language_escapes and
grrlpup are fiends who hate me: they both voted for the 1978 Peter Cook. (Yeah, well, the joke’s on
grrlpup - I’m not gonna use headphones! If I have to listen to this, so does she.)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978)
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
Should I have alcohol for this? I feel like I should have alcohol for this. Would Grand Marnier go nicely in marmalade tea? *experiments* Okay, I can report that Grand Marnier is a palatable addition to marmalade tea. And it’s time to stop stalling.
I’m at a disadvantage because I don’t know any of the main cast, so I don’t know know who this guy is who’s doing up his fly before sitting down at the piano. But it seems he’s a decent piano player, in addition to being a comic one. That’s a relief, anyway.
And he will be doing the silent-movie score for the movie! Here we go! A dog howling against the moon! And they turn the page… “Three French Nuns Retrieve Their Relic at the Baker Street Home of Sherlock Holmes.” Oh, god. This is gonna be full of sex jokes, isn’t it?
Who is this, a butler? Watson? He can’t iron. And uses a clysterer to dampen the iron-scorched underthings. At the nuns’ request, whoever-it-is goes to fetch Holmes. Holmes can’t play the violin and slurps his tea. And wears a hairnet. And a corset tummy-tucker thing under his dressing gown. And the guy with the iron is Watson, apparently? Okay.
So, every line is a joke, and none of them have made me laugh yet. For example: Watson wants to know if Holmes is in; Holmes sarcastically answers that he’s in Budapest; Watson believes him and goes to break the bad news to the nuns. That kind of thing. This could be a very long hour and twenty minutes.
And after three years and a day, the nun segment is over.
“In Which Holmes and Watson Hear of a Sinister Legend,” the on-screen titles say. The illustration is one by Paget, of Moriarty visiting Holmes at Baker Street,
you know the one. The Final Problem, of course, not The Hound of the Baskervilles, but whatever.
The phone rings, and Holmes wonders who it is. Watson purses his lips and considers: a middle-aged doctor, hailing from Dartmoor, named Mortimer. Okay, that was a refreshing change from the walking stick scene that usually goes here; I’m tired of watching Watson get it wrong, and sometimes mocked for it, film after film after film. Of course, Watson was here earlier when Mortimer made the appointment, that’s how he knows. He goes to answer the door (and shuts it in Mortimer’s face after confirming it’s Mortimer), while Holmes makes sure he’s displaying some leg to receive guests.
Mortimer side-eyes these two as hard as I do. No rape re-enactment; no flashback to the yew alley. The running joke in this segment is that every time Watson expresses an opinion, he does a complete a 180 to agree with Holmes the instant Holmes says anything himself. It’s not a very funny running joke: idiot buffoon Watson was never my thing, and jokes about how Watson is of course an idiot buffoon grate on me. They SUPER exaggerate the dramatic timing of the reveal about the footsteps. (“The footsteps…” *dramatic piano music* “of…” *more dramatic music” “A…” *MORE MUSIC* “GIGANTIC HOUND!”) Which, okay, yes, that is an ostentatiously-timed dramatic moment in the novel and approximately every adaptation? And yet there’s nothing funny in pointing that out. I wonder if this is going to be the most boring liveblog ever: the production so badly wants me to laugh at everything that there’s approximately nothing here that is even inadvertently amusing, let alone deliberately amusing.
“The Next Day… They Meet The New Heir” This time the Paget illustration is of Holmes and Watson meeting Sir Henry at the hotel while he waves a boot around. That’s the right story!
Usually Sir Henry is a handsome, valorous young man; this Sir Henry is middle-aged, round-shouldered, weedy, and whiny. Also, apparently a bit dim.
Holmes doesn’t want to find a boot; that’s a job for an imbecile! Watson immediately volunteers, har har. Mortimer, good man, instantly deduces the plot to steal a boot to train a dog to attack Sir Henry. Good job, Mortimer! Cut these two loose immediately, you have matters well in hand.
