My Film Festival Dilemma

Peter Cushing in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

Since I am a fan of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, it’s no surprise that the first film festival I’m putting together for the Tankerville Club of Cincinnati will feature a Rathbone film. But it won’t be The Hound of the Baskervilles. Although I think that was his best outing in the role, it’s too familiar.

The Hound will be well represented instead by the one starring Peter Cushing, the first Holmes movie in color. And colorful it is – a Hammer horror flick, and a good one. But for Rathbone, I picked The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It’s not very Canonical, but the plot is great, Watson is not an imbecile, and the film’s Moriarty shines.

So, the lineup of the five-hour festival, slated for Aug. 24 at Gateway Community & Technical College’s urban campus in Covington, Ky., goes: 

• Regina Stinson, Sherlockian extraordinaire, speaking on “The Films of Sherlock Holmes”
• A classic cartoon 
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• A Granada episode with Jeremy Brett 
• The Hound of Baskervilles
• An episode of Sherlock Holmes in the 22^ndCentury (animated) 

The great dilemma for me is – which Granada episode? I’m torn between “The Red-Headed League,” with that marvelous Moriarty coda at the end, and “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” with that great scene of Holmes smoking all night. Which one would you choose?