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Sherlock Holmes fans antsy with anticipation for the forthcoming extravaganza starring Robert Downey Jr. as the great detective and Jude Law as his sidekick, Dr. Watson, can settle down this weekend with the 1939 version of the most famous of all Holmes adventures, "The Hound of the Baskervilles." It's got the stately pace of old Hollywood glamour, camera work as static as England itself and a pervasive, soft-gray light that only dazzling black-and-white evening clothes cut through. But it's suffused with the qualities that made even that mystery-hating critic Edmund Wilson call the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle detective tales "among the most amusing of fairy tales." No one has ever looked as commanding in Holmes' cape and peaked hunting cap as Basil Rathbone, who even in his non-Holmes films could concentrate so intently that he seemed to levitate off the screen. He and Nigel Bruce, as Dr. Watson, have a rapport as close, and sometimes as comic, as Bob Hope did with Bing Crosby. And at film's end, Holmes does still get to turn to his friend and say, "Quick, Watson! The needle!"
At the time of the release of the second Rathbone-Bruce movie (the terrific "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"), novelist-film critic Graham Greene protested the loss of Holmes' exotic messiness - his Turkish slipper filled with tobacco, his bric-a-brac. But the supporting cast of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" looks plenty exotic, as if it escaped from "The Wind in the Willows." Barlowe Borland, a Dartmoor lawyer, has the intent glance, sloping forehead and rapidly working mouth of a badger. Morton Lowry's Stapleton, a naturalist in love with the surrounding moors, is as sly, quick and slender as a weasel. Lionel Atwill, a mysterious local medico (with a spiritual medium for a wife), has a porcupine's bristles and glower. Gaunt, menacing John Carradine - the butler, of course - is sui generis. Only Richard Greene as young Henry Baskerville, heir to the family curse of a man-eating hound, brings the fantasy to earth with a thud; the man who later became TV's Robin Hood here looks no more romantic than a pudgy Dick Powell.
The Southeast Anchor branch of the Enoch Pratt Film Library is showing "The Hound of the Baskervilles" as part of a Happy 155th Birthday salute to Holmes. Edgar Allan Poe fans should celebrate a Holmes revival, too, because Poe provided crucial inspiration for Conan Doyle with his own master sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin. In one Conan Doyle story, Holmes remarks, "Dupin was a very inferior fellow." But Conan Doyle himself asked, "Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"
"The Hound of the Baskervilles" screens at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Southeast Anchor Library, 3601 Eastern Ave., Highlandtown. Call 410-396-1580.
A Frankenstein family comedy at the Charles: When Universal Pictures made "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," the studio revitalized its baggy-pants franchise with this amiable, fun-for-all monster mash. The saturnine Abbott and the ever-mugging Costello show vaudevillian panache as baggage handlers who have the misfortune to process the coffins of Count Dracula ( Bela Lugosi) and Frankenstein's Monster (Glenn Strange). Add Lon Chaney Jr.'s tortured Wolf Man and you've got a snug-fitting context for Costello's infantile frenzies. The heavies maintain their deadpans and get the biggest laughs. (Strange's Monster does a horrified double-take at his first sight of Costello.) The last shot features Vincent Price as the voice of the Invisible Man, a come-on for future - and inferior - comedies of terror.
In honor of Halloween, the Charles will allow kids in free to the noon Saturday show. The movie will also screen at 7 p.m. Monday and at 9 p.m. Thursday. The Charles is located at 1711 N. Charles St. Call 410-727-3456 or go to thecharles.com.
Tons o' Halloween at the Senator: "The Wizard of Oz" as a Halloween-day matinee? Absolutely. One reason the film has held up for 70 years is its embrace of children's appetites for risk and terror. Those Winged Monkeys have haunted many a kid's dreams. But unlike the movie version of "Where the Wild Things Are," this film also overflows with high spirits. To celebrate the film and the theater's 70th anniversary, the Senator is presenting it for free at 1:30 p.m., preceded at 1 p.m. by a young people's costume parade on stage.
At 10 p.m., Chainsaw Sally and Jimmy O will introduce the original 1974 " Texas Chainsaw Massacre," followed by the original 1978 "Dawn of the Dead."
The Senator is located at 5904 York Road; go to senator.com.
'Horse Boy' benefits Rose of Sharon Equestrian School: It's a week away from the theatrical engagement of "The Horse Boy" at the Charles, but those who've been tracking the success of this documentary about parents seeking a cure for their autistic son on a trek through Outer Mongolia may want to catch the opening 7 p.m. show on Nov. 6. It's a benefit for the Rose of Sharon Equestrian School Inc., a nonprofit promoting therapeutic horsemanship.
