Trivia / The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

• Acting for Two: David Ogilvy played both Sir Hugo Baskerville and Stapleton, but is only credited for the first role.
• Actor-Inspired Element: It was Peter Cushing's suggestion that the mantlepiece feature Holmes' correspondence transfixed to it with a jackknife as per the original stories. He even provided his own costumes which accurately matched the famous Paget illustrations from the Sherlock Holmes series published in The Strand Magazine.
• Creator's Favorite: Cushing considered his performance as Holmes to be one of his best
• Enforced Method Acting: Christopher Lee readily admited he had a morbid fear of spiders, and the panic on his face during the scene with the tarantula was not due to acting.
• Hostility on the Set: According to various sources, Christopher Lee and Andre Morell didn't get along during filming and they usually avoided each other in between takes.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: The hound they used was a real dog called Colonel. On the set before the hound attacks Sir Henry Baskerville, they could not get Colonel to jump on Lee, so they started to "prod" him into action. Christopher Lee gave up and suddenly, Colonel lunged on him and bit right through one of his arms.
  • For the climactic scene between Sir Henry and the hound, Margaret Robinson revealed that "they duplicated the part of the set in miniature where the dog was to leap onto Sir Henry. A small boy named Robert was dressed to duplicate Lee. The dog couldn't bear the sound of crumpled paper, and the idea was he would go straight for a prop man as he crumpled it. What we didn't know is that Colonel hated small boys, too. The prop man caught the dog in mid-air before he got to Robert."
• Playing Against Type: Christopher Lee plays Sir Henry, a Nice Guy as opposed to his usual villainous self.
• Promoted Fanboy: Peter Cushing was a major fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and extensively studied the novel and stories to prepare for his role.
• Recycled Set: The Baskerville Hall set is a redress of that used for Castle Dracula in Dracula (1958), in which Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing also starred and Terence Fisher also directed.
• Stillborn Franchise: Originally proposed by brief Hammer cohort Kenneth Hyman, this movie was planned to be the first in a series of many Sherlock Holmes movies starring Peter Cushing, produced by Hammer Films. The audience disapproved of a Hammer movie without any monsters and failed to turn up. The planned series was then dropped.
• Wag the Director: Peter Cushing would often make amendments to his script to be more accurate to the character of Holmes. For example, dialogue where he inquires about how much he's getting paid was changed to "My professional charges are upon a fixed scale. I do not vary them, except when I remit them altogether." He also shot down producer Anthony Hinds suggestion to drop the deerstalker, citing it as an iconic part of Holmes' wardrobe.