EDITOR’S NOTE: Hound of the Baskervilles was on the CBS Late Movie on Septeber 25, 1974 and December 14, 1976.

Director Barry Crain wasn’t just a TV director. He was also a bridge champion, an ACBL Grand Life Master that won so many points that whoever gets the most points in a year wins a title named for him.

Writer Robert E. Thompson was writing for TV as early as 1956. He also wrote the script for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Using old horror movie sets, this film had Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Dr. Watson. As for the Sir Hugo Baskerville, William Shatner is ready to be Shatner.

This was intended to be part of a revolving door series of literary detectives, as they also made The Adventures of Nick Carter starring Robert Conrad and A Very Missing Person with Eve Arden as Hildegarde Withers. Ratings and reviews were not kind.

The real mystery? On July 5, 1985, Crane was “found bludgeoned shortly before 3 P.M. in the garage of his luxury town home in Studio City.” He had been attacked with a large ceramic statue and strangled with a telephone cord before being found naked and covered in bedsheets. It took 34 years for the killer to be found, as a fingerprint led to Edwin Jerry Hiatt pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2019, saying “Anything’s possible back then. I was big into drugs.”

You can watch this on YouTube.