Holmes decides to send Watson alone with Sir Henry to Dartmoor, and fucks off elsewhere. Aaaand Watson decides to do the walking-stick scene now, for some reason? Something about a chihuahua. I am so bored. So, probably, are you.
Again we get a Paget illustration from some other story; I don’t know which story this is, and I’m more interested in looking it up than watching the film. (Holmes and Watson in a train car, but not the illustrations from SILV or BOSC… So where is this from? Damn, but this is going to bug me.)
They are going up to the Hall in a motor car. I am mildly interested by the presence of the motor car.
I like Mrs. Barrymore. She’s not taking any nonsense from anyone. Watson and Sir Henry get cheese sandwiches and cold tea for dinner, and they must eat them right here, and not track crumbs all over the house. They may ask for anything they please between 4:00 and 4:15; otherwise, they can fuck right off. Their bedroom has four inches of standing water in it. Mrs. Barrymore has Wellingtons; neither Watson nor Sir Henry do. Watson's bed collapses into the water, and for a moment I almost feel for him.
Holmes is not hiding out on the moor; he’s in London, at a massage parlor. Ho hum.
Yay, midnight shenanigans, with the Barrymores signaling Selden on the moor. No, excuse me, these are dick jokes: they’re not signaling, they’re flashing, har har. Watson and Sir Henry don’t get very far in their investigation: Barrymore indignantly sends them back to bed, and chastened, they go.
Massage parlor again, and I am seriously considering bailing.
Yay! The Hound! I AM SO HAPPY TO SEE THE HOUND.
Well, that was a lovely three seconds of big beautiful doggie, but now we’re back to the usual gawdawful attempts at comedy, pity me. This time it’s the Barrymores having a midnight dinner party; Selden is the guest of honour. There are a bunch more people here; I don’t bother listening to find out who they are.
Holmes goes to see his mother, who is holding a fradulent seance. She’s also a female impersonator. Ah, she’s Dudley Moore, who is also Watson, who is also the piano player at the beginning. In the middle of her tirade about all the things, she strongly implies that Holmes and Watson are a gay couple and that Holmes doesn’t treat Watson right, sending him off to Dartmoor alone. I wish this was happening in some other context than HAHAHA GAAAAAAY. And now they’re making jokes that Sherlock is trans. The actual words coming out of her mouth are her belligerently misgendering him, and he’s upset enough about it that I can easily believe he is trans. Which means, of course, that none of this is the least bit funny. :-(
…aaaaaaand now I’m going to wander off to check in a bunch of works for Holmestice, because I am that bored, and I will never have anything even vaguely amusing to say about any of this.
[time passes; I reluctantly return]
Watson and Sir Henry’s room is so damp that there’s a fog bank inside it. Okay, I found that vaguely amusing. Not just their room, but the entire Hall is filled with fog! But it’s sunny outside, and you just killed the joke: it worked much better when the whole moor was so foggy - and the Hall so enormous and gloomy - that the fog permeated even the Hall. Omg, get on with it, I’m so bored with the fog joke already!
So, one thing I am learning from this film is that I don’t know my Paget illustrations very well. I couldn’t say if this was a HOUN illustration or not. Someone is all dramatic splay-legged on a chair with a book - not reading it, just being dramatic while holding it - while… a man? a painting? peers at him from… a window? a picture frame? a peep-hole in the clouds? I honestly don’t know what story this could be illustrating, and that question is far more interesting than the movie.
I can’t believe we’re not even at the halfway point.
Okay, this film broke me, because some rando just went past Watson in a cart, throwing offal at him, and that was genuinely funny. In fact, I’m scaring myself now, because I can’t stop laughing. I FEEL YOU OFFAL DUDE. THROW OFFAL. ALL THE OFFAL. THROW ALL THE OFFAL AT DUDLEY MOORE AND ANYONE ELSE WHO MADE THIS TERRIBLE TERRIBLE FILM AND CLAIMED IT WAS FUNNY.
