After the resounding success of the first two parts of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the director was practically doomed to shoot the sequel. The film studio was inundated with letters from viewers demanding to film other works of Conan Doyle. It is clear that the next film was supposed to be a picture about the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Main actors
The actors who played the main roles in the previous parts continued to act in the “Baskervilles Dog”. Vasily Livanov, who was later recognized as the best performer of the role of Sherlock Holmes among non-English-speaking performers, and Vitaly Solomin - almost a real doctor Watson.
The ironic Rina Green remained in the role of the unforgettable Miss Hudson, although she was 80 years old at the time of the premiere of the picture. The English police, inspector Lestred, a little and near, was still portrayed by Borislav Brondukov. Maslennikov took him to this role, believing that he has a more international appearance. But since Brondukov could not get rid of the Ukrainian dialect in any way, he was duplicated by Igor Efimov. These actors of the movie "The Hound of the Baskervilles" gave the picture a slightly comedic hue.
Mikhalkov and company
Sir Baskerville from America, as the film's scriptwriters decided, was played by Nikita Mikhalkov, who came to the shooting, taking with him Alexander Adabashyan, a famous director and playwright. And at first, two directors - Mikhalkov and Adabashyan - who also shot more than one film, constantly discussed among themselves the process of shooting "The Baskervilles Dogs", the actors and the roles that they got.
Maslennikov, in order to neutralize this “gop company,” suggested that Adabashyan play John Barrymore, the butler of Sir Henry. This role he later became famous throughout the country, and the phrase "Oatmeal, sir."
The temperamental, cheerful American, Sir Henry, and his phlegmatic English butler balanced and complemented each other. They became the most colorful duet of the actors of the movie "Hound of the Baxerville."
New stars
A whole constellation of Moscow actors starred in the films, who later remembered with pleasure the trip to the shooting from Moscow to St. Petersburg and back. Among the actors of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Oleg Yankovsky appeared as the main villain, Jack Stapleton and Irina Kupchenko, in the image of his unhappy wife.
Laura Lyons, the farmer’s daughter, was played by Alla Demidova, and her father, a local judge, was played by Sergei Martinson.
Svetlana Kryuchkova got the role of Eliza Barrymore, wife of the butler, housekeeper of Sir Henry. At first, the director did not want to take her to the shooting, because she was pregnant and had to give birth soon. Svetlana herself later wrote that she was frightened at first for the child when she read the script where her heroine weeps all the time and talks about her convict brother.
The biggest difficulty was finding the main actor of the “Hound of the Baskervilles” - the dog itself. No one knew what the horror of peat bogs should look like. We tried different dogs and even a calf. In total, we settled on the dog, which was filmed separately, and then the frames were combined with the necessary characters. The dog’s sinister face was made of papier-mâché.
How was it filmed?
As the director of the film, Maslennikov, wrote later, he did not have to persuade him for a long time. He willingly got to work, together with Yuri Veksler they wrote the script. They decided to make the film a bit of comedy, in contrast to the book.
In most films, St. Petersburg streets pretended to be English streets, the same Baker Street Holmes lived on is actually much wider than shown in the movies. The county of Devonshire and the peat swamps of Dartmoor, in which the novel "The Hound of the Baskervilles" takes place, went to search in Estonia.
The castle hall itself, where the actors of the “Baskervilles Dogs” spent most of the time, was shot in Tallinn in the castle of Count A. V. Orlov-Davydov. The episode in which Dr. Mortimer (Eugene Steblov), tells the legend of the Baskervilles, was filmed in Glen Castle.