AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME ON BLU RAY! WIN HAMMER FILMS HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES!

AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME ON BLU RAY!  COMPETITION! THIS WEEKEND! Don't Miss Out on the first of TWO competitions where you can WIN yourself a copy of Shock Entertainment's superb BLU RAY release of #hammerfilms THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES starring #petercushing #christopherlee and #andremorell Look out for updates and how you can enter here on our pcasuk facebook fan page, Cinema Cult Facebook page, the Screenpop Facebook Page and petercushing.org.uk! .... #areyouassharpassherlockholmes

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GREAT BRITONS PETER CUSHING ROYAL MAIL POSTAGE STAMP COMPETITION!

COMPETITION OPEN NOW! 

Here's your chance to win a set of the limited issue, Royal Mail 'Great Briton's Postage Stamps' that were issued last year. We have THREE sets to give away as prizes!

THE QUESTIONS:

1) Director Terence Fisher shot test footage of the Hound with children performers in smaller versions of Christopher Lee's and Peter Cushing's costumes, to try and make the appearance of the 'Hound' look bigger! TRUE OR FALSE?

2) The 'HOUND' was played by a Great Dane. His name was:
a) Trooper
b) Colonel
c) Major
d) Bonzo

3) Complete this line of Sherlock Holmes dialogue from the film: ' My professional charges are on a fixed scale, I do not vary them, except.....

4) The 'HOUND' wore a prosthetic mask, to enlarge his head and make his appearance more frightening. WHO made that mask?

5) Location work for the climax of Hammer films, The Hound of the Baskervilles, was actually shot on the moors of Dartmoor. TRUE or FALSE?

6) Actress MARLA LANDI played Cecile Stapleton, and was recommended for the role by Peter Cushing, after he spotted her in a film. TRUE or FALSE?

7) Hammer films, 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' was the second version of the film to be shot in colour.
TRUE or FALSE?

8) THE interior set of Baskerville Hall is actually the redressed set of Castle Dracula from 'Dracula , Prince of Darkness'. TRUE or FALSE?

9) According to uncredited producer Kenneth Hyman, from Warner Brothers, The Hound of the Baskervilles was made with a budget of approximately:
a) £35,000
b) £56,000
c) £92,000
d) £73,000

10) Andre Morell who played Dr Watson, appeared in how many feature films with Peter Cushing?

WHO CAN ENTER?:
As with ALL our PCASUK competitions, this competition is open to everyone! Even if you are not a 'follower' of this website.

YOUR ENTRY:
PLEASE SEND your answers to theblackboxclub@gmail.com ANY entries posted onto the comments feed will be deleted and not counted as an entry.

DEADLINE:
ALL entries must be in by the closing date of this competition: 9PM GMT TUESDAY JULY 22ND. The winners names will announced here on the pcasuk facebook page on WEDNESDAY JULY 23RD 10PM GMT.

Have Fun and Good Luck!

BEWARE THE MOORS AT NIGHT! TROY HOWARTH REVIEWS PETER CUSHING'S BBC 'HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES'

According to legend, the heirs of the Baskerville family are all doomed to meet untimely demises at the claws of the Hound of the Baskervilles; Sherlock Holmes is called in to uncover the truth…

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s career as a writer is inextricably linked to his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes.  This was not what the author himself had in mind, however, and indeed he eventually tired of the popularity of the character and grew to resent having to serialize his adventures.  He decided to kill the master detective off in 1893, with The Final Problem, wherein Holmes takes a tumble off Reichenbach Falls while struggling with his nemesis, the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.  Public outcry was so strong that Doyle eventually felt compelled to revive the character.  Published in 1901 and 1902, The Hound of the Baskervilles – its action set before the incidents dramatized in The Final Problem – was the first of the “new” Holmes adventures; it has since become the most popular of the various Holmes adventures.  It also remains far and away the most heavily adapted for film and television.  A complete rundown of the various versions would call for an article in itself; suffice to say, it was serialized in Germany on at least two occasions during the silent era, in addition to several other British and German versions, many of which are now believed to be lost.

 

The 1939 version from 20^th Century Fox version is remembered less for its (sometimes spotty) merits as a film than for being the first to introduce the now-legendary pairing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson.  Rathbone remains the screen’s definitive Holmes, while Bruce’s less-than-canonical account of Watson remains a sore point with many purists.  The Fox version has some nice set pieces but lumbers under the pedestrian direction of Sidney Lanfield.

