh.) Goodness, she introduces herself right out as Beryl Vandeleur - this is going to simplify the plot enormously. And Charles recognizes Vandeleur as a family name! Sir Charles doesn’t want to see her, but she is very insistent. “Miss or Mrs?” Charles asks, but Barrymore doesn’t know. Ah, Charles is reluctant to see her because there’s a Vandeleur in prison. But he does eventually agree to see her, otherwise this plot would never get off the ground.
She’d like to sell the Vandeleur property (which are adjacent to the Baskerville lands) to Sir Charles; he’s not interested in buying the land, but he does want to buy her. (Ew.) She demurs and demurs about his invitation to stay the night (she couldn’t impose, this was only supposed to be a day-trip, she wants to be back in London tonight). Meanwhile, Barrymore discovers that the coachman is already unloading her luggage in the drive, because she was already planning on spending the night here. Barrymore does not think these two stories add up.
(BTW, Barrymore is youngish, cleanshaven, and moderately dishy. I’m getting the impression from IMDB that he was well-known name at some point: Fritz Rasp?)
Mr. Stapleton is announced. He is a welcome guest, unlike people named Vandeleur. A welcome guest, a longstanding friend of Sir Charles, and apparently also a raging misogynist?
Sir Charles: Beware of him! He’s an embittered woman-hater. He eats women down to their skin and hair.
Me: Ew.
Beryl is wary of him, but more in a don’t-blow-my-cover kind of way than a fearful-for-her-skin-and-hair kind of way. After a moment of startlement on his part, he acts like he doesn’t know her. He’s going through this whole rigmarole about being too near-sighted to see her without his glasses, and when he finds them, he examines her face from four inches away to see if she’s pretty or not. (Ew.) Lots of jocular you’re-ugly-no-you’re-ugly joshing between the gentlemen, which Barrymore interrupts by throwing Beryl’s luggage down the stairs. Um, yeah, dude, no one believes you that the suitcase “slipped”, although I haven’t the slightest idea what your motivation was. In any case, it breaks up the party, Beryl goes upstairs to change for dinner, and Stapleton… produces a gun, describing it as the “best way to get rid of a pretty woman.” Seriously? Charles is not particularly disturbed by this, but I am. Stapleton won’t stay for dinner: he used to like Baskerville Hall, but now it has girl-cooties. Mortimer thinks all this rabid woman-hating has been hilarious, and he leaves with Stapleton.
…well, I must say, we’re so far off the usual of course of things that I haven’t the slightest freaking idea where we’re headed.
btw, this is the first adapt where I’ve been viscerally aware that this is the very same room that the Hugo flashback happened. It never looks/feels like the same place to me, but here, the way they’ve dramatically used the staircase in both time periods, I’m all, “Whoah, this is the exact same room that Lady Baskerville and her lover were murdered in! This is like a ghost story!”
Meanwhile Barrymore rejoins us, coming back down the Ancient Staircase of Murder And Also Thrown Luggage.
Charles: Is our guest happy with her room?
Barrymore: The lady didn’t have the courtesy to share her opinion with me.
Snippy! And that’s just the beginning of it: Barrymore is in a snit. Charles wants dinner for two, “friendlier than usual,” with flowers.
Barrymore: With flowers!?
Charles: Yes, with flowers! Why are you repeating that?
Barrymore: I’m not repeating, milord, I just said, “With flowers.”
Clearly, Barrymore does. not. like. the lady.
Mortimer and Stapleton, both in foul-weather gear, staggering along in the wind, clutching each other for support against the storm, still discussing Beryl Vandeleur and her prettiness, and whether that’s the ultimate mark for or against her character. Y’know, you’re both raging misogynists. One of you is just more immediately scary than the other, that’s all.
Sirens! Prison break!
And back to the Hall! Sir Charles is micromanaging the shit out of Barrymore’s table-laying - Beryl gets to have a special pillow for her chair! - and Barrymore is biting his tongue this hard. Barrymore is finally sent off-screen to search for The Perfect Candelabra Of Seduction.
