Sunday 15 November 2020

#SHERLOCKSUNDAY : FROM THE LIBRARY OF #PETERCUSHNG PLUS ARE YOU OUR #INDICATOR #IMONSTER WINNERS?

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to our TWO 'I MONSTER' blu ray Competition WINNERS! Alistair Carnell AND Alison Tipton 😊You have both won a copy of the fab remastered #Indicator / #Powerhouse bu ray 'I MONSTER' starring #ChristopherLee and #PeterCushing, directed by #StephenWeeks, released in 1971. Thank you to everyone who entered, there were very , very few incorrect answers/entries... but just TWO WINNERS, picked at random last night. It's a cracking premier release on blu ray, remastered and stacked full of extras. Again, many thanks to our sponsors Indicator / Powerhouse for once again stepping up and providing our prizes 😀 ANOTHER PCAS Competition arriving shortly ... stat tuned!😏

OUR COMPETITION QUESTION: 'STEPHEN WEEKS, DIRECTED PETER CUSHING IN TWO FILMS. NAME THE FILMS AND THE CHARACTER PETER CUSHING PLAYED!' 

THE ANSWER: Stephen Weeks directed two films with Peter Cushing; 'Amicus films 'I Monster' - Peter Cushing played Utterson. The second film was 'Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' in 1984. We excepted the title 'Sword of the Valiant' as a correct answer 😉 Peter Cushing played Seneschal Gaspar or Gaspar.

MANY, MANY correct answers! Maybe I should make these a little tougher???? - Please stay safe everyone and thank you for joining in on the fun! : Marcus


#SHERLOCKSUNDAY! One of quite a few Sherlock books owned by #PeterCushing containing a selection of #SherlockHolmes stories. This one is quite worn, which I value MORE! It's a good sign he read it and accessed it often? I love #ConanDoyle's Holmes stories, many I find more enjoyable reading off the page, than adapted for a film or tv production. . .


OVER AT the Facebook PCASUK Fan Page, I am asking if friends can select their favourite Sherlock Holmes story, or maybe a top three? I love the 'Red Headed League', 'The Empty House' and 'The Last Bow'.. . . What are yours?


ANOTHER TRIVIA QUESTION, being asked today at the Facebook Fan Page, is can you name ALL the faces in this photograph, and what was the occasion and why they were all brought together? LOTS of answers! Tea party? Convention? There are many . .  any ideas? 😁😉

PLEASE COME JOIN US at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE! With posts every day, rare images and photographs, features and prize competitions.You'll have good company with over
 34 thousand followers, all celebrating the LIFE and CAREER of Peter Cushing OBE!

Saturday 14 November 2020

IF IT LOOKS LIKE DRACULA, MOVES LIKE DRACULA, BITES LIKE #DRACULA, THEN IT IS . . .

UPDATE on this post, shared today at Facebook PCASUK Fan Page: The studio photographer, credit Bruce McBroom is a 'in-joke' name for screenplay writer Terry Southern, a joke shared by Terry, director Joe McGrath and Peter Sellers. Sellers was famous for his love of giving friends and associates pseudonyms. Betty Strain, Augustus Pillpot, you name it... he had them. Southern though did take many of the photographs and stills that were used in publicity and press for the film, hence his 'studio photographer' credit in the film credits, press book and publicity materials 😊 - Marcus


#ChristopherLee Saturday! Here is Christopher Lee on set of the #PeterSellers / #RingoStarr 1969 film, 'The Magic Christian' with the stills photographer Bruce McBroom. It's a kinda cameo role, credited as playing 'a vampire'... No Dracula here, honestly!! 😀😵😝😏It's a groovy, zonked out film, just tripping and slipping in at the end of a decade of psychedelic mania, peace, love and understanding. And that's the thing here.. I don't understand why Lee signed up for this...money? Moolah? lolly? ... he would do it once again just a year later, with #PeterCushing as Frankenstein for the his and Peter's good friends #SammyDavisJr and director #Jerrylewis, the ''Salt and Pepper' sequel 'One More Time' produced in 1970. Based on Terry Southern's book and screenplay, #TheMagicChristian is also of it's time, seen now by many as a 'classic' ... I love the soundtrack score with Paul McCartney's 'Come and Get It' theme song sung by '#Badfinger' .


