HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRAM STOKER : BORN TODAY NOVEMBER 8TH 1847

BORN TODAY November 8th 1847 in Clontarf, Dublin, Republic of Ireland… BRAM STOKER, creator of Dracula and a hundred thousand nightmares! Happy Birthday, Mr Stoker!!!

A VICTORY FOR ANY ACTOR : CHRISTOPHER LEE SATURDAY!

HERE IS A TWO PART POST that was shared on the FACEBOOK  PCASUK FAN PAGE today. There were some very interesting comments and opinions, which you can contribute to and read by just CLICKING HERE!

#CHRISTOPHERLEE SATURDAY! . . . PART ONE: Here's an interesting quote from the late Christopher Lee, taken from an interview with the Daily Telegraph in 2015. It's the first time I can recall, reading a quote from Lee where he compares his performance as DRACULA to other actors who played the role. This was also at a time when the mention of the 'D' word, was taboo in interviews, certainly interviews with the press. Lee ends this interview with the request, ' “Please don’t describe me in your article as a ‘horror legend’. I moved on from that.” . . .Was Lee's performance as the Count, just too good, he made a role from which he could not escape.. and that is why he became typecast? Or was it really about the attraction of the films were then pushing boundaries, in colour, blood, lust and horror, and that was the real attraction? What do you think?

#CHRISTOPHERLEE SATURDAY! PART TWO : As we have read in the previous post today and along with your very interest comments and opinions.. the role of Dracula was indeed one of Christopher Lee's finest. He often said, that he made too many, should have quit playing the Count earlier. Budgets and payments that should have been higher, better scripts . . he also mentioned these factors too. Personally, I never tired of watching any film that had Lee as Dracula and whatever he feelings were later about the role, he could not dismiss the fact, it was always good, Very good. For any actor, after a career as long as his indeed his was, in a business so fickle and unpredictable ...that has to be, for this actor... a sure victory?

REMEMBERING ONE OF HAMMER FILMS NICEST MEN : TUESDAY TOUGHIE : WINNERS OF CINEFICCION!

REMEMBERING: A wonderful actor and special guy, RALPH BATES. Sadly, no longer with us, and died today in 1991. A talented actor and a truly gentle and kind man.

THE GREAT, GREAT nephew of the renowned French scientist Louis Pasteur developed into a strangely handsome dark haired, pale complexioned English actor. Ralph Bates was born in 1940 in Bristol, England and attended the University of Dublin and studied at the Yale Drama School. His dramatic talents first came to audiences attention playing the evil Emperor Caligula in the well received BBC TV series The Caesars (1968). However, the Hammer studios resurrection of the horror genre was then in full stride, and Bates was soon engulfed in the swirling cloak of Hammer's success as he appeared in several horror films in quick succession.

FIRSTLY IN A SUPPORT role as demonic Lord Courtley in Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), followed as the lead character Baron Frankenstein in The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), then as Giles Barton in the sexy Lust for a Vampire (1971) and as the well meaning Dr. Jekyll in an unusual spin on the Robert Louis Stevenson story in Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971) and 'Fear in the Night' with Peter Cushing in 1972. Bates brought a new zest to Hammer and with his stylish dialogue delivery and film acting methods, he quickly won himself quite a few fans in both critics and regular film goers!

UNFORTUNATELY, by the early 1970s there had been a downturn in Hammer studios fortunes, and Bates then found himself turning to more traditional character work in other production houses and he appeared in several films before snaring other superb villainous role as George Warleggan in the 18th century period piece Poldark (1975).

AFTER POLDARK, Bates himself kept busy in a few forgettable UK made TV shows and television film roles which did not really do justice to his remarkable talents. In the late 1980s his health rapidly deteriorated, and he sadly passed away from cancer aged only 51 on 27th March 1991. 

BELOW OUR ANSWER to LAST WEEKS TUESDAY TOUGHIE!

ANSWER: THE ACTORS who Peter Cushing worked with BETWEEN 1956 and 1959 who became KNIGHTED were MICHAEL REDGRAVE in TIME WITHOUT PITY (1957) , CHRISTOPHER LEE in a whole range of feature films, STANLEY BAKER in VIOLENT PLAYGROUND (1958) and JOHN MILLS in END OF THE AFFAIR (released 1956)

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY! HERE ARE OUR LUCKY FOUR winners to the competition we held LAST WEEK! YOUR magazine will be with you shortly. IF ytou did not supply a postal address where you would like your prizes mailed to, PLEASE contact me at the PCAS email. AGAIN thank you everyone who took part and entered AND many thanks to DARIO at CINEFICCION for those prize copies! HERE is where you can ORDER YOUR copy too!  ANOTHER COMPETITION LATER THIS WEEK! KEEP LOOKING IN!

#SILENTBUTDEADLY #GIFS! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRAM AND THE MANY DEATHS OF DRACULA

BORN TODAY November 8th 1847 in Clontarf, Dublin, Republic of Ireland… BRAM STOKER, creator of Dracula and a hundred thousand nightmares! Happy Birthday, Mr Stoker! . . I guess it would never have crossed his mind that his creation, would in the future, die SO MANY DEATHS!

 BELOW: 'Dracula' / 'Horror of Dracula' (1958)

'Dracula Has Risen From The Grave'  (1968)

'Taste The Blood Of Dracula' (1970)

'Scars Of Dracula' (1970)

'Dracula AD 1972' (1972)

'The Satanic Rites Of Dracula' (1972)

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 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.  

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