Oh, wait! Hey! That’s PRUNELLA SCALES in the background! Rescue us, Prunella Scales! …Okay, I mildly enjoyed all the townspeople crowdsourcing Watson’s coded telegram to Holmes. Cryptography jokes are always funny. And I got to watch Prunella Scales, who was not excruciating and with whom I have comforting associations.
…aaaaaand I’m already hating this again.
[Uggggghhhhh, taking a break to eat dinner and read a book, because my god, there are limits as to how much of this I can take.]
[And an hour later, I’m back. By the way, I'm long past sober again, but I don't really think alcohol is going to help.]
Mr. Frankland lives in a tiny ramshackle cabin filled with hunting trophies. Apparently he is obsessed with hunting the Hound. And is also a raving lunatic, as much as that means anything in this film. A busty gorgeous Xena-esque Artemis of a huntress walks in - Mary Frankland, apparently, whoever she is supposed to be - and I am instantly smitten. Watson tries to shake her hand and is brought to his knees by the force of her grip. …and then the scene goes all to hell, with boob jokes and her getting knocked to the ground and throttled by Frankland, and never mind, god I hate this movie.
I can’t even guess what this next Paget illustration is from. Again, I am far more curious about it than I am interested in seeing whatever comes next.
Great, we needed a heaping dose of ableism, too. (A whole shtick about a “one-legged” man - he just has his leg bent up back behind under his coat, of course - and how he doesn’t realize that he’s disabled, hahahaha, god, I hate this movie.)
And now we finally get to Stapleton, who breeds chihuahuas. The chihuahuas are very cute, and give me a lovely excuse for not listening to the dialog. Aaaaaaaaaaand there’s the required piddling joke. Which went on for nearly an entire minute. Well, they do commit to their jokes, I’ll give them that. Nope, spoke too soon, make that two minutes of piddling joke. (Mind you, not two minutes of piddling jokes, plural. One single joke, dragged out for two minutes.)
…and I’ve again had all I can take. I’m coming back to this in the morning. Maybe.
Okay, it’s morning, I’ve done all my Holmestice tasks, and faced with the choice between kitchen chores and watching this… Actually, I’m gonna go wash dishes! Bye!
[hours later] Okay, Thanksgiving prep can’t continue until
grrlpup has done her thing, and I’m dragging anyway. Let’s see if we can kill this fucker. Only twenty-five minutes left.
Miss Stapleton is an aging diva who has seen the Hound. And now they’re implying that she was fucked by the Hound and she liked it? Ugh. Wait, what the. What. Does she have paranormal powers? Did this suddenly become a vampire film? She’s trapped Watson on the bed, and whoosh she waves her hand and the door shuts across the room, and whoosh she waves her hand again and the dressing table traps Watson against the bed and the lights flash and the wind howls and the bed is levitating and now she has bared her breast and the words LOVE ME flash in lights and there’s a prehensile tongue and what the EVERLASTING fuck is going on?
Mortimer rushes in to defend Miss Stapleton - who does not need defending - and everything immediately becomes normal again. It turns out that it was all a misunderstanding: she thought Watson was Sir Henry, and if he’s not Sir Henry, she doesn’t want to use her paranormal seduction-assault powers on him after all. Bye! And with a gesture, she blows him straight out the upper-story window on his arse. Well, she’s definitely the most interesting Miss Stapleton I’ve seen yet.
And another three seconds of the Hound. You cannot imagine my relief every time the scene cuts and it’s the Hound instead of a human failing to be funny. DOGGIE DOGGIE GIVE ME MORE DOGGIE.
Hah! This illustration is from the Twisted Lip! I got one! My morale was taking a terrible hit there, unable to identify so many illustrations.
The Barrymores are auctioning the contents of the Hall. Holmes is there in disguise. Holmes gets into a bidding war over one of the paintings, an expressionist thing done by Sir Charles, which turns out (after one turns it right-side up) to be of the Hound, ba-ba-ba-DUM. Which somehow proves that the Hound is a flesh-and-blood dog, and not a figment of legend and imagination? I don’t see how they got there, but that’s the least of my problems with this film.