Lee's appearance in the film adds to a few moments and amusing reaction shots, this one with the ship captain, played by Wilfred Hyde White, is one of my favs. WHW reaction is certainly 'a moment!😝

I LOVE Peter Sellers and the absolute chaos.. For me, Lee is a bonus. Have you seen the movie and what's your take on Lee playing a role, he often had many reservations on playing... ever again, and again.... 😊 Stay safe and have a great weekend everyone! - Marcus

PLEASE COME JOIN US at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE! With posts every day, rare images and photographs, features and prize competitions.You'll have good company with over 34 thousand followers, all celebrating the LIFE and CAREER of Peter Cushing OBE!

Friday 13 November 2020

THESE MONSTERS ARE STILL WAITING FOR YOU . .

MANY THANKS TO #INDICATOR / #POWERHOUSE for sponsoring another PCAS competition, with their brilliant 'I Monster' remastered blu ray, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, a fabulous package, busting with extras too! This competition is open only at our FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE and as with all PCASUK competitions, it is open to everyone, whoever, wherever you are,from the page!! We close the doors on the 'lab' and entries at MIDNIGHT GMT TODAY, Friday 13th... so bend the superstition, enter . . coz some people are going to get lucky! So GOOD LUCK Everybody! 😉😀- Marcus

YOU CAN ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY, direct form POWERHOUSE: HERE!




I THINK WE CAN all spot WHO this is above? 😏 A neat caricature of Peter Cushing by the talented Jeffrey Haiduk! I love the fingerless glove touch . .. 😄 - Marcus



Thursday 12 November 2020

UNSEEN DRACULA AD 1972 CONTACT SHOT : ALTAR GIRLS AND WIN INDICATOR'S 'I MONSTER' REMASTERED BLU RAY!

OCCASIONALLY, photographs pop up or are found on contact sheets from #PeterCushing films, that just by the random or weirdness of their content, when posted and shared, they cause a bit of a chorus of head-scratching or sometimes, stunned silence. The one above, has caused quite a rash of more questions than answers. Not that long ago, a small faded postage stamp sized exposure on a 50 year old publicity stills contact sheet I spotted, gave the answer to a plot hole, that had teased fans of #Hammerfilms, 'Dracula AD 1972' for decades.

ONE OF THE MANY entertaining plot points in this film is, all the pop picking, trendy youngsters in the film, fall victim to the bite of 'the Count', and we have a nice, wrap to their fate, with a shot of them either dead, dying or staked, a good few years before the trend of the 'teen slasher' movies, that would soon by the dying diet of most horror films of the late 70's and eighties. All the victims get gnarled and knocked off in style.  But, we get kinda cheated in the case of  actor, Phillip Miller's role of Bob, boy-friend of Stephanie Beacham's character, Jessica Van Helsing. We are aware in a reveal of Bob having been pecked and made part of the Vamp klan, during a set up scene with Johnny Alucard and Jessica at the night club. 



FULL UNCUT INTERVIEW with #CAROLINEMUNRO from 2000 RIGHT HERE!

BUT SHORTLY AFTER, Peter Cushing's Van Helsing stumbles upon him, dead and life-less in among the tombstones of St Bartov's cemetery. How he got there and what finished him off, was a mystery and a bit of whimp wrap. Hardly fast forwarding, but decades later, that little exposure on that very contact sheet, reveals all. An image of Bob, holding his hands to the sun and covering his face, in the cemetery where Van Helsing found him, points and hints to, Bob got fried in the sun... how and when, we may never know. So feast your eyes on the colour contact sheet exposure, at the top of this page. 

1970'S ACTRESS AND SINGER, Marsha Hunt is being laid upon the altar, by Christopher Lee, either having already been bitten or ..about to. This shot if it was ever filmed would have been very similar to the fate that almost fell Van Helsing grand-daughter Jessica, same location, same altar. It's hard to know which was filmed first, but if this was shot with Hunt, Beacham one the day and Hunt's footage hit the floor, instead meeting her end, by being bitten standing, in the church... ahem.. similar to Laura Bellows, as played by Caroline Munro. If the shot was filmed and included in the film, that would have made all three actress, spending sometime on THAT altar! I know, Hammer loved to get their monies worth out of props, costumes and sets, but that may have been going a bit tooooo far, maybe?  

