THE COUNT SESAME STREET HAMMER DRACULA MASH UP

#ONSETSATURDAY: 'The Count from Sesame Street' on the set of Hammer films, 'Dracula / Horror of Dracula' starring Peter Cushing and Christophger Lee. . . . .

 AND LEGO . . . .

JOIN US AT OUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE UPDATED DAILY! CLICK HERE

GRIMSDYKE GIF AND DOG WITH YOUR DOGS GALLERY ON NATIONAL DOG DAY!

AS WELL AS BEING OUR WEEKLY #FRANKENSTEINFRIDAY yesterday, it was also #NationalDogsDay. We thought we would take the opportunity to mark this with a GIF of Peter as Arthur Grimsdyke with his dog, Jamie from Tales From The Crypt! We also though, it might be an interesting idea to ask you to share any pics you might want to share with us, of YOUR canine Friends and Pets too! And boy, did you??!! We posted LOTS of your dog buddies on our facebook page. Here are just a few: 

HERE ARE KRISHEN'S Mervin (whippet) and Sapphire (rescued greyhound) who she says, 'loves watching Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee films with me!' 

THIS IS ZETAN'S DOG, taking in some rays and looking very cool indeed!

MEET EDDIE aka 'The Beastie' who belongs to Lexi.

THIS IS SCOOBY, whose owner Samantha says, 'Butter wouldn't melt!' Ha! A biscuit would though, I see!

HERE ARE A LOVELY COUPLE, Maggie and Ben who look very much at home. Their owner, Jennifer says,'We aren't exactly sure how old because they are rescue dogs. We believe they are around ten years old, and we have had them for eight. This is an older picture, but it is my favorite one of them. They had a pretty rough life before they came to us so we spoil them terribly'. What a couple eh?

JUST LOOK AT THIS LITTLE FELLA. His name is Mochi, pronounced 'Mock-key', he belongs to Mark, who when I asked him about his unusual name told me, 'He is named Mochi after Japanese glutinous rice cake, because he is kind of sticky (always at one's side and follows everywhere!)

AND FINALLY, this handsome fellow is Shadow, who once belonged to Dee, who told us, 'He was my definite wee shadow in so many ways ! This was him at just 5 months old, (he was big) bless him, a wee rescue pup, passed on 4 years ago. So thank you for helping me to look at his photo again.. took me a while x :) x 

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE ENTIRE GALLERY of your pics that were shared, you find them at OUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE HERE. But, we end this feature on a photograph of Peter Cushing, who although didn't actually own a dog, he was extremely fond of his long time friend and secretary's family's pet dog, who I believe was named, Toby!

HERE WE ARE ON FACEBOOK! COME AND JOIN US! JUST CLICK HERE! 

#FRANKENSTEINFRIDAY: BARON MAKES A QUICK EXIT!

#FRANKENSTEINFRIDAY: Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) making a quick exit much to the shock of the Burgomaster (David Hutcheson) and his wife (Caron Gardner) from Hammers The Evil Of Frankenstein (1964)

MORE #FRANKENSTEINFRIDAY at the Peter Cushing Appreciation

 Society Facebook Fan Page

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING: THE FIGURES AND MODELS OF PETER CUSHING

I GUESS FOR ME, IT STARTED with those fabulous figures in the mail order pages, in the back of any issue of Forry Ackerman's Famous Monster mag. Just flicking through the pages, and longing for them, was very much like dreaming about the gifts to be won by collecting vouchers, on those little pieces of grease-proof shiny paper, inside the American penny bubble gums called BAZOOKA JOE. No chance! To every child seeing these in the UK, it was an unreachable goal. The figures in Ackerman's mag of Chaney's Phantom and the bubble gum X-Ray Specs, were not for the likes of snivelling kids of the sixties, sitting in a cold and damp Blighty...

MAKING ENQUIRIES to my mother and father about maybe buying a 'International Money Order' or some dollars, then maybe sending the order off to the United States, was about as achievable in 1969, as sending a postcard off into outer space, and asking the recent moon treading  astronauts, to send you back a photograph of 'the man in the moon'!  Kids in down-town back of beyond, had no business sending off anything to anywhere as far off as the USA. 'You sent your Aunty Mary in Doncaster, a postcard from Blackpool while we were on holiday! What more do you want? That's you all over! Never satisfied. International Money what? I don't know who you think you are, Marcus?!' Well, I KNEW who I was, I was Marcus Brooks, the eight year old kid who disparately wanted his own Aurora Monster model!

THEN ONE DAY, quite by accident, I actually got my hands on one! The nearest town to where I lived, was some thirty miles away. Trips there in the family car were rare. This town also had a thriving dockland. Ships were powered by our local steam coal, ships  that sailed off to  far off and exotic places like Spain, Greece and the USA! On their return journey, the holds of ships would be filled with all kinds of goods to control the ballast of the ships, during their long journey home. Much of these goods would find their way into our local shops in our town, in an area known as 'The Arcade'. It was a shady indoor affair, of Victorian dusty windows, pre war gas lamps and faded shop fronts, selling all  manner of knocked off goods from, silk stockings, fruit, furniture, carpets, American comics and I was to find out...Aurora model kits! 