$15 benefit tickets can be bought at 410-592-2562 or roseofsharonschool.org.
'Coraline' at Pratt: If you missed it last winter, be sure to catch Henry Selick's "Coraline" at the Pratt's Central Library at 2 p.m. Saturday. This adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel about the grass not being greener in an alternate universe uses 3-D puppet animation to create a world that's dense, active and fluid: a sensory Jacuzzi.
The Central Library is located at 400 Cathedral St.; call 410-396-5430 or go to prattlibrary.org.
At the time of the release of the second Rathbone-Bruce movie (the terrific "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"), novelist-film critic Graham Greene protested the loss of Holmes' exotic messiness - his Turkish slipper filled with tobacco, his bric-a-brac. But the supporting cast of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" looks plenty exotic, as if it escaped from "The Wind in the Willows." Barlowe Borland, a Dartmoor lawyer, has the intent glance, sloping forehead and rapidly working mouth of a badger. Morton Lowry's Stapleton, a naturalist in love with the surrounding moors, is as sly, quick and slender as a weasel. Lionel Atwill, a mysterious local medico (with a spiritual medium for a wife), has a porcupine's bristles and glower. Gaunt, menacing John Carradine - the butler, of course - is sui generis. Only Richard Greene as young Henry Baskerville, heir to the family curse of a man-eating hound, brings the fantasy to earth with a thud; the man who later became TV's Robin Hood here looks no more romantic than a pudgy Dick Powell.
The Southeast Anchor branch of the Enoch Pratt Film Library is showing "The Hound of the Baskervilles" as part of a Happy 155th Birthday salute to Holmes. Edgar Allan Poe fans should celebrate a Holmes revival, too, because Poe provided crucial inspiration for Conan Doyle with his own master sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin. In one Conan Doyle story, Holmes remarks, "Dupin was a very inferior fellow." But Conan Doyle himself asked, "Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"
"The Hound of the Baskervilles" screens at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Southeast Anchor Library, 3601 Eastern Ave., Highlandtown. Call 410-396-1580.
A Frankenstein family comedy at the Charles: When Universal Pictures made "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," the studio revitalized its baggy-pants franchise with this amiable, fun-for-all monster mash. The saturnine Abbott and the ever-mugging Costello show vaudevillian panache as baggage handlers who have the misfortune to process the coffins of Count Dracula ( Bela Lugosi) and Frankenstein's Monster (Glenn Strange). Add Lon Chaney Jr.'s tortured Wolf Man and you've got a snug-fitting context for Costello's infantile frenzies. The heavies maintain their deadpans and get the biggest laughs. (Strange's Monster does a horrified double-take at his first sight of Costello.) The last shot features Vincent Price as the voice of the Invisible Man, a come-on for future - and inferior - comedies of terror.
In honor of Halloween, the Charles will allow kids in free to the noon Saturday show. The movie will also screen at 7 p.m. Monday and at 9 p.m. Thursday. The Charles is located at 1711 N. Charles St. Call 410-727-3456 or go to thecharles.com.
Tons o' Halloween at the Senator: "The Wizard of Oz" as a Halloween-day matinee? Absolutely. One reason the film has held up for 70 years is its embrace of children's appetites for risk and terror. Those Winged Monkeys have haunted many a kid's dreams. But unlike the movie version of "Where the Wild Things Are," this film also overflows with high spirits. To celebrate the film and the theater's 70th anniversary, the Senator is presenting it for free at 1:30 p.m., preceded at 1 p.m. by a young people's costume parade on stage.
At 10 p.m., Chainsaw Sally and Jimmy O will introduce the original 1974 " Texas Chainsaw Massacre," followed by the original 1978 "Dawn of the Dead."
The Senator is located at 5904 York Road; go to senator.com.
'Horse Boy' benefits Rose of Sharon Equestrian School: It's a week away from the theatrical engagement of "The Horse Boy" at the Charles, but those who've been tracking the success of this documentary about parents seeking a cure for their autistic son on a trek through Outer Mongolia may want to catch the opening 7 p.m. show on Nov. 6. It's a benefit for the Rose of Sharon Equestrian School Inc., a nonprofit promoting therapeutic horsemanship.
$15 benefit tickets can be bought at 410-592-2562 or roseofsharonschool.org.
'Coraline' at Pratt: If you missed it last winter, be sure to catch Henry Selick's "Coraline" at the Pratt's Central Library at 2 p.m. Saturday. This adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel about the grass not being greener in an alternate universe uses 3-D puppet animation to create a world that's dense, active and fluid: a sensory Jacuzzi.
The Central Library is located at 400 Cathedral St.; call 410-396-5430 or go to prattlibrary.org.
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