Which leaves Sir Charles in the awkward position of having to answer his own telephone, poor man. ~Mysterious~ and ~urgent~ and ~secret~ convo! Beryl is eavesdropping at the door. (Too bad she couldn’t find an extension.) Charles is very upset about something that is happening tonight - apparently he forgot to keep his calendar updated - and then the call drops. (Which, I abruptly remember, once upon a time was a legitimately bizarre and disturbing thing, it happened so rarely. Now I’ve got myself a bad case of pre-cellular nostalgia.) Sir Charles would have cussed out the operator there, if this had been a cussing kind of movie. As it was, he was pretty damn rude.
Sir Charles rushes out into the night. Beryl watches him go - oh, yum, but that’s a 1930s movie-star dress - and Barrymore comes back with the Seduction Candelabra, having missed all the excitement.
Happily, Frau Barrymore comes in to tell “Schmidt” that Sir Charles is in the garden! (Barrymore’s name is “Schmidt”? But people have been calling him Barrymore! And he’s credited as Barrymore, too. Is everyone running around under assumed names?) Barrymore runs runs runs for the door! Everyone follows! But before they all go out into the night, Barrymore dramatically stops them all and tells Beryl that she musn’t come out into the garden:
Beryl: Why not?
Barrymore: There are tripping hazards and booby traps.
…alrighty then! Frau Barrymore randomly tells Beryl that dogs aren’t allowed on the grounds, because of the Curse. I have no idea why Frau Barrymore is talking about dogs right now.
Our escaped convict collars Barrymore in the garden and calls in a marker from Jack-aka-Barrymore. I’m now wondering if the convict is ‘Schmidt’, and Frau Barrymore thought she was speaking privately to Barrymore, and then cut herself off because she wasn’t?
Storm! Barking dogs! More storm! Screams! Beryl strikes a pose in the wind! The Candleabra of Seduction blows out in a sudden gust! Beryl bravely rushes out into the storm to risk tripping hazards and booby traps!
And Sir Charles is dead. BTW, we’re at the 20-minute mark of a 75-minute movie, and we haven’t yet seen Holmes and Watson. I’m understanding now why Beryl and the Baskervilles have top billing.
Sir Charles’ obit is super-short, but conveniently in screen-readable 24pt type. (The adjacent articles are in teensy unreadable 12pt.) Among other things, he was an honorary member of the “Colonial Society of British-African-Friends” (I am enjoying the likely-erroneous implication that he was a Quaker). The whole obit is in German except for one word: “of”, as in “Lord Charles Baskerville of Burgess Hill”. I assume that not translating “of” to “von” is based on the way “von” isn’t translated to English when it’s part of someone’s German title-and-name? Never mind, I’m easily distracted.
Beryl is still at the hall, despite her host being dead. She’s wearing mourning, and is using a cane when people are watching. Time to read the will! OMGOSH SIR CHARLES HAD A SECRET NEPHEW. He’s an engineer! He lives in Paris! His name is Henry Rogers! Everyone is very shocked.
And here is Sir Henry! HE WEARS A BERET. He chain-smokes! I’m hugely distracted by all the motor traffic out the back window of Mortimer’s and Henry’s cab: that is a very late-1930s streetscape. Apparently Dartmoor is just. that. rural that they’re still using hansom cabs, because all the traffic in London has fossil-fuel engines.
Mortimer’s become a believer in the Hound. So much so, that he went to see Sherlock Holmes about it! Are we really not going to get to see Mortimer’s first meeting with Holmes? Oh, I see, he went to visit him, but Holmes wasn’t there; he and Henry will go together a little later. But first we must do the letter at the Northumberland. (The letter was mailed from Charing Cross? Which is ‘two hours from Baskerville’?) btw, someone worked REALLY hard on that letter: every single character was cut out individually. Henry thinks these threatening-letter shenanigans are hilarious.
Twenty-six minutes into the movie, and here we are at Baker Street! FINALLY.
