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The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978)

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16 comments in total

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Wasted Opportunity, 20 May 2004
Author: Chris Bright from London

Harry Thompson's very readable biography of Cook gives some of the background to the making of this dismal effort. Cook and Moore didn't have the creative control they should have done, and for whatever reason didn't feel able to pull the plug when it was clear that things were going horribly wrong.

The main problem is that Paul Morrissey has no clue about how Pete & Dud's humour works. This leads him to try and shoehorn them into his idea of "Carry on Sherlock" (a genre which he also fatally misunderstands).

Worse, much of Pete & Dud's groundbreaking work from the 60's is recycled in debased form - notably the one-legged man auditioning for the part of Tarzan.

I didn't even make it all the way through this when it was on TV a while back. See "Bedazzled" which has the benefit of a proper director and is a worthy showcase for perhaps the best English comedian of all. This is only notable as evidence of/a contribution to Cook's sad decline.

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7 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Its camp & stupid, i love to strike a happy medium....., 1 September 2005

Author: lee_symonds from United Kingdom

I'm amazed that most of the people who saw this film, thought it was terrible, i have to say, that this was the first film i ever saw of Cook & Moore, and i enjoyed it thoroughly, i know little about direction and all the technical sides to a film, but i know what makes me laugh, and this certainly did....

The scene where Holmes has a massage, Max Wall & Roy Kinner flashing, the classic one leg joke, and Moore playing Holmes's psychic mother, who call's Shelock 'Shirl'

How can people take a film so silly so serious.

This film turned me into a Cook & Moore fan, it cant be that bad...

Watch without prejudice!!

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
fairly lousy comedy, 4 March 2004
Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom

A misguided attempt to present a comic parody of the Conan Doyle tale, with Peter Cook as Sherlock Holmes and Dudley Moore as Dr Watson. Moore also plays Holmes' mother (!) and in this guise, is possibly the best thing in the film. Otherwise there is a spoof of the spinning head in The Exorcist, Denholm Elliot and a constantly urinating dog, and lame excuses for ‘jokes' and ‘funny situations' which really – aren't.

Although it has one or two moments which provoke a smile, the original source material isn't such that it survives being tweaked to this extent. Perhaps not the point, but the rest of the inspiration for this turkey must have been written on the back of a postage stamp. Skip this and watch Bedazzled and Not Only … But Also instead.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Vintage Dudley, 24 July 2003

Author: Tom Bixby from Baskewrville

The Hound of the Baskervilles is never realises its comedy potential as a vehicle for Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. However, it is an hillarious little piece in the Carry On mode, and that is its blessing and its curse. When its bad its awful, but it still has the ability to milk one or two belly laughs. Fans of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle will probably love it because it both sends up Doyles Holmes and Watson and is an affectionate tribute to their worlds. Were the movie falls flat is that the too many ideas are rather lacklusterly handled by Andy Warhol veteren Paul Morrissey. You rather wish the film had been directed by a heavy weight like Richard Lester or Blake Edwards or Cook and Moore themselves. At times the movie doesn't know whether it wants to be Monty Python smart or Carry On Corny, and so alot of the ideas that worked brilliantly on Cook and Moores Behind/Beyond the Fringe Days and Not Only But Also dont work here. What is fairly noticeable about this film is the growing talent and enthusiasm of Dudley Moore as a screen prescence. He has at this point broke free the comedy chains enforced by Peter Cooks talent and his confidence dances off the screen. His silent movie/Chaplin/Laurel and Hardy/Keaton tribute usical score is wondeful too. He is genuinely hillarious with his over the top welsh accent as Watson and cripplingly funny playing Holmes's mother. In all honesty it is Dudley who makes the film work. Dudley holds his own against British comedy greats such as Kenneth Williams(brilliant in the film), Terry-Thomas and Spike Milligan. Peter Cook is quite good as Sherlock Holmes, certainly looks the part and given the chance would have made a very good Holmes in a better movie. But it's Dudleys film, he is the one who makes it work, and things where abi=out to get very interesting for him over the next decade.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Love it or hate it, 12 April 2007

Author: raracan2 from Australia

Im really surprised to see real fans of this era of Brit comedy say they found this film to be really bad. I've seen it many times & count it among the funniest movies I've ever seen.

