Showing posts with label decapitation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decapitation. Show all posts

Thursday 17 August 2017

THE CAPTAIN, THE MARQUIS, THE COUNT AND THE LAST DANCE GIFS AND STILLS


#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY! The  weekly requested selection: 'SILENT GIFS BUT VISUALLY SCREAMING!' 

Here's #VINCENTPRICE as Vampire Eramus, boogieing-on-down in 'hit-miss-that-hit-miss' 1980 fun flick, 'THE MONSTER CLUB' produced by Milton Subosky, one half of the, by then defunked Amicus films. Amicus the one time, only serious contender to the Hammer films crown. It's a little sad to see how far Milton had strayed from the track with this one, although no one..myself included , would have ever told him that. Sitting in on the set, I remember seeing the 'costumed' dancers and clientele of 'The Club' in their fancy dress costumes and joke shop rubber masks, and thinking..'Maybe it will look ok, when the film is edited?' It didn't. 


THE ONE THING the film did achieve was give the crew, many of whom had worked with Amicus, some of the cast, Vincent Price and co, a last chance to have some fun. In this shot, the sound was added later in post production. The music was playing for the dancers, the band, Price, Carradine and Frau Viking-Helmet to have that last dance before for the camera, as the credits role ...but what you didn't get to hear, was the crew and extras laughing and supporting Vincent Price and his strut! It was fun, it was the last train out, that would have even made Dr Terror smile . ..  (requested Gif for J Mahon-Potter )  


#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY: AS BUDGETING FOR MONSTERS GO, it's pretty neat deal and very cheap too! There was a problem that beset most of the Hammer films, though not so much at the Amicus HQ, because they didn't really do 'Monsters of the Gothic kind'. The flicks that were the money earners at Hammer, had a 'Thing', a 'Grotesque', a Frankenstein Creation, an 'Ancient and dusty Mummy'. . . .or a 'Very Hairy Oliver Reed as Leon the Werewolf'... that something took time to make, usually make up artists built it onto the actor, HOURS before sun-up, when the majority of the studio crew still hadn't turned up for work. 



ROBERT BLOCH'S CONCEPT for Amicus films, 'THE SKULL' was just what Rosenberg and Subotsky's balance sheet ordered, a Monster, a focal point of terror, that wouldn't cost a fortune to assemble or have a make up man maintain every five minutes on the studio floor, where time was money. Once the Marquis de Sade was dead, and only his Head / Skull remained to stalk and terrorise Peter Cushing's Christopher Maitland, it was a 'no brainer'. In the morning, just a little powder to the cheek-bones. No tantrums, no agents, no trouble and pop him into the box, at the end of the day. It floated on command, and every performance was good to the bone, no strings attached!! Oh no. Wait a minute  . . . . .  


#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY!: Peter Cushing and Milton Reid as pirate Clegg and the traitor he left for dead, tongue-less and stranded on a desert island . . . 'We Meet Again' has never been more unwelcome. Captain Clegg / Night Creatures is a joy to watch, chiefly because we are in the make believe land of pirates, excise men, yo-ho-ho-taverns and lots of swash with the buckle, the kind that Peter Cushing loved. It's plain to see he is having a ball here. It's all high drama living and dying by the sword. Milton Reid is great too as the mute heavy with a grudge. Reid despite his frame, and heavy reputation on screen, actually had a soft high pitch to his own voice! He played many small roles in Brit films, when the industry had many for the picking. There is a fascinating features all about Milton Reid elsewhere on this website, and here is a quick link to find it: HERE! 


 

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY!: DESPITE ALL THE fouls deeds and murders that Peter Cushing's GUSTAV WEIL carried out in the name of a greater cause, no matter how much I hated him, his comeuppance, more than slightly cheats me of a private moment of pay back. It's a nasty death, where COUNT KARNSTEIN gets to silence nagging Gustav for good and Damien Thomas, makes it all work like clock-work.  But it doesn't sit right with me. I'll explain. Had Weil just been toppled over that balcony, fallen through the air and then had we cut away to the shocked face of long suffering wife, Kathleen Byron, that would have been fine. BUT no. 


