This is the best directed version of the Hound of the Baskervilles, but to be honest no great directors have tackled the story. "Der Hund von Baskerville" also has the honor of being the last silent Holmes film. The format didn't really suit the Holmes stories, which heavily rely on dialogue and exposition. To avoid excessive intertitles, the films had to simplify the material and stress action over cerebration.

In that respect, this "Hound" is no different (the walking stick deduction scene is naturally absent),but it uniquely goes whole hog for a German gothic/expressionist proto-noir style. Baskerville Hall becomes an old dark house like the ones in "The Bat" or "The Cat and the Canary," with shadows galore, eyes peeping out of statues, trap doors, and hidden rooms sealed off at the push of the button. And since this is a late silent, we're treated to voluptuous camera movement and eccentrically creative camera angles.

Carlyle Blackwell, an American matinee idol back in 1914, was imported to play Sherlock Holmes, introduced as "the genial detective." Fortunately Blackwell's confident performance is not entirely genial, though he does accentuate the smug, amused side of Holmes's character. Russian George Seroff plays a puppyish, plump, mustache-less Watson. The character was often a non-entity in silent Holmes films, but here he plays a major role, albeit an often comical ones (his gullibility prompts a light smack upside the head from Holmes). Stapleton is played by Fritz Rasp, that great gonzo gargoyle of German cinema.

For decades "Der Hund" was thought lost, until a print turned up Poland. Sadly the film is missing several expository scenes in reels two and three, which covered Watson's investigations of suspects at Baskerville Hall. These are compensated for by illustrated titles, but their absence leaves the whodunit mystery shortened and the overall story lopsided.

"Der Hund" is a mostly faithful adaptation of Doyle, and even shares strategies with later versions. Like the 1968 BBC production with Peter Cushing, it starts with the suspects gathered at Baskerville Hall. As in the Hammer version, Holmes gets trapped in an underground passage. And Laura Lyons has the same fate in the 1982 TV film starring Ian Richardson.

Low budgets are the bane of many "Hound" adaptations, but not this one. Baskerville Hall is opulently furnished and the outside moor, though created in a disused hangar, is a convincing wasteland of scraggly scrub. The hound is played by a mottled Great Dane, usually shown in extreme close-up, an unusual tactic to make it look more imposing. The other settings are modern-a motorcar pulls up to Baker Street and Holmes wears a leather trench coat alongside his deerstalker.

Sherlock Holmes came into being at the same time as the cinema, and remains a frequently filmed and televised character. THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, Arthur Conan Doyle's best novel about Holmes, has been produced at least nineteen times for the big and little screens. This is the last silent version and has many bright points about it.

For the majority of its length, it is a Gothic story of terror, using many of the techniques of horror movies developed to a peak in Germany: the dark lighting, the Dutch angles, a moving, subjective camera that implies an unseen, malevolent, supernatural watcher. It is only when Carlyle Blackwell as Holmes, the modern, rational, intelligent man is on the scene, that the mysteries can be unraveled and sense be made of the murky doings on the moor.

It is, in many a fashion, a last hurrah as silent cinema gave up the ghost. Carlyle Blackwell had been a major star in the 1910s, and a lesser one through the silent 1920s. He would make one more movie, a talkie, and retire from the screen. Alma Taylor, who plays Mrs. Barrymore, had likewise been a big movie star in Britain, the favorite actress of Hepworth, whose studio had disintegrated. She would continue in the movies in minor and unbilled roles for another twenty years.

This movie itself was lost for many years, almost forgotten. It likely never played in the United States, where only MGM of all the majors was still producing silent pictures, and even the minors were rapidly wiring for sound to keep up with the theaters that were doing the same. The other actors would fade, The director, Richard Oswald would wind up in charge of B movies in the United States during the Second World War, even the skilled cinematographer of this movie would go into decline, and light his last set nine years later.

Only Sherlock Holmes would prosper. There would be a couple of years without him appearing on the screen, then three movies about him would be released in 1931, including the first sound version of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES.

DER HUND VON BASKERVILLE (1929)

This was AMAZING. Right from the start, I fell in love with the mostly-piano music score. The opening scene in the story, unlike the novel, shows Sir Charles discussing the legend of the hound with his friends, the night he wound up dying under mysterious circumstances. This was exactly like the 1968 BBC TV version with Peter Cushing.

The bulk of the movie, surprisingly, follows the novel pretty closely, although it does simplify things quite a bit. For example, despite Jack's obvious intense jealousy, Beryl is never revealed to be his wife, but merely his ward. (In the 1939 Fox version with Basil Rathbone, she was Jack's sister.) Also, while Charles was lured out to the moors by Laura Lyons, the actual reasons for it never come up, and we never find out that she was in fact Frankland's daughter. On the other hand, we see Jack MURDER Laura to keep her from talking, which inspired a similar turn of events in the 1983 Ian Richardson version.

The last act of the film does manage to deviate in a fun way from the original story, in that Holmes discovers a secret underground tunnel that connects Baskerville Hall with Stapleton'e house, which is how Jack was able to sneak in and steal Sir Henry's boot, it's where Jack kept the dog, it's where Jack made Beryl a prisoner near the end, and it's where Holmes nearly gets killed when Jack floods it with water. (Shades of Chaney's "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA"!)

The directing, the lighting and the camera-work are all superb. Something I only found out days before seeing it, director Richard Oswald was the father of Gerd Oswald, who in the 1960s directed 2 episodes of STAR TREK and 14 episodes of THE OUTER LIMITS. Wow! I think that explains why "OL" looked the way it did so often-- it was the influence of German expressionism.

The restoration was done from 2 different prints-- one with Czech titles and a "home movie" version (NO KIDDING!) with French titles. The differences are glaring-- mostly-clear and very poor quality-- but without the lesser sections, even more of the film would be missing than still is. Chunks of the 2nd & 3rd reels are filled in with STILL PHOTOS, in the manner I've seen previously with "METROPOLIS" and "LOST HORIZON", so some key points in the story are there, but go by very quickly. This includes Henry's arrival at the Hall, his first meetings with Barrymore, Jack & Beryl. Fortunately, the bulk of the film-- and arguably all the best parts-- are still intact.

I immediately took an extreme liking to Carlyle Blackwell as Holmes. George Seroff as Watson is a lot more light-hearted, but from what I've read, this was one of the very first Holmes films to ever make the Holmes-Watson relationship a big focus of the story. There's a real joy in Watson when he finds Holmes hiding out on the moors, in a scene very similar to-- but in my view-- DONE BETTER than it was in the 1988 Jeremy Brett version! "Your cigarette brand betrays you."

Betty Bird as Beryl is very pretty, while Franz Rasp as Jack is a DEMENTED lunatic on the level with "The Joker". Holmes must have had a lot of trouble holding back telling Watson right away who the murderer was. It was so obvious!

One of the extras is a documentary about the history of Doyle writing Holmes, very reluctantly at first. It was only when "Hound" happened that he really decided to go full-throttle with the character, writing most of the 62 stories afterwards.