I cannot stress enough how insane this film is. It's as if there was a competition between the members of the cast (too many familiar faces to mention) to see who could get away with the most eccentric performance. Everyone, with the possible exceptions of Terry Thomas and Kenneth Williams, is doing their level best to be completely and utterly crazy, which results in a totally barmy movie that I found strangely compelling. Just when I thought it couldn't get any more madcap, Dudley Moore goes and sings a song that is the epitome of lunacy.
Moore plays several roles, but his primary character is that of the Welsh Dr. Watson, whom Sherlock Holmes (Peter Cook) sends to the Baskerville estate to investigate the story of a killer supernatural hound that haunts the moors. The film approximates the plot of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book, but with Moore and Cook on script-writing duties, it was guaranteed to stray into strange and unusual territory. Not all of their nuttiness hits the mark, but the bits that do are so hilarious that it's worth putting up with the odd duff scene (the painfully bad The Exorcist parody, I'm looking at you!).
The film's funniest moments include Max Wall's weather proverb ("Fog on the moors, clear skies indoors. Fog in the house, sun's out for field mouse"), a variation on Moore and Cook's one-legged Tarzan routine, the very silly codes suggested for Dr. Watson's telegram (Sausage), and Mr. Stapleton's perpetually incontinent Chihuahua that pees in Watson's face.
6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for Penelope Keith as a 'masseuse', showing us the sexier side of Margo Ledbetter that only Jerry was privy to.