Mrs. Hudson is VERY upset that Mr. Holmes hasn’t been home in two days, and pops across the hall to bother Dr. Watson about it. Watson is too busy inspecting ash samples to worry about Mr. Holmes’ absence. He has ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN different kinds of ash there, and Mrs. Hudson is very inconsiderately making drafts! Watson is smoking two cigarettes at a time for his ash project; meanwhile, the guy next to him has been smoking the cigars. (…is that supposed to be Billy? He’s a handsome young man of twenty-or-so, and also very informally dressed - his collar is unbuttoned! - and I have no idea who he is supposed to be.) Watson and Pretty Boy are both feeling ill, they’ve been smoking so much. Mrs. Hudson thinks Watson is “ruining that young man,” and I’m still curious as to who he’s supposed to be? Watson tries to conscript Mrs. Hudson into carrying her weight with the ash project: no one is allowed to just stand around not smoking, get with it!
Holmes is home! (You know, I assumed that was Mrs. Hudson earlier, but her name is Mrs. Garben?) Holmes is wearing what appears to be a long leather trench coat over a turtleneck and baggy, baggy trousers that buckle below the knee.
Also, we don’t get to see his face. At all. Not one tiny little bit. He has his back to the camera the whole time he’s in the front hall; when he enters the sitting room he turns his face away from the camera; and now he’s sitting in a high wingback chair with its back to the camera. You can just see a hand and his crossed legs beyond the back of the chair. The staging all through here is exacly like he’s a SHADOWY SUPERVILLIAN or something.
So, Holmes is just back from finishing up the Vatican cameos case, he notices Dr. Mortimer’s walking stick - and yeah, they are still not showing us Holmes’ face. We only get a close-up of Holmes’ hands on the stick… THERE. FINALLY. Slow pan up to… da-da-da-DUM, HIS FACE. Yeah, I have no idea why they were being so dramatic about that. Whatever I was supposed to be getting from all that build-up is completely lost on me.
Holmes deducing the stick, Watson quizzing him on the deductions… Huh, Holmes eliminates “judge” for Mortimer’s profession and decides on “(medical) doctor” - I presume judges in Germany use the same title medical doctors do? They’re making much of Mortimer’s Very Large Dog. No medium-sized spaniels here!
And here is Mortimer, with the Leather-Bound Tome of the Baskerville Curse that Sir Charles was reading back at the beginning. It’s titled “Chronik and History of the Baskervilles and their family.” Hm, it might be completely arbitrary which words are in English and which in German.
Watson is mostly doing all the interviewing, but Holmes makes a gesture to Watson that he doesn’t want Mortimer to know that they know that he has a large dog. (That was much more clearly conveyed on film than in that sentence.) Watson neatly changes the direction of his questioning, mid-sentence.
Holmes doesn’t know which newspaper the letter was cut from, but Mrs. Garben does. Watson is displeased by her impudence.
Holmes just called that pretty young man “Corporal” and sent him around to all the hotels to check for letters. I’m wondering if this character is who the credits are referring to as “Sherlock Holmes’ secretary”? Look, he was just sent on Cartwright’s job; I’m going to call him Cartwright from here on out.
And now they’re discussing the odds that “Miss Henry” would have come into the inheritence if “the direct heir” -- i.e., Sir Henry -- hadn’t surfaced. Who is Miss Henry? Are they talking about Beryl Vandeleur? From context, it sounds like it? Ah, the reason she was hanging on at the Hall is because she “hurt her foot” and couldn’t leave. Watson is doing quite a lot of the questioning here - there’s no sense that Holmes is the proper detective and Watson is only the assistant. Every once in a while Holmes will give Watson a cue about what to say or withhold, or Holmes will ask a question or two himself, but Watson is doing almost all of the active parts of the interviewing, while Holmes lurks about in the background, not saying much.
Cartwright is back!
Cartwright: Mr. Holmes, there was a letter for Lord Henry Baskerville in all the hotels you gave me. But they didn’t give them to me.
Watson: I can imagine. You don’t look like a lord.
Cartwright: Why not?
Watson: Look in the mirror.
Cartwright: Well, how does a lord look?
Watson: Like me.
Hah! Frankly, Cartwright looks like someone’s pretty young side-piece. Especially with the way he’s the only man on screen who goes around with his shirt half-open.
