Thursday 7 December 2017

THE ART OF RAQUEL GOMES: HAMMER FILMS KHARIS WITH ART WORK VIDEO


#THROWBACKTHURSDAY HERE'S a throwback to a role played by Lee alongside Peter Cushing in 'The Mummy'...what do you think of this artwork from Raquel?


Artwork by Raquel Gomes






FROM Raquel's Facebook Account: 'It is finally ready!!! Christopher Lee as 'THE MUMMY' (1959) directed by Terence Fisher from Hammer Studios! Will be available tomorrow in my shop HERE!, but meanwhile please feel free to visit it for other horror and scfi prints . I added several pictures and videos of the painting process' RAQUEL ETSY SITE CAN BE FOUND : HERE 









IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE. Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us . . Keep The Memory Alive!. The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website, facebook fan page and youtube channel are managed, edited and written by Marcus Brooks, PCAS coordinator since 1979. PCAS is based in the UK and USA .

Wednesday 6 December 2017

HORRIBLE DEATH WEDNESDAY 2: WITH CALLUM MCKELVIE



SO TODAY is of course our new theme, ‘Horrible Death Wednesday’, where we highlight some of our favourite dispatches for a multitude of memorable characters in Cushing’s film. It’s a pretty good line-up if I say so myself, featuring one film I’ve regularly mentioned as a personal best, another that featured in my ‘Choicest Cushing’ article and one that I haven’t as of yet praised- but will shortly. 


FIRST UP is the aftermath of the titular creature’s death from ‘Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell’. During the final moments, the creature (having of course been on the rampage) is set upon by the inmates of the asylum and quite literally ripped apart. A particularly gruesome moment, it’s one of a number of gory sequences that feel at odds in what is essentially a throwback film. None the less, it feels right in what is an exceptionally dark film (even for the Hammer Frankenstein series) and a fitting end to one of the more sympathetic creatures in the series.


NEXT UP is a sequence from a film I’ve regularly mentioned to be a personal favourite, though haven’t as of yet written anything substantial on it. Christopher Lee’s death in The Skull has long been one of my favourites and I think it’s down to the very subtle elements of black comedy in the scene. Bar one sequence at the opening, Lee and Cushing only ever appear playing Billiards together, so it’s little surprise when Cushing batters Lee over the head with a ball. Unlike the above sequence, there’s very little on-screen gore but it’s the context that makes this particularly gruesome. Subotsky had a particular flare for introducing gruesome elements into his films, but somehow instructing directors to keep the high levels of violence off screen (the ‘Blind Man’ sequence in Tales from the Crypt springs to mind). This is a prime example. 


FINALLY we have a sequence from The Mummy. The Mummy is full of a number of great death sequences, Daddy Banning’s and Mehemet Bay’s spring to mind, but today’s is the death of Cushing’s uncle played by Raymond Huntley. Huntley is a familiar British character actor and he’s such a friendly and likable character that his death, strangled as Lee’s titular walking cadaver crashes through a door, proves to have something of a resonance to it.






IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us . . Keep The Memory Alive!. The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website, facebook fan page and youtube channel are managed, edited and written by Marcus Brooks, PCAS coordinator since 1979. PCAS is based in the UK and USA  . 

Tuesday 5 December 2017

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: COLOURISED GUESTS FROM HAMMER BRIDES PREMIER




#TOOLCOOLTUESDAY: Here is a colourized image from premiere 1960’s 'The Brides of Dracula', featuring Yvonne Monlaur and of course Peter Cushing. 'Brides', is one of those films that in my very humble opinion…manages to outdo the original in almost every way. Ok I will conceit that perhaps during the latter half of the film the script isn’t the strongest, but the opening sequences at Castle Meinster easily stand among the best of any Hammer Horror and again…perhaps somewhat controversially, far outdo those in the earlier picture. Cushing once again gets to play more of the action hero and the final sequences in the barn are incredibly thrilling, including the famous ‘branding’ sequence. David Peel makes a refreshing substitute for Christopher Lee and it’s nice to see the Hammer team taking a chance on a very different look for this vampire. Of course Yvonne Monlaur steals a great deal of the screen, being equally glamorous and, un-like a lot of early Hammer heroines, convincingly brave as she becomes determined to free the Baron. It’s a shame she only did one more picture for Hammer, 1961’s 'The Terror of the Tongs' though horror fans can also catch her in 1960’s 'Circus of Horrors' alongside another Hammer star, Anton Differing. Monlaur passed away earlier this year, it’s a tribute to her performance that 'The Brides of Dracula' succeeds at being as powerful as it is. - Callum McKelvie (pcas)





IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us . . Keep The Memory Alive!. The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website, facebook fan page and youtube channel are managed, edited and written by Marcus Brooks, PCAS coordinator since 1979. PCAS is based in the UK and USA  . 

Monday 4 December 2017

WATCH BASKERVILLES, THE BRAVEST WOMAN IN SALEM AND TARKINS EMPIRE NEEDS YOU!


#MOMENTSOFTERRORMONDAY! : YOUR EMPIRE NEEDS YOU! A terrific call to arms from RALF SCHMITT! It's interesting, even a year on from Cushing's TARKIN re-emergence in ROGUE ONE, there us hardly a day when, something about this, probably now, the most famous of all Cushing's performances, doesn't appear on the 'Cushing Scanner!'..... and that is always a good thing!



