There are very few movies I've seen that I found so monumentally awful that I felt compelled to watch them again because I was convinced they could not have really been as bad as I thought. I have not yet re-watched Paul Morrissey's Hound of the Baskervilles, but I intend to. Until then, we'll have to go with my initial, head-spinning thoughts on the movie.
To say this adaptation of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle story (screenplay by director Morrissey and co-stars Dudley Moore and Peter Cook) is terrible is an understatement. It is beyond terrible. Other than a few chuckles and maybe one actual laugh the movie is brutally unfunny. The look of the film is drab and unattractive, the pacing is slow and the filmmaking is sloppy and scattershot to the point of seeming downright amateurish.
Moore and Cook, two comic geniuses, enthusiastically dive into their characters but cannot wring any joy or even mild amusement out of the material. The rest of the cast, made up mostly of familiar faces that populated classic British cinema in the 60s and 70s, appear utterly confused, as if they walked on the set and Morrissey just turned on the camera and said "action."
It appears Morrissey is trying to recapture the gleeful irreverence of his Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula but forgot how he managed to accomplish it. The outrageous gore, bizarre characters and non-sequitur dialog juxtaposed against such lush and pastoral settings made for a pair of genuinely idiosyncratic films (which were shot back-to-back).
That same magic never materializes in Hound of the Baskervilles. It is an utterly lifeless movie. The actors' performances are akin to witnessing the death throes of a drowning animal desperately trying to stay afloat. That mixed with the mind-numbingly awful screenplay and leaden direction results in an intensely unpleasant and uncomfortable experience.
Considering Morrissey's roots with Andy Warhol's Factory, one wonders if that were not his intention all along.
To say this adaptation of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle story (screenplay by director Morrissey and co-stars Dudley Moore and Peter Cook) is terrible is an understatement. It is beyond terrible. Other than a few chuckles and maybe one actual laugh the movie is brutally unfunny. The look of the film is drab and unattractive, the pacing is slow and the filmmaking is sloppy and scattershot to the point of seeming downright amateurish.
Moore and Cook, two comic geniuses, enthusiastically dive into their characters but cannot wring any joy or even mild amusement out of the material. The rest of the cast, made up mostly of familiar faces that populated classic British cinema in the 60s and 70s, appear utterly confused, as if they walked on the set and Morrissey just turned on the camera and said "action."
It appears Morrissey is trying to recapture the gleeful irreverence of his Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula but forgot how he managed to accomplish it. The outrageous gore, bizarre characters and non-sequitur dialog juxtaposed against such lush and pastoral settings made for a pair of genuinely idiosyncratic films (which were shot back-to-back).
That same magic never materializes in Hound of the Baskervilles. It is an utterly lifeless movie. The actors' performances are akin to witnessing the death throes of a drowning animal desperately trying to stay afloat. That mixed with the mind-numbingly awful screenplay and leaden direction results in an intensely unpleasant and uncomfortable experience.
Considering Morrissey's roots with Andy Warhol's Factory, one wonders if that were not his intention all along.