ON THIS DAY,  I was busy pouting and sighing, accompanying my mother being dragged around the said Arcade, in what was our annual trawl around the stores, to buy my new school uniform. Looking through a shop window, a horrendous garish multi coloured,  blown glass clown, had caught my Mother's eye. With a shrill shrike of excitement, my arm was grabbed and I was pulled into the dimly lit shop.

FED UP, I stood taking in the clutter of over stuffed shelves, the mountain of needles, balls of knitting wool, boxes upon boxes of 'Fancy Goods'. Glass cats, damaged china ducks and tacky paintings of 'blue ladies' and  tempted wives, mothers, grandmothers,  home makers of a certain age, who wanted something exotic and colourful to give their two up, two down, a touch of class, would all be inside ferreting for bargains. All this tack and chatter from bustling ladies with a couple of 'bob' to spare, from the house keeping money, filled the small shop from nine am until six pm. It was a little gold mine, stuffed to bursting point.

It was while I was examining a box of ornamental miniature nodding dogs, that the plump lady peering over the counter told me that, 'All damages MUST be paid for, Son!' Rolling her eyes, my mother give out a long suffering sigh and  'TUT!', then taking the nodding dogs  from my little mitts, she packed them back into the box with the tissue paper, and was placing them back on the shelf, when she was distracted by spotting what she was looking for, THE clown.

IN HER HEIGHTENED  excitement, she dropped the box of nodding dogs, which knocked another box from the shelf onto the shop floor. More 'tutting' this time from lady behind the counter, huffing she started her, 'All damages have to be...' speech, when she was interrupted by my Mother's profuse  apologies, delivered in her forced and strained telephone voice, 'Hi am Soo soore, Mrs Prue. It is ourwa Marcus, his ands, are everywhere-a. I told im. Uwe don't lewek with your-a ands! He-a is a Night-mare-a!' Well, I might have been, but right now, I was looking at MY Holy Grail! An Aurora box. I spotted the lettering on the side of the lid. The very same lid and lettering I had been studying for MONTHS inside Uncle Forry's Famous Monsters mag!

That night, I sat on my bed. You would think, after getting my mother to part with £2.50, and finally having a my very own Aurora kit, to make my very own Phantom of the Opera', I would be over the moon! I was, but one thing worried me. That mass of plastic bits and pieces? In my fuzzy fantasies of craving, I had over looked the fact that the model was a kit! It had to be carefully assembled AND painted. Me plus Glue plus paint, equals MASS MESS!

The evidence of my last attempt to assemble a scale model of the Columbus Mayflower ship, could be seen at various spots around my bedroom. The cat knocked over the model paint, and left puss prints all over my bedding! The new carpet 'that was your Aunty Patrica's 98% pure wool shag pile, that was... now ruined, with ship plank green, and our moggies sticky paw prints, of ship sail yellow all over it! To bed now!!!'  Yeah, my Aurora dream, was a job not worth starting. Just the smell of modelling glue and paint would have sent my mother off like a rocket!

ALL OF THIS,  in about 25 years would made a far off memory, when at last, certain talented individuals, decided to make life like models, of my favourite Hammer movie monsters and actors! EVEN Peter Cushing! No glue needed. No paint. Not all were spot on, but many had more than a passing resemblance. 

THE CAT IS NOW LONG GONE, now that it is been safe to prowl.  But,  I can hear my mother now,  God bless her.... 'Oh Marcus, that figurine of Peter Cushions..' ....It was my mother's strange habit to always make a plural of any name, that she was not sure of... ' ..Yes, Peter Cushions! His dark green jacket? And is it, Engrid Pitts?' Yes, Mum.  'Her dress?, I LOVE that green too. What you need now, on the wall above them, are those three green china ducks, I bought from Mrs Prue's shop. It would set that all off, loooovely!' Yes, already assembled and painted figures of Cushing and Ingrid. My mother would have approved, for sure!  

ARE YOU ON FACEBOOK? SO ARE WE! JOIN US HERE! 

#GIMMETHEGIFWEDNESDAY : THE BARONS BEDROOM EXIT AND LIGHTNING EXIT FROM THE COUNT

THREE GREAT GIFS MAKING OUR REQUEST LIST for this week's #GIMMETHEGIFWEDNESDAY. 'The FIRST..!' as Christopher Lee once grimly announced in a Dracula film long ago....is from #BruceCrichton. He requested, the moment where Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) is struck by lightning in Hammer's Scars Of Dracula (1970). See Above. 