TODAY'S #MOMENTOFTERROR is a scene from 1959’s Hound of the Baskervilles, surely a firm favourite of many of our readers. Coming at the climax of the film, this is the moment where Christopher Lee’s Sir Henry Baskerville comes face to face with the Hound. Hammer’s version of the tale is easily one of the creepiest of the many filmed, preformed or staged over the many year’s and this scene is a prime example. Of course it’s well known now that the titular hound is a Great Dane in a rubber mask, but Fisher’s skill at keeping the beast off screen until this crucial moment is what makes it all the more shocking.


NOT ONLY this but it follows it up with one of the more disturbing sequences in the entire film. As Cecile Stapleton attempts to escape across the more Holmes, Watson and Henry Baskerville, unable to see her in the darkness, listen to her pitiful cries as she is sucked under the mire. It’s a shame that Hammer never thought to draw on any of Doyle’s other Holmes stories as another Gothic thriller in the same vein with a returning Cushing and Morell would have been a real pleasure. A truly chilling moment and a worthy climax to another great from Hammer’s early years.




IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us . . Keep The Memory Alive!. The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website, facebook fan page and youtube channel are managed, edited and written by Marcus Brooks, PCAS coordinator since 1979. PCAS is based in the UK and USA  . 

Sunday 3 December 2017

THE DEEP END OF HORROR: CALLUM MCKELVIE REVIEWS SHOCK WAVES



Throughout his film career, Cushing played Nazis a surprising number of times. From Rudolph Hess in a 1953 episode of You Are There, to Heinrich Haussner in Son Of Hitler (1977) and Martin Blueck in the Hammer House Of Horror series, missing several in between and after. Of course tht's not even including close cousins such as Major Heinrich Benedek in Scream And Scream Again or Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977). And can anyone forget that striking poster for the unmade The Savage Jackboot, featuring an image of Peter  dressed as an SS officer and brandishing a whip? 


Perhaps the most obvious Cushing Nazi role is that of the unnamed 'SS Commander' in Shock Waves...... despite him having very little screen time. Shock Waves has certainly build something of a reputation for itself, in spite of being incredibly low budget and essentially utilizing a tired slasher format. Of course what Shock Waves is most remembered for re-introducing the concept of Nazi Zombie popular in the 1940's and doing successfully. It doesn't really need to stated, that excluding some excellent offerings post 2000 (Dead Snow I'm looking at you) the Nazi Zombie film sub-gene is primarily made up of some pretty awful films, euro-horrors Zombie Lake and Oasis Of The Zombies (both 1981) spring to mind. Shock Waves is often thought of as the best of these, avoiding a straight up Romero rip-off in that it's Zombies are calculated, trained killers that never stop rather than flesh eating monsters.


The film tells the story of a The film tells the story of a group of tourists cruising on a small boat skippered by genre favourite John Carradine. After encountering a strange orange haze and a possible Ghost boat, the ship begins to take on water and the group find themselves evacuating to a nearby island. The island is deserted aside from an aged SS Commander (Cushing), who lives in self-exile in a deserted hotel. Cushing tells the group the story of the Death Corps, a group of undead super soldiers developed towards the end of the war, who unable to die have lain in the hold of the sinking ship, until the tourists crashing into it released them. One by one the group are laid to siege by the unstoppable killers.



It’s an incredibly simple film and as I stated before works using the format of a slasher film above anything else. Characters are introduced. Threat is introduced. Characters are picked off by threat one by one until only one/two survive. That’s it. However that’s not to say Shock Waves is bad. Far from it. Where it succeeds is atmosphere and heaps of it. The island setting is incredibly evocative and the hotel where director Ken Wierderhorn filmed is particularly creepy (apparently he payed $250 to rent the entire building, it’s now a luxury hotel which charges significantly more than that per room per night). 


The Nazi zombies themselves look INCREDIBLE, the simple design giving them a sleek appearance that makes their stalking scenes particularly effective. The shots of them underwater are one of the highlights of the film and are genuinely chilling.


And what of Cushing? Well as ever he attempts to imbue his character with some pathos but there really is far too little of him on-screen to even really comment on his performance. His monologue is one of the most chilling sequences in the film and easily the highlight and he does manage to at least deliver a menacing presence for the 5+ minutes we actually see him. 


It’s also interesting to see him acting in what is clearly a film that fits more comfortably into the ‘Horror New Wave’ style of the 1970’s than it does into any of the more classically based horror that he usually appears in. It’s a pity he had no scenes with Carradine however, though just as with every other horror star from the 50’s/60’s/70s you can always catch them together in 1983’s House of the Long Shadows. 


However if your intending to watch Shock Waves for Cushing alone, maybe give it a miss.   I recommend Shock Waves. It’s no genre classic and certainly slogs considerably once the nature of the Zombies is revealed and it turns into standard slasher fare. That said however, its ninety minutes of genuinely well-shot atmosphere. If you enjoy that indie 70’s grunge horror, then give it a watch. For genuinely excellent Nazi Zombie horror- watch Dead Snow .



IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us . . Keep The Memory Alive!. The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website, facebook fan page and youtube channel are managed, edited and written by Marcus Brooks, PCAS coordinator since 1979. PCAS is based in the UK and USA  . 


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