DIRECTOR JOHNNY HOUGH, knew exactly what he was doing, when Cushing himself volunteered for that, impact fall on the top step, and the limp, lifeless slide down the remaining eight........! There is something terribly unsettling and moving about Cushing's shattered and frail frame rattling down those steps, the axe clattering before him, as his head gently lolls in that, familiar loose neck, very effective Cushing style. It wasn't a technique as such, because he came at it differently every time... it's just THIS time it looks all the more final and tragic. Cushing did a very good job as Gustav, right up to the final few feet of the last reel  . . . and that fall, of a different kind of Vampire Hunter.  



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Wednesday 21 December 2016

CUSHING COPY: ROGUE ONE NOT THE FIRST


#ROGUEONE is not the first time that Peter Cushing has had a likiness of his face/ head appear on the big screen... Here is Peter with, his 'chopped noggin' on the set of 'The House That Dripped Blood' (1971)...granted this head didn't cost the earth in CGI effects, and maybe wasn't the most reliable of replica's...but back in the day, we gave it the 'nod'😉


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Thursday 29 September 2016

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY : AMICUS LOOSES THEIR HEADS AND AN ACTORS LIFE FOR ME


#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: For this post we go back to a time when, unlike today, special effects and the make up department where often the poorer cousins of all the other departments, at the studio. And during the budget allocation, they were often allocated the smallest amount of the budget, and more often then not, the least amount of time to prepare and deliver on the studio floor.....



LITTLE WONDER THEN, that come the climax of many a Horror film, when it comes to the big payoff, the 'reveal'...it was a bit of a anti-climax. Films walked a very shaky line between getting the desired effect, and a reveal that brought the house down, with embarrassing laughter. The case in point here... Cushing's reaction is wonderful! What could it be to make his character recoil with horror like that??? 


THE ANSWER, a very weird look-a-likey of actor, one Joss Akland! Maybe Milton wanted a AA certificate??? It wasn't a mistake, because two mins later, the film delivers a 'chopped off' noggin, that looks equally, if not worse than this one... maybe we can't blame the make up and props people, did they have the budget, the time, the right model artist?? Who knows..... how ironic this scene takes place in a museum full of badly made wax figures of murders and criminals... this dummy head, really is a crime!!!



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Sunday 23 November 2014

VAMPIRE LINE UP: WHO IS MISSING? : VAMPIRE LOVERS COMPETITION


Spot WHO IS MISSING in our 'THE VAMPIRE LOVERS' competition and win yourself a copy of Hammer films REMASTERED BLU RAY 'THE VAMPIRE LOVERS' from FINAL CUT ENTERTAINMENT starring Ingrid Pitt, Peter Cushing, George Cole, Douglas Wilmer and Madeline Smith.

Final Cut Entertainment The Vampire Lovers is set for release on DECEMBER 1st 2014 and available for pre-order now: HERE

Monday 19 May 2014

INGRID PITT AND THE THEATRE ROYAL CUSHING BUST : OCTOBER 1998


OCTOBER 1998: Ingrid Pitt Unveils Bust Of Peter Cushing 
At Chatham Theatre:

Ingrid said on her website at the time: 'One of the best `do's' I've been to recently was down in Chatham. A group of theatre lovers have got together to try and save The Theatre Royal. It was a project dear to the heart of Peter Cushing and it now looks as if, with the council backing it, there maybe a future for the derelict theatre. I was there to open an exhibition of Peter's water colours and unveil a bust of his head.'


She goes on to say, 'Sheila Gray, secretary of the restoration group, rang me a couple of days after my visit and told me that at last the local council have decided to help out with a welcome £50,000. Now I don't want to claim that my visit had anything to do with the councils belated magnanimity but..... whatever the reason, I was asked back in October and presented with a life-size head of Peter Cushing. Tit for tat! In Vampire Lovers he decapitated me - now I've got my own back. I wish Peter had been there to see it, it would have suited his sense of humour!'

Friday 24 January 2014

HEADS UP! ONE SEVERED AND ONE PLASTER!


HEADS UP! Peter Cushing with his 'axed nogging' from Amicus Film 'The House That Dripped Blood' (1971) and make up artist's Roy Ashton's plaster head of Peter, which he used to produce the latex prosthetic for Cushing's Arthur Grimsdyke in Amicus films 'Tales from the Crypt' in 1972.
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