Sir Henry calls Dr. Mortimer at Baker Street to report the Saga of the Missing Shoes. Holmes has a second earpiece on his phone that he can use to listen in, hee. :-D
…and Watson is sent alone to Baskerville Hall!
Today’s demonstration of the dangers of the moor is not a drowning, screaming pony, but a drowning policeman who had been searching for the convict. Happily, Policeman Two and Policemen Three are quick thinkers and good with a lasso, and Police Horse saves the day!
And here is Stapleton and his butterfly net.
Stapleton: Greetings to you, Mr. Watson.
Watson: How do you know me?
Stapleton: Firstly, I saw your picture recently in a newspaper. And secondly, your right shoulder is somewhat scuffed. That indicates that you always fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Sherlock Holmes. And thirdly, your name is on your suitcase.
Huh, I see you’re not having any vision trouble today, Stapleton! Odd that Mortimer doesn’t notice. But I am enjoying the suggestion that Holmes and Watson spend so much time shoulder-to-shoulder that they’ve both got wear-spots in their jackets from it.
Back at the Hall, Beryl is STILL in residence - longest overnight guest ever! - although no longer using a cane. Watson cuts off Sir Henry’s introduction, and introduces himself as “Joe Parker.” Because Beryl Vandeleur is the ONLY ONE in this movie isn’t running around under an assumed name, I guess.
…and Watson has just forgotten what false name he gave. Not smooth, Watson. Pretty sure Beryl just made you there.
Stapleton privately tells Barrymore that he’ll stay for dinner after all, and the two of them have a little confab about how they think Beryl is after the Baskerville fortune, and they must protect Sir Henry from her.
Meanwhile Beryl is helping Sir Henry unpack? …did she just get herself hired on at the hall as a maid? All righty then.
Back at Baker Street, Holmes is playing the violin while Cartwright searches through atlases for caves on the moor. Would Mr. Holmes be interested in a neolithic hut, instead? Yes, Mr. Holmes is very interested in a neolithic hut instead!
Watson is smoking in bed and sees the convict signalling out on the moor. Quick, get your slippers, Watson!
Well, that was a disaster. Watson and Sir Henry get their signals crossed and miss each other in the dark hallway, with the result that Watson is stalking Barrymore while Sir Henry is stalking Watson. And Sir Henry catches Watson a good one right across the jaw, too, ouch. Worse, when Watson tries to get Sir Henry to go on their Midnight Convict-Hunting Escapade, Sir Henry refuses to go - he wants to wait to go convict hunting in the morning.
(Which might keep them both from drowning in the mire, okay, but wouldn’t it make more sense to chase the guy who’s making the signal while you can see the signal? I think Sir Henry just doesn’t want to put shoes on.)
For this Watson, breakfast is an opportunity to interrogate everyone in the house. The paperboy just rolled on Beryl: she bought TEN copies of the Times the other day! (Why did she need ten copies when she was building those warning notes one character at a time? Surely there are enough letters in a single issue of the Times to build ten copies of the warning letter, if you only need a particular character and not a particular word? wev, don’t think about it.) And just in case there was any doubt about what she was doing with those ten copies of the Times, she asked the paper boy to deliver some glue, too.
Sir Henry goes for an early morning ride with Beryl, and they hear shots fired! She whips his horse for him, they ride away real fast, and when they finally come to a stop again she tells him straight out that someone is trying to kill him, and that’s why she sent him all those warning letters at the hotels.
And here is a big happy harlequin Dane having a happy run on the moor! It’s Mortimer’s dog, and it wants to sniff and smell and chase all the things! Maybe get some pets, too! Good doggie! I sincerely hope you survive the movie.
Stapleton has a song about cooking fish for breakfast. He doesn’t want to interrupt his singing and fish-cooking to help Watson search for Henry and Beryl, but Watson is welcome to go use the telescope on the roof.
But they won't be seen from the roof, because Henry and Beryl have already gone back to the Hall, where they’re having a “hooray, we lived!” drink, and- Oh, Sir Henry, no. He explains that “Mr. Parker” is actually “Dr. Watson,” and even explains that he’s that Dr. Watson, the one that runs with Sherlock Holmes. Beryl is very, very, very not pleased.
