The plot of the film has long been familiar to everyone: Sir Charles Baskerville died under mysterious circumstances in his swamps. At a decent distance from the corpse were found traces of a huge dog. With this case, of course, everyone immediately ran to the most famous detective in the world Sherlock Holmes and his loyal friend Dr. Watson. They will have to solve this problem in the future.
From comparisons with my favorite domestic film, I naturally can not resist, although it came out forty-two years later. The film in all articles inferior to the Soviet version of the story. Starting from the script and ending with the actors. If everything in Maslennikov’s film was filmed with a copy of the story, there was only one non-existent moment from the drunkenness of Watson and Henry, who, by the way, organically fit into the film, immediately twisted everything. Somehow, strange scenes with a medium, the future wedding of Henry and Barry Stapleton and many other similar moments came from somewhere. But most importantly, a catastrophically small volume. It's only 80 minutes. It's too little for such a work. Naturally, many characters are cut from the film: Laura Lyons, Inspector Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson... The characters of none of the heroes are revealed. Especially the most important character, Baryl Stapleton. This is all very disturbing.
Now on the cast. Everyone played terrible. Especially the actor playing Henry Baskerville. It is clear that after the great role of Mikhalkov there will be nothing to look at, but I still hoped for the best. It turned out a lot depressing. Completely cardboard character, any lack of emotion and all that. So the actors performing Holmes and Watson were disgusting. No words. The only one I liked less in this film was Morton Lowry, who played Stapleton, but his role was so shortened and he was so inferior in acting to Yankowski that it was still stupid.
In general, a terrible adaptation of a wonderful story. This movie wouldn't have attracted me as a standalone piece, and it sucked. Such a warm heart for our cinema, about the same as after watching the film “Solaris” in 2002, another talentless adaptation of a great Soviet film. I didn’t like the fact that there was no music that created half the atmosphere of our Soviet film. It is not recommended to watch.
Original