by Неизвестный
And although a Hound-like plot, complete with a glowing marsh monster, was employed to great effect in Rathbone’s later, non-period The Scarlet Claw, his Hound, with a surprising lack of mood music, often failed to grip. By contrast, one of the areas in which the 2002 Roxburgh Hound succeeded was in its dramatic, pulse-pounding, and very different opening, with the inquest into Sir Charles’ death punctuated with flashbacks to his autopsy.
None of these would seem to be insurmountable obstacles. CGI technology that can create a plausible Gollum should be able to create an animal that matches Doyle’s words. (According to Sherlockian film expert Phil Cornell, in a recent issue of the scion publication, The Passenger’s Log, there was some talk in the late 1970s of Peter Cushing appearing in his third version of The Hound, which would have featured a stop-frame animation hellhound from special effects master Ray Harryhausen.) And a subtle hand could content itself with terrifying off-screen howls, suggestive silhouettes, or other tried-and-true tricks of the trade to ratchet up the suspense, even among those members of the audience who can recite the text of Watson’s second report from Baskerville Hall verbatim.
HOLMES AWAY FROM HOLMES —
Perhaps as equal a difficulty for the screenwriter is to stay true to the spirit of the book while finely adjusting the storyline so that there is more Holmes. The Hound is the only one of the long stories without a lengthy back-story set in India or America, but it still goes for a fairly long stretch without Holmes’ presence. “This works really well in a book, as we associate with Watson on his own, for after all he is our story-teller, he holds the point-of-view. But in a film that is not the case, and the audience feels dislocated not to be with Holmes,” observes David Pirie, author of The Dark Water, the only recent pastiche that succeeds in pitting a Holmesian sleuth against an evil that may be otherworldly.
The 1973 Hound with Stewart Granger expands Holmes’s role by having him initially accompany Sir Henry, Mortimer and Watson to Dartmoor, before concocting an excuse that will enable him to continue his inquiries in secret. In theory, such a liberty could work, but given the poor casting and production values of that effort, it is not so easy to visualize that plot alteration in a better-quality adaptation. Perhaps someone with imagination could craft an early Holmes-Stapleton encounter that would prove to reveal an important clue.
At the other extreme is the 2001 Matt Frewer production, although many may feel that the decision not to have his quirky, self-parodying Holmes reveal himself on Dartmoor until he shucks off a disguise and takes potshots at a blinded hound that hunts by smell alone to have been a wise choice under the circumstances. The lack of intelligence in that version’s script is demonstrated by its inclusion of a scene in which Kenneth Welsh’s very able (if elderly) Watson tracks down Holmes’s lair in the stone hut, without actually tracking down Holmes himself.
Other productions, most notably the 2002 BBC version, tack on lengthy invented scenes to play up the Holmes-Stapleton battle of wits, seeking to elevate the secret Baskerville to Moriarty-like dimensions of villainy. Once again, with the right cast, and writing faithful in spirit to the Canon, such scenes could address the problem of the missing Holmes, but the efforts thus far have sacrificed fidelity to the story’s spirit for action or post-modern recursions (when Richard Roxburgh’s Holmes insists that Stapleton’s schemes will leave little mark on the world, his adversary knowingly counters that he will achieve immortality because of the fame of Holmes himself, a conceit that just doesn’t work).
One option that has not been attempted comes from Denis O. Smith, the brilliant author of some of the best pastiches ever written, including “The Secret of Shoreswood Hall,” one of the very few tales to capture the spirit of The Hound, and who richly deserves to be widely read both within Sherlockian circles and the general mystery-loving public. He has suggested that a screenwriter could give Holmes more actual detective work to do while on Dartmoor than would actually be shown; perhaps more grilling of Dr Mortimer and/or Stapleton about the ancient legend that could expose questions about its provenance (after all, as commentators have long pointed out, the text says nothing about how Sir Charles’s predecessor met his end, and if he did not die in a manner consistent with the legend, why would Sir Charles have taken it so seriously?)
THE ACTOR PLAYING SIR HUGO DUNIT —
Many mystery readers don’t focus on the fact that, as Bert Coules puts it, “Most of Doyle’s stories are not detective stories in the modern sense of the word.” The solutions in the Canon are often either not particularly surprising, or not based on fair-play clues carefully sprinkled beforehand. In some ways, The Hound is more of a mystery than many others of the original sixty. Denis Smith has commented that The Hound “is also notable for being one of the very few of Doyle’s stories which is presented pretty much in the form which was to become popular later in the 1920s and ’30s, that is, an initial mystery plus a cast of innocent-seeming, if somewhat eccentric local characters, one of whom, you suspect, may in fact be the villain. It is also almost unique among Doyle’s Holmes stories in having a sub-plot (the business with Selden and the Barrymores) which is dragged across the path of the main plot like a red herring, to confuse the issue.”