Stapleton has a song for everything. Now he’s singing sarcastic songs about men who are too busy putting their eyes to telescopes to eat some nice fish. (There is a dirty joke there, but I'm not making it.) Watson doesn’t care about sarcastic come-eat-some-fish songs! He’s spotted a man on the moor!
…and apparently he’s going to wait for dark to go search for the man on the moor? What is it with everyone spotting someone out there, and then waiting twelve hours to do anything about going and finding them?
Going and finding ~whoever~ is out there requires a planning session between Watson, Henry, and Stapleton - Stapleton is showing Watson and Sir Henry the various safe paths across the moor. Well, this is better than the usual case of dude-hold-my-beer midnight shenanigans? All right, fine, I suppose it makes sense to not go in the instant, if you’re going to make a well-planned campaign of it. Oh, dear, over the course of planning, Watson shows Stapleton the warning letters Henry received in London and lets it drop that Beryl wrote them. Watson, if you just put a target on Beryl’s back, I shall be very, very cross with you.
Frau Barrymore is VERY upset about the men going out on the moor together. She wants to go with them to protect them; Barrymore locks her in a room so that she can’t. That felt incredibly random, but I suppose she's worried about Selden?
Barrymore: Let happen what will happen!
Mrs. Barrymore: There will be a disaster and we are at fault. There will be a disaster!
And now Beryl is sneaking out of the castle. She heard some of the planning earlier, which makes this is the most not-secret secret midnight expedition ever. She passes by some shrubbery, and someone hidden in it grabs her hand and desperately tries to talk her out of… something. She’s unmoved. She knows she might die tonight while doing this unspecified thing, but she’s going to do it anyway.
You know, given the number of trigger-happy people wandering around the moor tonight, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if half the cast ends up dead by accident. I’m half-expecing a Hamlet-esque kill count before we’re done with all this, the way they're going.
Meanwhile, Barrymore is going up into the tower to signal Selden again. All the various parties see him signalling; most shrug and go back to what they were doing, but Beryl goes back in to confront him. And here’s where the audience is finally told about Barrymore and his brother-in-law the convict. Beryl hears from Barrymore that everyone is out on the moor tonight. She doesn’t want to be left out, so she goes back out again.
omg, Holmes is the worst at hiding out on the moor! Sir Henry and Watson are wandering around trying to find the convict, and they instead spot Holmes’ fire! I am agog at the not-hindingness of that. And then they get the jump on Holmes - actually apprehend him when he enters his hideout! - because it turns out he had no idea that they were lying in wait for him?
Holmes’ excuse for not telling Watson sooner that he was coming up to Dartmoor: “Because I only found out this evening that the man on the moor is an escaped prisoner.” …and what, exactly, does that explain? And it seems to have escaped Sir Henry’s notice that there’s been a massive manhunt going on all this time? The information flow in this film is so weird, in terms of who knows what when. They’ve been telling us-the-audience nearly everything straight out as it happens, but various parties are coming into various bits of knowledge at weird times and all out of sync with each other, and I’m starting to lose track of who does and doesn’t know a thing.
Meanwhile, Selden dies, as he always does.
Aw, Holmes has charged Sir Henry with making sure that Selden gets a decent burial. After all, as he says, “what happened to him was meant for you.” And Sir Henry actually comforts the Barrymores, instead of acting betrayed! And Barrymore demands justice for his brother-in-law: “When will this criminal be caught?” He doesn’t mean Selden, of course, but whoever has been setting the Hound loose and thus killed Selden. I don’t know that I’ve seen one of these adapts demand justice for Selden like this before.