Hey, this illustration is actually from HOUN! Good job, film-makers! It’s of Holmes and Watson and Lestrade lurking behind a rock, while Sir Henry is bait. Which, according to the titles, is what’s coming right up.
Out on the moor, in the foggy dusk, Holmes striding along in pipe and deerstalker, followed by Watson and Sir Henry. Are they escorting him to dinner at Merripit House? Oh, this is Selden’s death! They’re playing this very straight: Holmes explains the plot points from the book, and no one makes any jokes. Nope, spoke to soon: Sir Henry quips that he wouldn’t be caught dead in that coat, har har.
No one at Merripit House was expecting Sir Henry at dinner - because they were expecting him to get killed by the Hound on the way to dinner, haha! But they invite him and Watson in anyway. Everyone is here, btw: the Stapletons, of course, but also the Franklands and Dr. Mortimer.
Holmes lurks outside the windows, but then his mother shows up to make sure that Watson is okay. She was worried about Watson alone in Dartmoor.
This is a terrible dinner party. As usual, the chihuahua is the only thing on the screen that’s tolerable to watch. Of course they reprise the piddling joke, so I don’t even get to enjoy that. Miss Stapleton does the Exorcist head-spinning protectile-vomiting thing all over the dinner table, and that’s the end of the dinner party.
THE HOUND. THANK GOD IT’S THE HOUND. PLEASE COME SAVE US, HOUND. EAT THEM ALL!
We only see the Hound in silhouette, so it’s hard to tell, but is it a Wolfhound? It might be an Irish Wolfhound. It’s lovely, what I can see of it.
Sir Henry and Watson flee across the moor, followed by the Hound, followed by the dinner party, followed by Holmes and his mother and her accomplice in seances, all in double-speed, with comic-opera music underneath. The only one missing from the parade is Lestrade, who isn’t in this version, apparently. This is actually a kind of lovely shot, all of them silhouetted along the ridge, and if I didn’t hate the film so much, it might be interesting to find a place for it in a vid. (Should I do an all-the-versions-of-HOUN vid? I considered it once. I even have music for it.) But I’m not going to find a place for it in a vid, because GOD I HATE THIS FILM SO MUCH. There’s operatic singing and dramatic piano pounding about how Sir Henry is going to be dead soon. The Hound’s tail wags furiously as he traipses along.
That, too, is a lovely shot, the Hound bounding in silhouette after Sir Henry. Again, it’s a shame I hate this film so much. I don’t know where everyone else has gone, but now it’s just Watson and Holmes following Sir Henry and the Hound. The Hound gets hugs and scritches and wrassling - sorry, the Hound “savagely attacks Sir Henry” - while Watson and Holmes argue about whether to shoot it. (Watson is in favor of shooting it if it doesn’t surrender; Holmes is on the side of not-shooting.) Sir Henry collapses. The Hound sits very politely beside Sir Henry, tongue lolling happily.
Holmes and Watson hide while they wait for the others to catch up. Everyone else - the Franklands, the Stapletons, and Dr. Mortimer - congratulates each other on successfully killing Sir Henry. Holmes rotates the way-sign from “Grimpen Mire” to “Merripit House.” (Actually, he rotates it from “Merripit House” to “Grimpen Mire,” which is nonsense for the plan, but we know what he meant to do.) Holmes announces that Sir Henry is alive and in love - with the Hound! Sir Henry wakes up and gives the doggie kisses and skritches! Happy doggie! And then everyone else guiltily slinks back off toward “Merripit House,” but fall in the Mire instead. (See, I told you I knew which way Holmes meant to turn the sign.)