Even so, Doyle unveils the man behind the dog earlier on in the book than might be deemed ideal. (Bert Coules, again — Doyle “gives away the identity of the murderer quite incidentally. It’s almost thrown away, a long way before the end of the story.”) And some film versions give the show away even earlier than that by casting the same actors (1972’s William Shatner and 1983’s Nicholas Clay) as both Sir Hugo and Stapleton without taking any pains to make the family resemblance a subtle one. Others (the 1988 Granada for one) show too much of the mysterious figure dogging Sir Henry in London to make his identity much of a mystery.
Suspense concerning the hand on the devil-dog’s leash could be enhanced by delaying the revelation of the villain’s identity (although Basil Rathbone in 1939 only risked his client’s life a second time by not sharing his suspicions with Watson until the very end of the film), or, as Denis Smith suggests, by writing in “in a few extra encounters with Frankland and Mortimer, to try to make them appear a little furtive or suspicious, and possibly making a little more of Laura Lyons’s absconding husband.” Efforts along these lines have been attempted — the 1939 and 1959 versions do make token efforts to transform the genial young Mortimer of the book into a scowling, belligerent figure with some secrets to hide, but fail to develop the concept. (Many Holmesian scholars have noted plot inconsistencies in the original — how did the doctor’s spaniel make its way to the heart of the Grimpen Mire? — that suggest to them that Mortimer and Stapleton were in league. And the first Cushing Hound featured a half-hearted attempt to cast suspicion on Frankland, now both an entomologist and a bishop, by introducing a deadly spider into the action. The 1983 Richardson adaptation substitutes a brutal drunkard Geoffrey Lyons, complete with Roylott-like poker-bending strength, for Frankland, but then undercuts the logic of the plot by not only having his wife strangled, thus eliminating any residual belief that unearthly forces might have been at work in Sir Charles’ death, but by showing Lyons snoring downstairs while she is murdered., thus eliminating him as a suspect. Having Laura Lyons killed by Stapleton — but in a way that suggests she fell afoul of the legendary hound — could be a logical amplification of Doyle’s story — after all, the original text has Holmes remarking that she had had a “fortunate escape,” having had Stapleton in her power.
UNPLUMBED DEPTHS —
There are abundant variations on the basic plot that could give a film version a better shot at creating menace, fear and suspense. The supernatural angle could be played up. Intriguingly, one of the few (if not the only) interesting aspects of the Granger Hound is its very ending, when a mournful howl echoes over the moors after Stapleton and his beast have sunk into the Grimpen Mire, suggesting that the curse has not ended after all
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A similar notion was to be the basis of an unmade Keith McConnell Holmes film, The Werewolf of the Baskervilles, which reportedly postulated that the family had been haunted by a lycanthrope all along. Incorporating aspects of the various myths that may have been the “west county legend” Fletcher Robinson recounted to Doyle also could provide new angles that could help. (The Roxburgh Hound does portray the beast of the legend as a loyal pet defending his mistress’s honour, rather than an instrument of satanic forces, but does virtually nothing with this innovation.) Given Holmes’ encyclopedic knowledge, it would not be surprising that a man who kept entries in his commonplace book for vampires would be aware of the Whist Hounds or the Black Dog of Dartmoor, and be able to employ that knowledge to uncover Stapleton’s scheme.
A NEW HOPE? —
Perhaps, despite the pessimism of this column’s subtitle, The Hound is not an unscalable peak. When analyzed, flaw by flaw, the problems with these films should be susceptible to correction. Perhaps we, as the second Hugo Baskerville might have put it, (if he were alive today, and a reader of SHMM), should learn then from this essay not to fear the fruits of these past adaptations, but rather put to use them as a prism to highlight Doyle’s original remarkable act of creation. And when the next version hits the screen, just maybe it will be the product of a Sherlockian Peter Jackson, who could be out there, even as I write, preparing a film that deserves Doyle’s own description of his work, a film that is “a real Creeper.”
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Leonard Picker, an inspector general in New York City, has written on the Master for Publishers Weekly, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and the Baker Street Miscellanea, and is fortunate to be married to someone willing to sit through six straight hours of Hound movies without complaint. He may be contacted at [email protected].
ASK MRS HUDSON, by (Mrs) Martha Hudson
It is both gratifying and a tad onerous that ever since I became landlady to the illustrious Mr. Sherlock Holmes, my life has become richly endowed with incident, and at times is downright adventurous. One may therefore well imagine the enlarged experience that such an association brings an industrious gentlewoman as I hope I may represent myself.
Mr. Holmes’s dear friend Dr John H. Watson has encouraged me to share this store of worldly knowledge with the readers of this apposite periodical. To get things started, he has solicited several queries which I have endeavoured to answer below.
In future, should you wish to seek my advice, address your query to Ask Mrs Hudson at
Sincerely,
(Mrs) MARTHA HUDSON
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Dear Mrs Hudson,
I am an American, and my cousin is almost forty, lives alone, is meticulous to a fault (I once caught him refolding the guest towels after I had used the lavatory). He shies away from women — in fact, he seems afraid of them. He is a member of the Guilford Choral Society, and enjoys Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. He says his years at a boys’ public school were the best of his life, even though I know the boys were beaten and forced to take cold showers. Is he “peculiar?”