It is surreal, absurd & profoundly silly in the way that Cook & Moore's 'Derek & Clive' were masters of. My friends & I still spontaneously erupt into extended dialogues from it on occasion to our never tiring delight.

I suppose like many a work of genius you either get it or you don't. I don't mean that as an attack on those who don't like it. Im just trying to say that kind of humour either strikes a chord in you or doesn't - in which case I can imagine it must have been a dismaying experience to watch it.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
I liked it, 11 May 2006

Author: ajcemrush from United States

Geeze, that last post was a bit harsh. I found this movie funny when I first saw it soon after release, and when I recently watched it with my three young daughters. I thought the pee pee scene was hilarious, and I enjoyed the homages to Moore's and Cook's other works. It's just fun. It's SUPPOSED to be just fun; not deep, not a cinema-graphic classic, but fun. If my kids can enjoy it now, 25+ years later, It can't be that bad,and it isn't. Find it, watch it with a drink or two in your gullet, and enjoy! Not everything has to be a great work of art, you know. We all need to stop being so pretentious with these critiques. You can enjoy Spartacus AND Evil Dead, The Maltese Falcon AND Ice Pirates, You can enjoy this movie too.

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
A dog of a film, 18 October 2004

Author: Cheese Messiah (cheesehoven@fastmail.fm) from United Kingdom

Following the rudimentary outline of Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes tale, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore concoct a feast of comical whimsy. Or so they would have sold this weak film to its producers. As it is, it is a threadbare piece of work all too briefly lightened with flashes of genius(I laughed out loud when Dud encounters his double in the post office). We have bits of Pete'n'Dud's earlier stage material (ie 'i've nothing against your right leg, and neither have you') which were much funnier (because they were much fresher) in their original versions. Newer material seemed thin and drawn out. The accents that Cook and Moore avail themselves of (Jewish and Welsh) are funny to begin with, but soon pall. Likewise, the piddling dog is hilarious but dragged on for so long that the viewer starts to become annoyed and forget that he ever found it amusing. The music is a major drag. Dudley is an accomplished pianist, but his soundtrack in the manner of an old silent film accompanist falls as flat as the rest of the film.

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4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
The Hound must have worms, 26 October 2004
Author: tom farrell from dublin, Ireland

British humour has such a rich hierarchy of anarchists, loonies, clowns and mad geniuses that it would be very hard to establish any kind of 'A Division.' But undoubtedly Peter Cook and Dudley would be in there. Their work with Beyond and Fringe and later 'Not Only but Also' and 'Derek and Clive' is unimpeachable and they had impressive solo CVs. But in 1978 some kind of evil curse seemed to be floating about given that this year also saw the release of 'Sergeant Pepper The Movie' Renaldo and Clara AND the 'Star Wars' Thanksgiving Special. Paul Morrisey decided to direct this Holmes and Watson spoof without making up his mind whether it would be sea-side English bawdiness in the Carry On style or Pythonesque anarchism. In the event the movie was neither, simply a burst whoopie cushion where every gag falls flat and a strong cast is completely wasted. Tragically Terry Thomas made his last movie appearance in this stink bomb, while Spike Milligan was only given three minutes. Max Wall, Roy Kinnear and Prunella Scales were hardly allowed rescue the movie while Kenneth Williams was inadvisedly slotted in as Henry Baskerville. Prancing around with his 'startled moose' expression and flared nostrils, this movie buries the myth that he was a great comic actor who was trapped by the mundane Carry On scripts. But it is Dud and Pete who really disappoint, affecting (for no apparent reason) Welsh and Stage Jewish accents with Moore playing Cook's insane mother, a potential comedy winner that instead simply irritates. Elsewhere, Denholm Elliot's urinating dog spraying Moore in the face simply causes the viewer to avert his or her eyes while reheated sketches from their 1960s show (i.e the one legged runner) only underscore the movie's lack of invention. Although Cook had problems with drink and depression by the late 1970s, the duo was also producing the much-praised punk humour of Derek and Clive at the same time. That said, it probably was a factor in their 'divorce' and Moore's flight to New York, Lisa Minelli and 'Arthur.' The look of the movie is cheap and shabby and at least a decade out of date. Moore was a fine pianist but his score is out of place in a comedy. It is wholly appropriate that the final credits end with the unseen audience pelting him with rotten fruit

