The Hound of the Baskervilles

This is the first I've seen of Brett playing Sherlock Holmes and Hardwicke playing Dr Watson, and I'm impressed! They avoid clichés and just as importantly don't simply pay homage to previous on-screen portrayals of Doyle's characters (in particular Rathbone and Bruce). The hound beast does not get much screen time here and that is for the better (adds to the suspense) and Mr Holmes does not don any silly disguises, instead he roams the moors in his regular detective gear (he means business).

The acting was fairly solid even though the story moved at a snails pace. The biggest problem I had with this version of the story is the fact that it completely lacked any sense of horror or dread, This is as close as Arthur Conan Doyle ever came to writing an outright horror story. This story works best when done as a horror story, Holmes is out of the picture for most of it and Watson simply chronicles the eerie happenings.

A classic story turned into what was probably a solid TV two-parter, but a pretty stodgy and languid feature film if you're actually holding it up to the standards of 1988.