Sincerely, Puzzled in Pembroke
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Dear Puzzled, Don’t worry about your cousin. No, he is not peculiar; he is merely British. Yours, Mrs Hudson
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Dear Mrs Hudson,
My mother in law goes everywhere with us — holidays, shopping trips, even restaurants. To make matters worse, she lives next door and has taken to popping over for tea without being invited. She goes on at length regarding my performance as a wife and housekeeper — I wasn’t even allowed to buy drapes for the bedroom without her advice. When I complain to my husband, he says he only wants to be a good son and that I should be more respectful of my elders.
Ignored in Ipswich
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Dear Ignored:
Here is what you should do: Have your husband transfer his assets to your name, then book a one-way ticket for one to Palermo. Take a train in the middle of the night. Leave no forwarding address. Get an Italian boyfriend. He will be just as attached to his mother, but it will be worth it, as he will be much better in bed.
Ciao,
Mrs Hudson
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Dear Mrs Hudson,
My husband likes to dress in women’s clothing. Should I divorce him?
Doubtful in Dublin
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Dear Doubtful,
Not unless he looks better than you do in heels.
Sincerely,
Mrs Hudson
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Dear Mrs Hudson,
My Labrador retriever Wellington has taken to sleeping in the bed next to me. He’s become so bossy about it, in fact, that my poor husband has to sleep on the couch these days. In fact, if poor Jacques tries to come anywhere near the bed, Wellie growls and snaps at him. What should I do about this?
Snoozing in Sussex
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Dear Snoozing,
Yes, you certainly are. What on earth do you expect when you name a dog after a general who famously defeated Napoleon? Your dog is merely living up to his namesake by re-enacting the battle between England and France, attacking your poor husband, who has the misfortune to have a French name. Your husband may not be much of a man (as I strongly suspect, as he is allowing a Labrador retriever to intimidate him), but he deserves his place beside you in bed. Give away the dog, if you must, but restore your poor beleaguered Jacques to his rightful place before he loses all of his self respect. And for god’s sake, tell the new owners to give the dog a new name! Votre servante, Mrs Hudson
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Dear Mrs Hudson,
I am frightfully sorry to bother you, but you see, my girl went and ran with my old school chum, Charlie. Not that he’s a bad sort, mind you; he’s a regular decent chap, I suppose; a bit of a prankster on the old rugby pitch, you know — he’s just a little fellow, don’t you know, so he played scrum half, only he wasn’t that keen on it — rugger, I mean, so he was always a bit bulloxed. Good fun, really, at the parties afterward. Always had something amusing on his head — lampshades, a plate of salmon mouse, the fullback’s underwear. But I mean, sod it — what a rotter, to go and do something like that! I mean, it does really take a bit of cheek, doesn’t it, to go and pinch a fellow’s girl? The thing is, you see, I’d like to show I’m a good sport and all that by getting them a nice wedding present. Any suggestions?
Stranded in Surrey
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Dear Stranded,
Have you considered cyanide? I believe there’s a sale on just now at Harrods. And for god’s sake, you sound like an upper class ponce. Try talking like a sensible, normal person and maybe your next lady friend won’t leave you for a scrum half.
Cheerio,
Mrs Hudson
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Dear Mrs Hudson, Do onions store well in a root cellar over the winter? Wondering in Woolwich
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Dear Wondering,
Yes, they do. I am including my recipe for onion and wild mushroom tart, which is a great favourite of Mr Holmes and Dr Watson. Wild mushrooms are best, but store bought ones will do
Sincerely,
Mrs Hudson
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MRS HUDSON’S WILD MUSHROOM TART
Pastry dough 1 tablespoon unsalted butter 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3/4 lb mixed fresh wild mushrooms such as morels,
oyster, and chanterelle, quartered lengthwise
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1 tablespoon fresh
parsley
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup crème fraîche
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 whole large egg
1 large egg yolk
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Special equipment: a 9-by-1-inch round fluted tart pan with a removable bottom; pie weights or raw rice
Make shell:
Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin into an 11-inch round and fit into tart pan, trimming excess dough. Chill until firm, about 30 minutes.
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 375°F.
Lightly prick bottom of shell all over with a fork, then line with foil and fill with pie weights. Bake until side is set and edge is pale golden, 18 to 20 minutes. Carefully remove foil and weights and bake shell until bottom is golden, 10 to 15 minutes more.
Cool completely in pan on a rack, about 15 minutes.
Make filling while shell bakes:
Heat butter and oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until foam subsides, then sauté mushrooms, shallot, onion, thyme, parsley, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper, stirring frequently, until mushrooms are tender and any liquid given off is evaporated, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and cool to room temperature.
Whisk together crème fraîche, heavy cream, whole egg, yolk, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper in a medium bowl until combined.