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11 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
A deeply horrendous film, 9 September 2001

Author: Tom May (joycean_chap@hotmail.com) from Sunderland, England

I have scarcely, if *ever*, been so disappointed with a film as I was with this. My expectations were hardly particularly high going into the viewing... I certainly did expect more from a film involving Peter Cook, based around the enjoyable Holmesian mythos.

To begin with, the direction was appallingly unsuitable. Paul Morrissey evidently had all the wrong ideas about how to film a comedy and how to illicit comedic performances; he is following the Carry On formula, but this film considerably outstrips the majority of those in terms of the cringe-worthy. Morrissey merely 'directs' an astonishingly experienced and talented cast to go horribly - and I mean horribly - Over The Top, shout a lot, and mixes this with pointless, inapposite crudity. The veteran comic talents of Max Wall - barely in the film, much to his overwhelming relief I suspect - Joan Greenwood, Cook, Moore and Spike Milligan are frittered away carelessly, and allowed to dissolve in an acrid bath of self-abuse. The ageing Greenwood is given an appallingly crass role and embarrassing 'things to do'; Terry-Thomas, clearly an ill man by all accounts at this time, looks completely out of it: a saddening sight. Is Kenneth Williams another to be added to this unfortunate role-call of British comedy greats forcibly desecrated...? Well yes, his performance is every bit the unsubtle, irritating stereotype that many expect of him, including it seems, Paul Morrissey. Such a waste considering the ill-tapped talent the man clearly had; it is hardly surprising to read his increasing despondency about this project in his diaries.

Apparently, Pete n' Dud had a hand in the script-writing, but it really doesn't show; this is committee stuff to the letter, including 'topical' take-offs of "The Exorcist" (1973) as well as the spirit-crushingly inept attempts to 'emulate' the Carry Ons. There are, at best, perhaps one or two middling gags of theirs that surface, but they seem hopelessly out of kilter with the film's remainder. Cook is an aloof, stony-but-insubstantial presence as an 'actor' in this 'picture', Morrissey allowing him no scope for his usual absurdism, shoehorning him into a cardboard nonentity of a role - though surely he himself is culpable, if scripting? Moore is worse, faring poorly as an inept, 'Welsh' Holmes; never once amusing.

This truly is a dire, unspeakable film. The production side of matters is, if anything, as shabby as the rest of the picture; a slipshod shoddiness makes the visuals outright repellent. Strikingly, there is no attempt to truly parody or spoof the Sherlock Holmes mythos; it makes even mediocre films like "The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother" (1975) or "The Seven Per Cent Solution" (1976) seem like satiric masterworks in comparison. All this ends up doing is lamentably degrading the Holmes mythos it claims association with.

I hated this film intensely - as I am sure you gathered - and can say with the utmost confidence that it symbolises the utter fall from grace of a tradition of British (film) comedy.

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What a dog, 19 June 2008

Author: jglillis-1 from United States

I bought this on CD. Big mistake. I should have looked it up on IMDb first. I figured I'd add to my "Holmes" collection. This has nothing to do with Holmes. It has nothing to do with "British humor" either - I think some of Cleese is hilarious and I own everything Sellers has ever done. This is just a pure-and-simple complete waste of time. It's not funny. Whoever was in charge of casting must have been throwing darts at a board loaded with the photos of wannabe comedians. My God! Who is that thing cast as Sir Henry Baskerville? It's not well-acted. The plot is ridiculous. The dialogue is childish and in many cases reeks of non-sequitur. And Sherlock Holmes's MOTHER?!?!?!? Puh-leeze. I've walked out of three movies in my life - the musical version of Lost Horizon, Paint Your Wagon (a MUSICAL starring Lee Marvin, believe it or not), and this thing.

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