An obscure German version from the 1950s would follow, but it would be up to Hammer Films to offer up the next significant adaptation.  Peter Cushing made his debut as Holmes, with Andre Morell as a much-truer-to-Doyle incarnation of Watson.  Capitalizing on the success of their Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), Hammer also saw fit to cast Christopher Lee in the role of Sir Henry Baskerville, thus giving the actor his first chance to play a romantic lead.  This version has many fine points to recommend notably Morell’s Watson and a tour de force bit of directing from Terence Fisher during the film’s extended opening flashback sequence – but it suffers from taking too many liberties with the text and has a generally cramped and claustrophobic quality, despite some superb cinematography by the great Jack Asher.  Cushing’s neurotic take on the detective, however, did not really connect with audiences – and the film failed to repeat the box office takings of Hammer’s straight horror films, thus quashing the potential for a series of Holmes adventures.

The next version is the one under discussion, produced by the BBC , with Cushing reprising his turn as Holmes and Nigel Stock stepping in to play Watson, as he had done for the entire run of the BBC series.  Later versions would range from the serious to the comical – Paul Morrissey’s slapstick-infused version from 1978, starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, is often reviled, but taken on its own lighthearted terms, it offers some genuine chuckles – with wildly uneven results.  A 1972 TV version starring Stewart Granger and Bernard Fox was one of the worst, while Granada ’s miniseries version with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke was something of a disappointment.  Ultimately, for a story adapted for the screen on so many occasions, the definitive version has proved elusive; in many respects, this two-part BBC version is as good an option as any, for at least it remains true to the basic particulars of the story, and offers up a fine Cushing performance at its center.  But like every other extant version to date, it most definitely falls way short of the potential offered by the subject matter.

Like other entries in the BBC series, the film suffers, aesthetically, from the mixture of being shot on film and video – the location photography is much appreciated, however, and helps to add a sense of menace to the proceedings.  The script is dialogue heavy, but this is hardly an issue when Cushing is on hand to help sell the material.  He again displays great chemistry with Stock, and the two actors are quite skilled at bringing their characters to life.  Director Graham Evans shows himself to be more competent than inspired, and the pacing tends to slacken when Holmes is off screen – which, this being relatively faithful to the text, poses a problem in the mid-section of the narrative. 

The supporting cast includes Gary Raymond, then part of the ensemble of the popular Rat Patrol TV series and later to headline on the better episodes of The Hammer House of Horror, Two Faces of Evil.  Raymond does a capable job as Sir Henry, though he inevitably lacks the sheer presence of Lee in the earlier adaptation.  Ballard Berkeley, later to find small screen immortality as the delightfully dotty Major in Fawlty Towers, puts in an appearance as Sir Charles Baskerville; he had earlier costarred with Cushing in Cone of Silence (1960).  David Leland makes for a less blustery and overtly suspicious-looking Dr. Mortimer than Lionel Atwill and Francis DeWolff, in the Fox and Hammer versions, respectively; he would later pop up in comedic relief capacity in Roy Ward Baker’s Scars of Dracula (1970).

This version of Hound may not offer up the blood and thunder approach of the Hammer version, but it remains a very competent adaptation in its own right.

It’s truer in spirit and particulars to Doyle’s original tale, and it makes for a cozy way of whiling away a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon; mystery lovers with a love of old fashioned whodunnits will be properly entertained.

Review: Troy Howarth
Images: Marcus Brooks

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HOW SHERLOCK GOT THE BURNS IN HIS DRESSSING GOWN: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

Peter Cushing on his methodical preparation in playing Sherlock Holmes. With the majority of roles that Peter played throughout his long career, this attention to detail, was not unusual....

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES: HAMMER FILMS (1959) PETER CUSHING SHERLOCK HOLMES

'HEAR NOW, THE LEGEND OF THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES' PETER CUSHING, ANDRE MORELL : SHERLOCK HOLMES : HAMMER FILMS GALLERY AND REVIEW

Considering that I like the character of Sherlock Holmes so much, it may come as some surprise that I’ve never read a word of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories. My first, and most extensive, contact with Sherlock Holmes comes from the films starring Basil Rathbone as the world’s greatest detective and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. I’m aware that the performances these two gave, and the stories they were involved in, varied (sometimes greatly) from the source material, but I like them all the same.

Because I’m so familiar with the Basil Rathbone versions, it’s always interesting when I get to see another actor’s take on Holmes and another set of filmmakers’ approach to the same basic material. Consequently, when the Hammer Films version of The Hound of the Baskervilles aired on MGM HD — an almost, but not quite, variation on Turner Classic Movies — I jumped at the chance. I happen to have a fondness for Hammer productions, so this was a two-fer.

