Product Details

• Actors: Richard Roxburgh, Ian Hart, Richard E. Grant, Matt Day, John Nettles
• Directors: David Attwood
• Writers: Allan Cubitt, Arthur Conan Doyle
• Producers: Allan Cubitt, Christopher Hall, Gareth Neame, Greg Brenman, Julie Scott
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: BBC Warner
• VHS Release Date: January 21, 2003
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000797E6
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #175,014 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Wrong Version, September 3, 2005

By 

E. Planteen (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hound of the Baskervilles [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a wonderful story and production...originally. However, the BBC Video (company) version I purchased which is 100 minutes in length had been edited so much that there were entire scenes missing right from the begining! I know because I taped the original when it aired on Masterpiece Theatre.

Buyer beware: This is not the full length version of the otherwise excellent program.

37 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent adaptation, July 10, 2003

By 

Sean Brady (Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Hound of the Baskervilles (DVD)

This is one of the best adaptations of the famous Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes book. It does take numerous liberties with the text but it's a handsomely mounted production featuring an excellent cast. Ian Hart is great as a more lively than usual Watson. Richard Roxburgh wouldn't have been my first choice as Holmes (co-star Richard E.Grant would have been my pick), but he does a fine job. The direction, costumes, lighting, special effects and excellent location work combine to make for a great looking production.

The DVD itself is well worth purchasing. The widescreen transfer and audio are excellent, and the various interviews and 'making of' feature are informative.

I mark this down one star because of the scriptwriter choosing to include Holmes' drug use. It doesn't add anything to the story and I assume that it was only added to be controversial. Holmes did not use drugs during a case...the character only succumbed to the needle to relieve his boredom between cases, and I don't recall his drug use being part of the original novel. At least we get to see Watson's disgust with Holmes' habit, but it doesn't excuse including it in this adaptation.

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, My Dear Watson, April 11, 2003

By 

John Floars "commajockey" (Woodbridge, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Hound of the Baskervilles (DVD)

After Jeremy Brett, any other Sherlock Holmes is likely to be considered a pale copy. In this case, there is nothing in this production that was not done far better in the Brett version.

In contrast to Brett's wonderful quirkiness, Richard Roxburgh is curiously colorless. Watson is similarly undistinguished and also suffers from looking far too young to have been through what Watson had by the time he met Holmes and began their famous relationship.

Besides the weakness of the main characters, the production suffers from the obvious implication that the people who made it were woefully ignorant of the source work. The dialogue is far too modern (as when Holmes says "I could MURDER a bottle of Montrachet," or Watson explains that "Parties are not Holmes's thing.") Such dialogue is straight out of the 1990s, not the 1890s.

Anyone who reads Doyle's original stories will know that Holmes and Watson were in a sense soulmates. They shared a friendship (more than that, really; a nonsexual devotion that was perhaps unique to men of the Victorian Age) that this production misses entirely; in fact, Watson at one point declares that he does not trust Holmes. Such a feeling would have made the famous Holmes-Watson relationship impossible.

In this production, Holmes has been turned into a hopeless cocaine addict. Anyone who has read the original stories knows that Holmes would never have used cocaine during a case; he was in fact known to fast during a case, because he did not want the requirements of digestion to hamper his mental efforts. He would have found the idea of shooting up during an investigation repugnant. Rather, the [chemical substance] was his escape from the boredom he experienced between cases.

In the advertisements for the production, much was made of the computer-generated hound. Unfortunately, the beast suffers from LOOKING like a computer animation. Aside from that, the animal is simply too much -- too large, too evil-looking. If the explanation for the hound had been supernatural, its appearance would have been very appropriate. But it is entirely wrong for a NATURAL creature.

In trying to impart an air of dreariness and gloom to the moors of Dartmoor, the production probably succeeds too well -- so well that it is difficult to imagine anyone actually living there by choice. The Brett version, by comparison, has wonderful cinematography of the moors lit in the golden glow of an autumn sun; it is a place I would like to visit -- a claim I cannot make of the locale seen in this "Hound."

A few small points: In an apparent (and ill-advised) attempt to get away from some of the Holmes "cliches," this production turns him into solely a cigarette smoker. Holmes's preferred method of using tobacco was the pipe; Doyle says so, all other productions show that, and to change it is to change Holmes's character. (Speaking of which, I found the production's desire to turn Holmes into some sort of Victorian Mannix, in his handling of the cabby who transported the villain in London, utterly out of character. Holmes knew how to get information amiably, without violence; he seldom had to bash his informants about.)

Also, this production shows Baker Street unpaved. Holmes lived in London, not Dodge City; if even the slums of Whitechapel were cobblestoned, a respectable neighborhood like Baker Street certainly would have been.

If you want a first-class version of "Hound of the Baskervilles," get the Brett version. If you want a very good version, get the Rathbone version or even the Hammer Films version. All have one thing in common: They are better than this one.