Mortimer offers to “put in a good word for Holmes” if they save him. (A good word with whom? Against what?) Holmes instructs Watson to save Mortimer. No one is actually sinking/drowning in the Mire, they’re just sitting around like it’s a hot-tub. Holmes’ Mother and her accomplice show up, as do Henry and the Hound - he is a lovely Irish Wolfhound, by the way, just as I thought. After the usual round of stupid jokes, they hold a reading of Sir Charles’ will, which is conveniently laminated against the damp of the Mire. Everything has been left to Sir Charles’ beloved pet dog, the Hound of the Baskervilles. And in the case of the Hound’s death, to Sir Henry. And in the case of Sir Henry’s death, to all the neighbors.
And thus Holmes reveals the nefarious conspiracy: the neighbors, knowing of the Baskerville family heart condition and in an attempt to create a climate of terror and anxiety, made up all these horror stories about the Hound; Dr. Mortimer, in hiring Holmes and fetching Sir Henry from London, was in charge of making sure that Sir Henry knew about the Certain Death stalking him on the moor. Consequently, when the Hound smelled Sir Henry and chased him in delight, Sir Henry was to drop dead of a bad heart, while Holmes and Watson were to shoot the poor innocent dog, thinking they were protecting Sir Henry. With the dog and Sir Henry dead - and not by their own hands! - the neighbors inherit!
You know, this is actually a very tight solution to the story. Or tight enough, anyway. And it neatly explains why in so many Hound adapts the Hound is wagging his tail while he “attacks” Selden and Sir Henry. Also, it means that the doggie gets to live happily ever after, and I am 100% behind any solution that lets the doggie live happily ever after.
(
grrlpup has just sat down and asked me how the movie is. I told her that much to my shock, it got almost good at the end. “Do you want to see the doggie?” So we rewind it to when the Hound starts chasing Sir Henry, and she watches the previous four minutes, which in fact were not egregious, just as I had suspected: Grrlpup laughs at all the jokes. Of course, she’s an easy sell whenever there’s a dog on the screen - which is more or less continuously for these four minutes - but if they’d made this thing a five minute short, centering on this alternate solution to the classic case, it might actually have been a decent comic film. But they didn’t, so OFFAL FOR THEM, and I still have four more minutes to get through.)
Sir Henry and Mrs. Holmes are both very shocked and very dismayed by this evil plan, and give the poor maligned Hound some jaw skritches. The sweet ginormous doggie enjoys them very much, as well he should.
The denouement is seeing the Barrymores off on a boat, they’re going to open an inn in America or something, I stopped paying attention.
THE DOGGIE IS BACK! Is Mrs. Holmes adopting him? She opines about what a wicked world this is, all those people wanting to make Sir Henry scared of the poor lovely doggie. I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY. There are two more minutes of random crap after that, including characters and sets exploding in flames, but the film really should have ended there, with JAW SKRITCHES and the observation about what a wicked doggie-hating world it is.
NO WAIT, I CHANGED MY MIND, THIS IS THE REAL END, AND THE BEST END: The doggie gaily running across the moors, carrying his portrait! So happy! So lovely! Disappearing into the sunset! Such a beautiful ending! The subtitles inform us: “And So… The Dog Stole The Picture,” which is meant to be a stupid pun, but for once the subtitles are exactly right: the filmmakers should have skipped everything but the five or six minutes that had the Hound in. There was actually a decent idea buried in all that crap, and decently executed too, and you could get at it with a five-minute Hound-centric super-cut, easy-peasy. And I’ll admit, I am kinda glad I saw those Hound-centric parts. (THE HOUND GOT A HAPPY ENDING AT LAST HURRAH!!) But the rest of this steaming pile of crap is absolutely not worth sitting through.
THE. FUCKING. END. Hurrah!
tl;dr One hour and twenty minutes of excruciating awfulness, but the five minutes near the end with the Hound in were watchable, offered a satisfying and doggie-positive alternative to the story's usual ending, and could have made a decent comic short. TOO BAD THEY RUINED IT BY MAKING A FEATURE-LENGTH FILM.
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