Hammer is known primarily for its horror output (all those Dracula movies foremost among them), so The Hound of the Baskervilles is something different. It still has a quasi-Gothic feel to it — it takes place primarily in a manor house on a moor, after all — so it’s not as divergent from Hammer’s usual product as all that, but it lacks any supernatural elements and is, basically, a straight-up Sherlock Holmes movie with a few Hammer touches.

The Hound of the Baskervilles has been made into a movie 24 times, so I’m going to lay odds you’ve seen at least one version at some time in your life. Accuracy to the source material varies, I’m sure, so arguments can be made about which is more faithful, but for me these kinds of things boil down to who’s playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I’ve already told you that I favor Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, but in this film we have Peter Cushing and André Morell.

First a quick word about Peter Cushing. I have seen him in other things, most notably as various Van Helsings and Frankensteins in Hammer Films’ other type of movies. Despite all this, the very first thing I think of when I see Peter Cushing is Star Wars. I know it’s unfair to boil an actor down to a single role like that, and it’s equally unfair to Alec Guinness, who likewise had a long and varied career, but Peter Cushing equals Grand Moff Tarkin in my mind. As a result, he had a tough row to hoe when it came to winning me over as Holmes. It may surprise you that it didn’t take long.

Peter Cushing makes a really excellent Sherlock Holmes, and he went on to play the character many times afterward, so I’m not the only one who thought so. He has the almost sneering air of superiority about him that Basil Rathbone did so well, while remaining just likable enough in his brilliance that we can still root for him as the hero. Equally important, André Morell acquits himself quite well as Dr. Watson, something that’s absolutely essential in The Hound of the Baskervilles because Holmes is offscreen for fully one half of the picture.

Morell’s depiction of Watson is completely absent the lovable buffoonery that marks Nigel Bruce’s portrayals of the character and is more in line with (as I understand) his literary roots. Let us not forget that Watson is a decorated war veteran and, while he may not be as gifted intellectually as Holmes, is a medical doctor and partner to the detective. In the whole of this The Hound of the Baskervilles he does precisely one silly thing, which serves as foreshadowing for the demise of one of the other characters.

Story-wise there are differences between this film and the other with which I’m familiar. I consider these the Hammer touches. For example: the Baskerville family apparently suffers under a curse brought upon them by the excesses of an ancestor. In The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), this information in shared with the audience via good, old-fashioned exposition. In this The Hound of the Baskervilles, we get a prologue set well into the past, where Sir Hugo Baskerville holds a wild party in which murder and rape are on the menu. This is the kind of thing that set Hammer Films apart from, say, Universal’s horror output: the willingness to push the envelope and even feature some (brilliantly colored) blood.

This Hound turns a supporting character into a sultry Spanish temptress, the better to feature her exposed legs and bare feet and bosom to the audience for their titillation, no pun intended. Another supporting character has a grotesque webbed hand. I’m not saying the old Rathbone pictures didn’t have good-looking women in them, or characters with weird traits, but they weren’t quite so in-your-face as these examples are. The difference between making movies in the ’30s versus the ’50s, I expect.

There’s a nice bit of cultural shorthand in The Hound of the Baskervilles that is likewise appropriate to a Hammer film. Christopher Lee — looking tanned, handsome and very aristocratic — plays Sir Henry Baskerville, the latest heir to the Baskerville manor and fortune. While he’s unfailingly polite and gentlemanly, he finds himself nearly out of control with sexual desire when it comes to the aforementioned Spanish temptress, the daughter of one of his neighbors. He presses his sexual attraction on her without an ounce of shame, calling back to a time when the aristocracy were essentially masters of all they surveyed, including the “little people.”

With some exceptions, the mystery plays out pretty much the same as it does in the Rathbone version. I won’t spoil you with the solution to the curse, even though you’ve had over 100 years to read it (I still haven’t), but I will say that the Hammer Films approach to the climax is more violent and, in its way, mean-spirited than the way they handled things in 1939. I’m not saying this is necessarily worse, only that it’s different.

You should check out The Hound of the Baskervilles for a few reasons, including a rare chance to see Christopher Lee playing a good-guy role, and Peter Cushing essaying Sherlock Holmes. The stage-bound, colorful images are an added treat, being as much a Hammer signature as the heaving breasts and blood.

Maybe I’ll actually read the novel now.

REVIEW: Sam Hawken
IMAGES: Marcus Brooks

COMING SOON!

COMING SOON: HEAR FROM THE WOMAN WHO MADE THE HOUNDS MASK ...MARGARET ROBINSON, WIFE OF HAMMER FILMS PRODUCTION DESIGNER, BERNARD ROBINSON, IN A 1980 INTERVIEW ON THE BLACKBOXCLUB.COM PODCAST SOON!