And Holmes takes the time (at last! shouldn’t you have done this earlier??) to impress on Sir Henry that it’s dangerous to leave the Hall and go wandering around the moor. I note that this is usually the point in the narrative that Holmes is trying to convince Sir Henry of the exact opposite, to wit, that he should be taking a solitary moonlit walk across the moor, I know I said before that it would be as much as your life was worth but don’t worry about it, it’ll be fine. Anyway, Holmes leads off in the “don’t go across the moor, the Hound is out there looking for you” warnings by explaining about the Hound tracking Sir Henry’s scent, and Watson elaborates on the theme by explaining about the shoes - and we cut away to Barrymore just as he realizes that the discarded clothing he took to Selden got the man killed. Poor Barrymore. :-(
This Watson is really fast on the uptake - Holmes asks who the portrait is of, and Watson is right there with how it looks like Stapleton. Watson doesn’t think strategically, though - this is the second? third? time that Holmes has had to interrupt him from blurting everything he knows in front of everyone.
Everyone goes charging up to Beryl’s room to interrogate her. (Yes, it’s still the middle of the night.) She’s not there, but among her things is a letter of complaint from the telephone operator that Sir Charles yelled at way back at the beginning of the film, ten minutes before his death. Everyone troops off to the post office together. (Which I assume is also the switchboard?) Well, everyone but Sir Henry. Sir Henry wants to go, but Holmes and Watson won’t let him, because too dangerous.
Sooooo of course Sir Henry goes and calls up his new best friend Stapleton. The poor switchboard operator has to get out of bed because MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT PHONE CALL, and OH does she have opinions about Baskerville Hall and its inconsiderate tendency toward late-night phone calls! Sir Henry tells Stapleton everything, because Stapleton knows all the best routes across the moor, and surely he’d want to help? But Sir Henry can hear - I assume that’s Beryl? - crying for help, and so Sir Henry hangs up and goes running off to Merripit House by himself, without telling a soul where he’s going. GOOD THING that Holmes and Watson are on their way to talk to the telephone operator who just connected that call.
And Watson takes the lead on sweet-talking her, because she is Just That Pissed about all things Baskerville, and Barrymore was getting nowhere with her. Holmes and Watson really do have the job divided up so that Watson does nearly all of the social parts, and Holmes just asks a pointed question or two - or signals for Watson to take a different tack - and Watson adjusts on the fly.
Everyone is off to Merripit House. Sir Henry is being chased by the Hound, but good man, he climbs a ladder to get away from it! (How many times have I yelled at Sir Henry to climb a tree in one of these?) Unfortunately, when he gets up to the first story window, he gets a punch in the nose from Stapleton, knocking him back down the ladder. Fortunately for Sir Henry, however, Holmes and Watson arrive in time to shoot the dog. Stapleton flees, but Holmes, Watson, and Sir Henry opt to let him go in favor of rescuing Beryl: good job, I approve. It takes them AGES to find her; she’s locked in a cabinet.
Meanwhile, someone has gone after Stapleton… Is that Barrymore? I think that’s Barrymore. The fight on the back of the speeding wagon doesn’t go so well for Barrymore, and he’s thrown off. But then Stapleton accidentally drives straight into the Mire, so I guess that worked out okay for Barrymore after all. Stapleton dies, while Barrymore watches.
And back at Baker Street, Holmes is playing the violin while Watson moralizes about pretty women. Pretty Young Cartwright Who Doesn’t Button His Shirt brings in a letter. Holmes smells it, then puts it aside unopened: he has deduced that it’s an engagement announcement, because that was Miss Vandeleur’s perfume. And Watson moralizes some more about the incomprehensibility of women, because I don’t even know why.
THE END.
…so there was definitely some stuff I missed along the way (who was in the shrubbery with Beryl near the end? what was the urgent phone call about back at the beginning? who is Schmidt?) but that was a fascinating take on the Holmes-Watson partnership. There were at least two Deutsche Hunde before this film (1914 and 1929), and more generally, a solid nexus of Deutsche Holmes adaptations made before WWII. (You know how over the last half-century, there's been a solid Russian fanbase, enough to fund a body of Russian-language productions? From what I can tell, that same thing was happening in Germany before WWII.) Anyway, I am now hugely curious about that body of German adaptations look like. Is this one an outlier from the rest in how it portrays Holmes and Watson, or is this what Holmes and Watson looked like to pre-WWII Germans?
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