#CHRISTOPHERLEESATURDAY! THIS WEEKEND much of our time is more than taken making a short journey through the film 'HORROR EXPRESS' from 1972. It was film that both Christopher Lee and Cushing enjoyed making. Even though, as you will read above, Cushing was still much effected by the terrible loss of his wife, Helen, Lee managed to have Peter focus on the production at hand. The result is a film that was appreciated back then on it's release, and even today. Recent DVD and BLU RAY releases have sold well, and gained even more appreciation. The two roles that Lee and Cushing play, come over well. A change from their usual roles of one destroying the other, here we have interesting characters who are in competition, but have to pull together to destroy someone else and all their supporters!
BELOW: THIS SUNDAY sees CALLUM MCKELVIE's weekly feature focus on, HORROR EXPRESS TOO. A personal spin on his first memory of watching the feature plus we'll be uploading the ENTIRE film from our PCAS YOUTUBE CHANNEL, with many images and supporting images through out the feature. JOIN US TOMORROW! We will also be posting the FOUR WINNERS of our CINEFICCION MAGAZINE prizes!
BRITISH ACTRESS YVONNE MITCHELL was first and foremost a stage actress who
began her career quite early as a teen. By the time of her death, she
had performed under the theatre lights for over four decades. Her output
in films and TV paled in comparison, but the work she put out in those
mediums were of unusually high quality with mature themes. The
dark-haired actress made her film debut in a key role in The Queen of Spades
(1949) and proceeded to become a moving, thoughtful, often anguished
presence throughout the 1950s, winning the British Film Award for her
touching, sterling performance as the biological mother of a foster
child in The Divided Heart (1954). A year before that, she appeared with PETER CUSHING in the BBC production of '1984' as Julia. The broadcast gained much publicity for both her and Cushing, stirring the public in it's two live performances.
THE PUBLIC WERE so upset by Orwell's story and the BBC almost uncensored production that a debate in the government House of Commons, after the first LIVE show and the planned second live broadcast, debated if the broadcast should go ahead at all. It did. It certainly didn't mar her career, but for Cushing it set the motion of his career forever becoming tilted towards the Horror and Fantasy genre, on both the big screen and tv. Yvonne's slovenly, cuckolded wife in Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) won her the Berlin International Film Festival Award. Other important films included Escapade (1955), Sapphire (1959), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) and Johnny Nobody
(1961). On the sly, Yvonne was a novelist of both children and adult
books and an award-winning playwright. She also penned an enormously
successful biography entitled "Colette--A Taste for Life" based on the
famed French writer. The wife of film and stage critic Derek Monsey, she wrote her biography in 1957.
YVONNE MITCHELL, changed her name legally in 1946 from Yvonne Frances Joseph to Yvonne
Mitchell (Mitchell was her mother's maiden name). She also deducted a
decade from her age, which is why many sources have listed 1925 as her
birth year. She married author and critic Derek Monsey
in 1952, the couple would later divorce, only to be reconciled. They
would remarry in late 1978, just months before Monsey died of a heart
attack on 13 February 1979, with Mitchell dying of cancer just over a
month later.
