{"id":15978,"date":"2023-10-23T20:00:46","date_gmt":"2023-10-24T00:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=15978"},"modified":"2023-10-22T14:15:36","modified_gmt":"2023-10-22T18:15:36","slug":"the-hound-of-the-baskervilles-1939-sidney-lanfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/15978","title":{"rendered":"The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939, Sidney Lanfield)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oft-adapted Sherlock Holmes story – there are three versions just on my must-see list – but I’ve never known what it’s about until now. In fact I’m struggling to recall if I’ve ever seen any Holmes movie, besides the time I watched the first half of Wilder’s Private Life<\/em>. It’s set on the southwest peninsula of English on the “moors,” AKA the heath, which are either highlands or lowlands, tundra-related, and don’t seem very well defined. Now I’m suspicious about other vague British landscape terms: fens and bogs and derries and what not.<\/p>\n

But on these particular moors, Sir Charles is dead, and young Richard Greene (tormented zombie of Tales from the Crypt<\/a><\/em>) has arrived to inherit the estate, asking for assistance from Holmes (Basil Rathbone, evil mesmerist of Tales of Terror<\/a><\/em>) and unimpressive mustache guy Watson (Nigel Bruce, third-billed in Limelight<\/a><\/em>) because of the suspicious wolfy deaths in the area.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Colorful characters: suspicious John Carradine looks after the house, Barlowe Borland is a sideburnsed maniac who enjoys suing his friends, and beardy Dr. Mortimer (Lionel Atwill, star of Doctor X<\/em> and The Devil is a Woman<\/a><\/em>) is like oh btw I dabble in the occult, and a minute later they’re all having a seance.<\/p>\n

Then there’s pretty girl Wendy Barrie (Dead End<\/em>) and her brother Morton Lowry, a murderous dog-keeper. His dogs bump off a local convict who’d stolen Basker’s clothes. Holmes is seemingly absent from all this, having sent Watson ahead, but has actually been observing in disguise.<\/p>\n

Watson, his unamused friends, Holmes:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Killer on the heath<\/del> moors:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Christoph Huber in Cinema Scope:<\/p>\n

Though only billed respectively second and fourth… Rathbone and Bruce’s immediate success spawned the only long-running Holmes film cycle. Rathbone brings unprecedented authority to the part, conveying both the arrogance accompanying Holmes’ intellectual superiority and the irony necessary to complement Sherlock’s full mystique. Meanwhile, scene-stealer Bruce, not quite as (in)famously bumbling as later Watsons, deserves credit for solving an eternal dilemma: his endearing interpretation humanizes the duo’s relationship in a manner similar to Watson’s exaggeratedly humble narration of the stories, and gives the doctor something to do when not participating in the action, just admiring his friend’s brainy prowess.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oft-adapted Sherlock Holmes story – there are three versions just on my must-see list – but I’ve never known what it’s about until now. In fact I’m struggling to recall if I’ve ever seen any Holmes movie, besides the time I watched the first half of Wilder’s Private Life. It’s set on the southwest peninsula […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[343,3171,825,533,3170],"class_list":["post-15978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1930s","tag-basil-rathbone","tag-dog","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-sidney-lanfield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15978"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15995,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15978\/revisions\/15995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}