1978’s The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the most dire comedies I have seen. This broad farce is little more than a series of sketches, most of which have only the most tangential of connections to the characters of Holmes and Watson. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore play those legendary figures here, ending on a foul note roughly a decade as a renown comedy team. They are joined by many staples of British comedy, some of them legends, but none of whom can get this turkey off the ground.
I am the easiest laugh I know, and I will admit to chuckling lightly at a few moments in this picture. The single funniest thing in the movie is during the opening credit montage, where Holmes is seen reading a book by Freud titled Guilt Without Sex. There, now you know the best joke in this film and can do something else with the 90 minutes of your life that wasn’t wasted here. Some examples I suggest are…
Instead of watching Cook and Moore in this Victorian-set picture, you could enjoy 1966’s The Wrong Box, which is set in the same period. While a bit on the slight side, it is vastly superior in comparison. It is also as consistently clever as Baskervilles is grating.
Terry-Thomas looks to be suffering here, when I have seen him appear unaffected in films nearly as bad as this one. Often cast as a mischievous scoundrel, you can find him in about a hundred better films than this, and I mean that literally. Might I recommend School for Scoundrels, a deeply funny, deeply cynical movie where he is joined by Alastair Sim, Ian Carmichael and Janette Scott?
Denholm Elliott appears game here, even if he is reduced to holding an incontinent puppy that douses Moore in a stream of urine of impossible length and duration. Can you believe this guy was in A Room with a View and TWO Indiana Jones pictures? You can also find him in many superior comedies, such as Michael Palin’s The Missionary.
Then there’s Roy Kinnear. How could a movie waste an appearance by Roy Kinnear? He was in The Beatles’s HELP!, John Lennon’s How I Won the War and a Hammer film or two.
Still, he isn’t quite as much of a comedy legend in the UK as Spike Milligan or Max Wall, neither of whom is given much to do here. This leaves US audiences even more confused as to how these two influenced a generation of comedians.
And poor Dana Gillespie. She is better known as a great singer than as an actor, but doesn’t get to do anything more here than be the obligatory heaving bosom. Her cleavage is very impressive, but I felt bad seeing her reduced to this. Also, breasts merely appearing on screen is never funny unless is it part of an actual joke.
Prunella Scales is another woman of note appearing here in a brief cameo. Given she actually has lines that are an attempt at humor, she fares better than Gillespie. Still, you could watch at least three episodes of Fawlty Towers in the time it takes to watch this film, so why not do that instead?
Lastly, I was shocked to see the director is Paul Morrissey. He is best known for Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein, each of which had been falsely associated with Andy Warhol for decades. I wouldn’t call either of those high-camp movies a classic, yet the wooden performances and eye-rolling dialogue in them is more enjoyable than anything here.
I know I have seen worse comedies than The Hound of the Baskervilles (I’m looking at you, Freddie Got Fingered), but I can’t think of a single reason why anybody should watch this. The partnership of Cook and Moore dissolved shortly after this and, watching this movie, it is no surprise it did. Still, they seem to be having a good time even if most of the rest of the cast does not. Maybe that puppy of Elliott’s is an apt metaphor, as somebody just seems to be taking the piss here.
Dir: Paul Morrissey
Starring: Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and a cast of comedy staples and legends whose careers somehow survived this
Watched on Code Red blu-ray