#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: 'CULT OF THE RESTLESS DEAD' AND HAMMER NUDE VAMPIRES!

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: I would have liked to have shown you what must be, one of the rarest posters featuring Hammer's DRACULA as played by Christopher Lee. However, our website provider is very strict on what is considered, naughty, far too naughty and what is down right, 'ooh er missus!. So, here is as much as we can reveal. Those of you who are familiar with the bit of detective work I did about three years ago on, the Daily Mirror Christopher Lee Photo-Session and the 'Linda Hayden' pic, will know the session that this colour pic came from! This photograph also turned up in a 'top shelf' magazine in a feature called, 'Cult of the Restless Dead'. You can read about the photo-session and see pics from the contact prints,by clicking HERE

MORE ON THE PHOTO-SESSION CLICK HERE

MORE HERE 

AND THE FINAL PIECE OF THE PUZZLE HERE

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RICK BAKER CREATES A GREAT HALLOWEEN TRIBUTE TO PETER CUSHING!

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: It's a great tribute to the work of make up artist Roy Ashton and Peter Cushing, that Cushing's portrayal of Arthur Grimsdyke STILL gets as much attention that it does! Make Up genius RICK BAKER too to twitter today to show us his #Halloween make up for this year! It's terrific! ' “Tested my Halloween party makeup today....He tweeted.... #Grimsdyke Fabricated out of cotton & latex. Hard to shoot a selfie with black fabric on your eyes!” GREAT job!

THIS TRIBUTE TO ASHTON/CUSHING also reminds us of the 'cameo' that the make up did in #thewalkingdead TV show last year. Greg Nicotero did a great job also of recreating Cushing's nightmare-Grimsdyke, back from the dead!

 

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THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN : MINUS CUSHING AND D.O.A.

While not a Peter Cushing  film, the Horror of Frankenstein is included here because it is part of the Hammer films Frankenstein series and while Cushing didn't appear in the film, it's of interest as an example of how Hammer tried to experiment with a winning formula . . .  and failed.

CAST:

Ralph Bates (Victor Frankenstein), Dave Prowse (The Monster), Kate O’Mara (Alys), Veronica Carlson (Elizabeth Heiss), Graham James (Wilhelm Kastner), Dennis Price (Grave Robber), Bernard Archer (Professor Heiss), Jon Finch (Lieutenant Henry Becker)

PRODUCTION: 

Director/Producer – Jimmy Sangster, Screenplay – Jimmy Sangster & Jeremy Burnham, Photography – Moray Grant, Music – Malcolm Williamson, Make up – Tom Smith, Art Direction – Scott MacGregor. Production Company – Hammer/EMI.

SYNOPSIS:

VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN, a cold, arrogant and womanising genius, is angry when his father forbids him to continue his anatomical experiments. He sabotages his father’s shotgun, causing him to be killed. Inheriting the family fortune, Victor uses this to enter med school in Vienna but is forced to return home when he gets the dean’s daughter pregnant. There he sets up laboratory, starting a series of experiments into the revivification of the dead. Eventually, he builds up a composite body from human parts, which he brings to life.

COMMENTARY:

THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN was the fifth film in Hammer’s Frankenstein series. By 1970, Hammer had regurgitated most of their monster themes several times over. The Horror of Frankenstein came at the point Hammer were starting to inject new blood into their product. The influence of the younger generation was making itself felt and Hammer were casting younger stars, recruiting young directors, not to mention placing an open emphasis on sexuality in films.

WITH THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster was brought back to rewrite his script for The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), which started the series and Hammer’s reputation as a horror industry leader off thirteen years before, while he was also allowed to make his début as director. The role of Frankenstein was given a facelift and Peter Cushing was unceremoniously dumped from the role in favour of Ralph Bates whom Hammer were grooming as a new horror star at the time.

PUBLICITY STILLS were shot on the set with Ralph Bates and Peter Cushing shaking hands to announce the change. The future of the Frankenstein series seemed to be heading in a new direction ... only The Horror of Frankenstein was a disaster and the Hammer Frankenstein series failed to go in any new directions.

THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN starts in with a promising sense of black humour. However, the opening tapers off and Jimmy Sangster thereafter seems uncertain whether he is delivering parody or straight melodrama. The effort turns out dismally where all that Sangster ends up doing is weakly echoing The Curse of Frankenstein in a plot that seems more interested in Frankenstein’s sexual dalliances than his medical obsessions. The sets seem flatly lit. Dave Prowse, the bodybuilder who later played Darth Vader in Star Wars (1977) and sequels, turns the monster into a mindless brute. The best thing about the film is Ralph Bates’s cold and arrogant Frankenstein but the rest of the show is dreary and dull.

THE SADDEST THING about The Horror of Frankenstein is that it comes from Jimmy Sangster who did such a fine job in tuning the script for Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein. There is such a gulf between The Curse of Frankenstein and the loose remake here in terms of quality with Sangster seeming to understand so little about what made the original work that the success of Curse can only be placed down to director Terence Fisher.

The other Hammer Frankenstein films are:– The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973).
REVIEW: Richard Scheib
IMAGES: Marcus Brooks

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CHRISTOPHER LEE : ONE YEAR ON . . .

SO HERE WE ARE . .  It's been a whole year since the day we woke, to the terrible sad news that, the last remaining figure head of a 'Golden Age', had left us. The towering talent that was, Christopher Lee had gone.

FOR WEEKS afterwards, tributes, television specials and features filled the media, and for many it was sudden realisation, like looking from the top of a mountain, and seeing this vast spread, a different coloured landscape... THE huge and prolific career, of Christopher Lee!

OVER THE DAYS, fans revisited films, youtube clips, watched reruns of his movies on tv, posted stories on facebook of meeting him, autographs collected were shared, other actors, friends and people within the industry shared their stories too. WE posted photographs and banners, interviews and long lost tv appearances, but it was still hard weeks later, come Christmas..and no video festive message!

I HAVE A GROUP OF FREINDS who aren't 'into' the genre and some of the films, we celebrate here, but they too found themselves, 'digging out' and watching not just the Lee classics, but his lesser known tv work too, in an attempt to find out for themselves, 'what WAS the allure of this actor?'....some were pleasantly surprised!

AND THAT IS WHERE we are today. I would loved to hear, if you have 'gone digging' too? Have you over the last year revisited some Christopher Lee favourites..OR have you strayed further a field and discovered something you knew nothing about too, a film he appeared in you hadn't seen before and enjoyed??? I'd LOVE to know. He may not be physically with us now, but there will always be a thread, a post, a banner, a clip...always time to celebrate, the one and only... never to be replaced, Christopher Lee...right here!

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