THIS WEEK : A HAUNTING AND A WEREWOLF: LAST WEEK: THE HELEN HAYES WIG AND TOUGHY ANSWERS

HERE IS THIS WEEKS TUESDAY TOUGHY! SUSSEX, PETER CUSHING A HAUNTING A WEREWOLF AND A CASTLE? WHAT IS THE CONNECTION? Here is a clue: All FIVE things point to a past Peter Cushing project.  FIND the title of that past project, and you have nailed it!

ANSWERS to last week's TUESDAY TOUGHY: 1: The film Christopher Lee was helping to promote was 'Funny Man' 2: Peter Cushing is playing Count Gerard De Merret in the TV adaption of Balzac's 'La Grande Breteche', in Orson Welles Great Mysteries in 1973. 3: The country that linked these questions was FRANCE

THE APPEARANCES OF THE WIG! You have to have a keen idea, know the costumes or good memory of press photographs from the films, but here are the THREE appearances of the hair piece that Peter Cushing called, 'The Helen Hayes Wig'. I don't think the cinema going public and those who watched Orson Welles Great Mysteries took too much notice at the time, when the wig appeared, but ceratinly since voices and opinions can be heard on the net, the vote on the wig, is quite negative. It's interest to note that, even though Cushing made a joke about the wig, the choice of using the hair piece was actually Peter's!!

RAISING HAIR PROBLEMS! MORE on DRACULA'S HAIR and MANY OTHERS in our FEATURE at the website : HERE!

MANY OF YOU chose Amicus films, 'And Now, the Screaming Starts' or 'Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell', where Peter wore that same wig! The costume, is the giveaway. Well done to everyone who had a go!  Most got Funny Man, but the wig threw most of you . . 

CALLUM MCKELVIE: GOES RUMMAGING ON PLANET AARU FOR CUSHING WHO GOODIES!

SO FIRST THING FIRST- I’ve been away a little while, but now I’m back! So as before every Sunday I’ll be stealing the lime light to ramble a little about a differing aspect of Cushing and his work. It seemed best to return with a bang and following on from my two-part review of the ‘Dr. Who’ movies, we’re presenting another two-part piece on the films, though this time it’ll be more along the lines of a ‘behind the scenes feature’. Primarily there’s two reasons for this. A) I am of course a massive Doctor Who fan. B) There’s a lot of neat images and footage we have yet to share.

ONE OF THE MAIN REASON FOR this article was to showcase some footage available on the BBC DVD of the Jon Pertwee story Death to the Daleks. (see above) Recently discovered at the time of that stories release, the footage is a rare behind the scenes look at the making of the 1965 film. The BBC’s presentation of the footage is admirable as they’ve gone to the trouble of interviewing some of the original crew along with Hammer Historian Marcus Hearne, for what is an admittedly small amount of film. 

THE FOOTAGE has some interesting Cushing moments, showcasing him exploiting the slapstick comic potential of his character as he jumps around wildly in a doorway when their escaping the Dalek trap. The real delight however is a tiny moment in which Cushing and fellow star Roy Castle are seen partaking in a small song and dance number of what we can presume is some kind of Broadway theme. Unfortunately as the footage has no sound we’ll never know what this sounded like! Though I’m sure someone with excellent lip-reading skills could tell us the name of the song.

ONE OF THE MORE INTERESTING facts in terms of the films promotion centres around its sets. Designed by Scott Slimon (who worked on many contemporary horror pictures including Scream and Scream Again and The Skull amongst others) they are easily one of the most striking aspects of the production. Indeed so striking were they deemed by Milton Subotsky that not only did sections of them appear alongside the Daleks at the Cannes Film festival in the 1965, but they then went on a country-wide tour across the UK promoting the film. 

SEVERAL OF THE DALEKS from the film would be loaned out the BBC and appear as ‘Dalek guards’ in The Chase, which due to the shows tight turn-around would actually be broadcast before the film’s release. Their noticeable by the fact they are missing their large bases.

OF COURSE THE FILM was released during the height of so-called ‘Dalekmania’ within Britain, when the titular killer pepper-pots from the planet Skaro were taking over the toy stores. Indeed it’s often easy to forget that during this period it wasn’t really the ‘Doctor’ that was the draw of ‘Doctor Who’. The year the film was released the Daleks appeared in a massive 19 television episodes and that’s excluding cameo appearances, indeed one of the episodes didn’t even feature the Doctor (Mission to the Unknown). 

BY THE TIME the film hit cinema screens then a slew of Dalek related merchandise was available for the avid collector. Some was explicitly related to the Cushing film (The ‘Paint and Draw the Film of Dr. Who and the Daleks’ book) whereas a majority was simply ‘Dalek’ merchandise (Dalek soap, Inflatable Daleks). Most famous….or perhaps that should be infamous was the ‘Dalek Playsuit’. A red plastic dome would fit upon the head of the wearer, with a plastic sucker and gun arm, whilst there body would be draped in a plastic sheet, designed to look like a Dalek.

MORE EXPLICITLY movie related merchandise including a Dell comic adaptation, that like all Dell comic adaptations of the time told the story of the film with some rather unimpressive artwork. Meanwhile child star Roberta Tovey released the album ‘Who’s Who’ with a B-side featuring Jack Dorsey’s Dance of the Daleks. Listen to it at your peril…

PLEASE JOIN ME HERE AGAIN, next week! Where I’ll be discussing tid-bits concerning the second Dalek movie…DALEK INVASION EARTH 2150 AD!.

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  . . 

BEHIND THE SCENES RARE STILLS GALLERY PART ONE: THE CUSHING DOCTOR WHO MOVIES

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY!! PRESENTING  PART ONE of a TWO PART PCAS SPECIAL GALLERY featuring many rare photographs from behind the scenes and ON-SET during the making of the two DALEK / DOCTOR WHO MOVIES starring Peter Cushing, Jennie Linden, Bernard Cribbins, Roy Castle, Jill Curzon and little Roberta Tovey. . . .and of course THE DALEKS. Here is an opportunity to view for many, will familiar scenes for different angles, in stills taken by BERT CANN (DIE2150AD) and TED REED (DWATD) the unsung and uncredited stills camera men who captured many of the images you see below, and in PART TWO of the PETER CUSHING DOCTOR WHO MOVIES GALLERY Part Two, VERY SOON! ENJOY!

YOU CAN FIND a whole TARDIS load of information about DR WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965) AND the sequel movie 'DALEK INVASION EARTH 2150 AD' by clicking THESE BLUE LINKS or clicking the LINKS UNDER the feature BANNERS BELOW!

CLICK FOR PART ONE THIS FEATURE AND GALLERY HERE!

CLICK FOR PART TWO OF THIS  PCAS FEATURE AND GALLERY HERE!

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY! WE CLOSE GALLERY ONE win a very special photograph. A reunion of the cast of Cushing's 'DR WHO AND THE DALEKS' film from back in 1965. This photograph was snapped at BBC television Centre during the making of the '30 Years In The Tardis' documentary in 1993. The late Roy Castle didn't actually take part in the documentary, as he was working on his BBC show 'RECORD BREAKERS'.

LOOK OUT FOR PART TWO SOON! HERE AT THE PCASUK WEBSITE!

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 . .  

THE POWER OF THE DALEKS : PHOTO OPS DURING DALEKMANIA OF THE 60'S.

Snaps shots of the Dalek invasion of the 60's and how newspapers, film promoters and toy shops created photo ops at the circus, on westminster bridge...and bus shops.