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Films: H is for...

Hound of the Baskervilles, The

Not the Hammer one, not the Ian ‘couldn’t possibly’ Richardson one and definitely – thank the maker- not the Pete and Dud one this is instead what should be formally known as The Best One with Basil ‘what place is this?’ Rathbone and Nigel ‘these and not much else’ Bruce. It’s not like we don’t know what’s going to happen so just kick back and enjoy the Best Holmes Ever once more.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Glenn Aylett

    September 24, 2022 at 12:54 pm

    I was introduced to the original and best Sherlock Holmes when the BBC re ran all the Basil Rathbone films in 1978. Also, around the time Rathbone was playing Holmes, I saw him play the cruel Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield, which was quite a shock.

  2. Richardpd

    September 24, 2022 at 3:33 pm

    Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes film series adapted most of the original stories, then started to have original adventures set in the present day.

    Basil Rathbone is on that long list of famous people you didn’t know were South African.

  3. Glenn Aylett

    September 24, 2022 at 4:03 pm

    @ Richardpd, the stories jump to wartime London, with Dr Moriarty predictably playing a Nazi spy. Not a bad thing, as people wanted to see Sherlock Holmes beat the Nazis and the stories were just as enjoyable as the films set in the Victorian era. Never knew Basil was South African, though.
    One spin off that wasn’t very good and was cheaply made was The Baker St Boys, where a group of urchins solve crimes on Holmes behalf in 1880s London.

  4. Richardpd

    September 24, 2022 at 9:59 pm

    Rathbone was born in South Africa to British parents, & the family moved back to the UK during the Boer War.

    I presume the Wartime stories were inspired by one of the later stories where an older Holmes exposes a Spy at the start of the First World War.

  5. Glenn Aylett

    September 25, 2022 at 11:15 am

    @ Richardpd, Holmes would have been very old by 1942, LOL. but the move from the 1880s to the present day could have been inspired by the First World War story. It was part of a trend in the Second World War where everyone from Sherlock Holmes to The Invisible Man had to help the war effort. I’d imagine cinema goers would enjoy seeing their heroes getting one over the Nazis or the Japanese and the box office was always good for these films.

  6. Richardpd

    September 25, 2022 at 12:22 pm

    Yes I guess a few existing characters were being shown to be doing their bit for the war effort.

  7. Glenn Aylett

    September 25, 2022 at 3:15 pm

    @ Richardpd, there was even a film where Mr Ed The Talking Horse is sent in to a jungle to fight the Japanese( kind of a so bad, it’s good film). Then Tarzan gets to take on the Nazis in one of the better RKO films, Tarzan Triumphs( now Tarzan make war). Will Hay had one of his best films, The Goose Steps Out, where he plays a spy in Germany and rescues some Austrians forced to work for the Nazis, and The Ghost Of St Michaels has a wartime plot.

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