WHEN THE GIF WAS POSTED on the PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE today, it set off a thread of it's own, when in the description of the GIF also mentioned the connection with Christopher Lee's, 'To The Devil A Daughter' for Hammer in 1976. We said, ' TRIVIA am sure some of you know, that this scene and it's ending, went on to trip up the climax of Christopher Lee role in Hammer films, 'To The Devil A Daughter'... the idea was for Lee's role to be struck by lightening, and everything was et to go on the day, until someone piped up...hey, didn't you get struck by lightening in one of your Dracula films?' Oops... so Lee's Father Michael, was struck by a rock instead... in a very weak ending....' Many of us remembered the ending and the confusion. We followed it up with a post of these two shots, from the Lightening Bolt sequence shots that were filmed, but changed for a different ending...

NEXT CAME ...'GOODNIGHT!' says the Baron…! There are quite a few things people find not to their tastes in Peter Cushing's #theeviloffrankenstein but the are quite a few things that are refreshing and spot on...one of those is the 'black humour ' in the script...this gif captures that perfectly! The GIF was requested by Mat Harrison

OUR NEXT REQUESTED GIF made the website just a few days ago too.  Creature (Christopher Lee) encountering the old blind man (Fred Johnson) in the woods in this classic sequence from Hammer's The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957) was accompanied by the question, 'There is a Cushing's 'The Abominable Snowman' (1957) connection here...can you guess it? '. This was answered by Summer Rhiannon-Elizabeth Miller Vining : 'He was one of the Yeti in the film!'.. which also started a thread on who the eyes of the SNOWMAN featured in the close up in the film, actually belong to?

We had always believed, Jack  Johnson was THE snowman whose eyes we see in the film, ....but INMB credits John Rae, so a pic was provided, so we could chew it over. Stewart Green thought Johnson looked very much like, Michael Gough! So we pinned that theory with a pic too!

AND SO ENDED another entertaining and satisfying couple of GIFS for  another #GIMMETHEGIFWEDNESDAY.

COME JOIN US AT OUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE 

Now with over 25 followers and friends!

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: TIME WARP VAMPIRE SHOES : AND TWO DRACULA ACTRESSES THAT ARE NOT LINDA HAYDEN

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: ANSWER? Very cool and a bit of a trend setter too... Note her PALE BLUE STILETTO HEEL SHOES... they were not invented until the early 1940's.... This scene in Hammer films Dracula starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, took place in 1885, putting her at least 55 years ahead of popular fashion, un-dead she maybe, dumb she isn't !!

 

#‎toocooltuesday‬ : PETER CUSHING, an actor who for the latter third of his career did get trapped in a kind of type-casting, of horror fantasy roles, and even though he didn't watch horror films, had a good sense of humour about it all... that's too-cool!

#‎TOOCOOLTUESDAY‬ : HERE'S A VERY COOL REPOST, that also turned out to be one of our most popular series of posts on our website. It it tells the tale of Christopher Lee having a right ol bat flap in a series of contact sheet photographs from a photo session with a Daily Mirror newspaper photographer in 1972...This feature you can find at the website HERE!

NOT ALONG AFTER we posted the Dracula Daily Mirror Pictures . . . We started getting enquiries about a colour photograph we posted in the feature. A mysterious photograph that was also turning up at signing sessions, and being signed by LINDA HAYDEN. The problem was..it WASN'T Linda Hayden in the photograph with Christopher Lee.. but someone with a Space 1999 / glamour model connection . . the mystery was solved! You can read all about it with full gallery HERE 

AS THE PUZZLE OF THE ' NOT LINDA HAYDEN' photograph was solved, we decided to get to the bottom of another mysterious face in Dracula AD 1972, the DANCER ON THE PIANO.. who again, some were saying...also could be the girl in the pic with Lee! This one, wasn't going away.. but after MORE digging and a telephone chat with the lady in question.. we managed to solve this one too! Find out just who THAT girl is RIGHT HERE

JOIN US AT OUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE NOW WITH OVER

25,000 FOLLOWERS AND FRIENDS

NEWS : SNARK WILL NOT BE CHRISTOPHER LEES LAST MOVIE

THE AWARD WINNING ACTORS Tracey Birdsall and Barry Corbin are at this time, shooting THE TIME WAR, the writer-director Neil Johnson's long gestating science-fiction thriller that started development way back in 2010. The good news is, THE TIME WAR features the legendary actor, the late Christopher Lee (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars : Attack of the Clones) in what could be, his final screen role.

Filmmaker Johnson was so sure that the film would get made one day, that in November of 2010, he paid Sir Christopher Lee to record an opening narration, while at Abbey Road studios on other business. Johnson didn't realize that this would be the last time that he would see the acclaimed actor, who passed in 2015.

#MONSTERMONDAY : FRANKENSTEIN'S CREATION MONSTER OR VICTIM?

TEXT ‪#‎MONSTERMONDAY‬ this one isn't maybe as easy or obvious as it may first look... So, the last thing you see, is the floor flying to you, as you hit the marble floor of the home of Frankenstein, next thing you wake up, with one mega headache, and a body that certainly isn't yours.. I think I'd be a little 'annoyed' too ha! Well... Monster OR Victim??

Join us at our facebook FAN PAGE now with over

 25,000 friends and followers!