Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 94: Sat Apr 4

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Fisher, 1959): Rio Cinema, 11.30pm


Welcome back Cigarette Burns to their spiritual Rio Cinema home. This screening is part of the Film London Sherlock season and is the first UK screening of a new HD remastering of one of Hammer's finest movies and one of the best Holmes adaptations on the big screen. The evening is introduced by critic, writer, and Sherlock Holmes aficionado Kim Newman. You can find out all the details here at the Cigarette Burns Facebook page.

Time Out review:
The best Sherlock Holmes film ever made, and one of Hammer's finest movies. Terence Fisher, at the peak of his career, used Conan Doyle's plot to establish a stylish dialectic between Holmes' nominally rational Victorian milieu and the dark, fabulous cruelty behind the Baskerville legend. This opposition is expressed within the first ten minutes, when he moves from the 'legend' with its strong connotations of the Hellfire Club (the nobleman tormenting a young girl with demonic satisfaction) to the rational eccentricities of Baker Street. Holmes is indeed the perfect Fisher hero, the Renaissance scholar with strong mystical undertones, and Peter Cushing gives one of his very best performances, ably supported by Andre Morell (who does not make the usual mistake of overplaying Watson). Christopher Lee is in equally good form as the Baskerville heir, and Jack Asher's muted Technicolor photography is superb.
David Pirie

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