#SILENTBUTDEADLY! : RAZOR BLADES GUNS AND TONGUES GIFS!

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY! WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE? Anyone who is a fan of the Amicus portmanteau films, or has been watching the uploads I have been making over the last four weeks of #DonaldFearney's 'Amicus Vault Of Horrors' #documentary, will know, every one of those Amicus movies contain two things, a so-so story and a really fantastic story . . . or maybe two fantastic tales! In the case of 'From Beyond The Grave' their last multiple story movie, seemed to crack the formula, where every story was a winner....sadly this happened just as they packed up shop, and Amicus were no more! This #GIF is from one of the more popular stories, from the film 'Tales from the Crypt' and it's a story with frightening moral, called 'Blind Alleys'. I won't give anyway any plot spoilers, to anyone who hasn't caught this film yet but, those of you who HAVE seen the film, will probably recognize the shot in the #GIF. If you were faced with the same dilemma as Major William Rogers ... BLADES or DOG? Which one would you choose?

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY! : WHEN PETER CUSHING announced in a 1971 interview that he was currently working with AMICUS FILMS in the role of a certain MR SMITH, he made the role sound quite uninteresting and quite pedestrian. Anyone who has watched Cushing play Mr Smith will agree...the role is anything but usual or uninteresting.  ASYLUM would be the first in quite a few characters that Amicus would press on Cushing to play men who suffered great personal loss, of family or...wife. Watching Cushing emotionally dissolve while clutching his revolver is a strange experience to watch, and would wobble even the stiffest lip . . .

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY! : Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein resetting the 'evil meter'!  'Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed' presented us with a Frankenstein that reminded us that, it wasn't for nothing that Cushing's portrayal made the Frankenstein franchise one of the more profitable series in the Hammer film portfolio.

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY! THE FAMOUS TONGUE cutting shot in Hammer films, 'The Mummy' must have had audiences twitching and cringing back in 1959, in much the same way as it does now on blu ray and late night screenings on tv. IMAGINE what the 'CONTINENTAL' audiences felt, when they were treated to the full-on, bloodied 'tongue in the tongs' version?? It was hoped when Lionsgate and Hammer launched their restoration project, to bring the THREE Cushing / Lee Classic Hammer marquee titles up to scratch, scratch-less, uncensored and complete, and in this case including the Kharis offending Lingua! Despite searches that did turn up the magnificent missing 'Dracula Death' shot, wandering eyeballs  in a jar and teeth clenching artery shots from 'Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell', and a few other once snipped out pieces, that were thought far too upsetting for the delicate tastes of the European audiences. The Kharis Tongue sadly, remains allusive . . . 

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 BOTTOM LINE: CHRISTOPHER LEE THE PROS AND CONS OF EXCEPTING A ROLE

#HAMMERFILMSSATURDAY: WHEN IT CAME to business of  excepting a role in a film, television or on stage, with over 200 film credits to his name, you would think that the late Sir Christopher Lee, was an actor with formula, maybe a complex check list of pros and cons. It appears that was not the case at all.....

 

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 reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!

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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