ABOVE : DIRECTOR Alan Gibson and production designer Don Mingaye on THEIR knees at the altar at the set of 'Dracula AD 1972 

WEEK, I GUESS script writer Don Houghton, was maybe running out of ideas, tough with all that action with Dracula taking place in Christopher Lee's ONE location in this film... INSIDE the desecrated church of St Bartolph's! If this shot was never taken, then maybe it was the result of a set up by the film's studio publicity photographer George Whitear. Maybe, one day will will find out? Over at the Facebook PCASUK Fan Page this pic has certainly got friends and followers thinking though . . 😏 

TRIVIA: IMDB credits 'a picture of Peter Cushing's recently deceased wife Helen Cushing can be seen on the desk in Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing's study'. . . it ain't her at all, it is a random photograph form a photo library, not Helen Cushing. At the the Facebook PCASUK Fan Page we are asking, Can you name the film where Helen Cushing's photograph WAS used???


OUR PCASUK 'I MONSTER' INDICATOR BLU  COMPETITION CLOSES FRIDAY 13TH! THERE IS STILL TIME TO ENTER HERE! 


OUR FULL REVIEW OF INDICATOR'S REMASTERED BLU RAY OF AMICUS FILMS CLASSIC  'I MONSTER' starring #ChristopherLee and #PeterCushing IS HERE! 

PLEASE COME JOIN US at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE! With posts every day, rare images and photographs, features and prize competitions.You'll have good company with over 34 thousand followers, all celebrating the LIFE and CAREER of Peter Cushing OBE!

Tuesday 10 November 2020

ACTOR JOHN FRASER DIES AGED 89

 
SADLY, today we say goodbye actor John Fraser... a Scottish actor and author. His partner of 42 years, Rodney Pienaar confirmed that John had died on Saturday after returning home from a stay in hospital. Throughout his career, John Fraser was a very busy actor, on both the big and small screen from about early 1960's until the late 80's. Quite a few notable roles and the reputation of being touted as the 'most handsome man in Britain' for a while

#JohnFraser was cast as #PeterCushing 's son, Christopher Trevenyan in the film 'Fury at Smugglers Bay' in 1961, an interesting widescreen movie, that almost seems like a relation to Cushing's #Hammerfilm 'Night Creatures' aka 'Captain Clegg' which came swashbuckling along a few months later in 1962!

FRASER WORKED with an impressive line up of top billing actors, including #PeterSellers and Alec Guinness, but first came to public notice in 1955 as the doomed Flt Lt J V “Hoppy” Hopgood DFC in 'The Dam Busters' in 1955. Later, Fraser had leading roles in films such as 'El Cid', 'The Trials of #OscarWilde' (playing Lord Alfred Douglas), #RomanPolanski's Repulsion, Isadora and Schizo. He made appearances on television series including Danger Man (1964), Randall and Hopkirk (1969), #Columbo (1972), Doctor Who (1981) and The Bill (1995).

NOTABLY IN THE 1960'S his novel 'Clap Hands If You Believe in Fairies' was a first in bringing the devastation caused by the #thalidomide drug to the attention of a wider public. In the late 1990's, Fraser retired from film making and acting to Tuscany in Italy. In 2004, he published his autobiography, Close Up, in which he wrote frankly about his gay life and friendships.

A WELL RESPECTED actor and gentle man, Fraser died yesterday aged 89... This post has also been shared at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE where everyone is sharing their memories of John Fraser, his life and work... please free to share and to join them today . .  - Marcus 

PLEASE COME JOIN US at the FACEBOOKPCASUK FAN PAGE! With posts every day, rare images and photographs, features and prize competitions.You'll have good company with over 34 thousand followers, all celebrating the LIFE and CAREER of Peter Cushing OBE!

Monday 9 November 2020

RARE #CHRISTOPERLEE PRINCE OF DARKNESS PUBLICITY STILL

THE UK PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY also has a presence on INSTAGRAM and for the last few days has been winging it's fast growing total of followers PAST the 1K mark. Thank you to everyone who have joined and have been reposting 😊If you want to support or keep up with what is happening at the site, feel free to join up! HERE! 


#ChristopherLee Saturday! Hammer's Dracula, played by Christopher Lee in 'Dracula, Prince of Darkness' 1966

PLEASE COME JOIN US at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE! With posts every day, rare images and photographs, features and prize competitions.You'll have good company with over 34 thousand followers, all celebrating the LIFE and CAREER of Peter Cushing OBE!
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