THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1959) ** Mad magazine somewhat ruined this one for me with their satire, The Hound of the Basketballs, but I have no regrets. It's a Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee Hammer film anyway so there's no need to alert the Oscar committee. That being said it's a cool story, and the dark Hammer touch adds tremendous atmosphere and flickering illuminations to aspects of Arthur Conan Doyle's tale. No, not like Conan the Barbarian, for the illiterati. True there are no reasons, independent of Conan's work, to suspect that Sherlock Holmes is anything but a rat snouted Brit with an appalling sense of fashion, but any real detective, or personal injury lawyer or Hollywood schmoozer in the right circumstances, will tell you that that's an original and independent perspective vindicating the entire project. The beautiful Dartmoor forest, strangely bereft of trees, may be seemingly vacuuous but comparably rich in flavour and design.