THE LAST REUNION OF CHRISTOPHER LEE AND HAMMER FILMS?

#CHRISTOPHERLEESATURDAY! Christopher Lee as, August in the 2011 film, 'THE RESIDENT' a role for Lee, that was seen by many, as a welcome return to Hammer films. The Hammer connection though, was also a very sticky point when the film was released. Many Lee and Hammer fans, didn't see or credit this roel as a RETURN at all, only that Hammer was now far removed from the lone and iconic production company of yesterday. Many argued that THE RESIDENT was produced by a Hammer films, that was a consortium of businesses, that it wasn't a sole Hammer film production and that Hammer was just a name! Does the fact that Hammer films had changed and that several hands were producing the films, take away the link between Christopher Lee appearing in what appeared to 'the public' to be a celebrated reunion? This isthe question we are asking today at the Facebook PCASUK FAN PAGE! Please feel free to join the debate, and add your opinion on this too!

#CHRISTOPHERLEE Saturday! Aged 85, and out and about in town in 2007, is Christopher Lee! 😊 Look closely and you'll see he is carrying some DVD's in his hand. Over at the Facebook PCAS FAN PAGE we've asked those of you who are keen eyed film collectors, IF they can identify the title of that dvd? 😉

 

CATCH UP with all the details on Warner Brothers REMASTERED blu ray releases of THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA and DRACULA AD 1972 : Reviewed : animated GIFS, photographs and screen captures!

BY THE WAY, did you know that the name of Dracula's 'hang out' Pelham House in 'Satanic Rites' was an 'in-joke reference' to Hammer films CEO Sir James Carreras home of residence, Pelham Place in London? 'Satanic Rites' was Sir James' last production with Hammer films.

ANOTHER MILESTONE AND A BIG THANK YOU!

AND IF ....the sharing of the news of a long thought lost Cushing film wasn't enough excitement for today... We have just hit another MILESTONE! We have just crossed over TWENTY-NINE THOUSAND LIKES AND FOLLOWERS to this PCASUK fan page 🙂 🙂 Thank you everyone, SO MUCH! The sharing and liking of our post makes all the difference to the life and success of what we all do on this page. That is obviously working...thanks to you 😉 Next step the 30, hopefully soon! You are the best and thank you again - Marcus

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SUPERNATURAL: PETER CUSHING AT 100: WITH RARE PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY

As a lifelong fan of Peter Cushing, I’ve suffered the trauma of his “dying” on three separate occasions. Bear with me, that’ll make sense soon enough. I was born in 1977, the year that Star Wars was unleashed on the world. I was too young to see it theatrically, though my father and my brother both went nuts over it and became fans for life. I seem to recall seeing the film theatrically at a very young age, however, and I can only imagine it was in 1980, when the film was reissued to coincide with the release of The Empire Strikes Back. I don’t recall much about what I thought of it then, but even at that ridiculously young age, I knew who Peter Cushing was. Even though he was playing a villain with a heart of stone, I still recall being deeply upset that he went up in smoke at the end. Somehow, that just didn’t seem quite right and proper to me.

The second time I learned of his demise was when WTBS ran Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed in 1986. A friend of mine was able to watch the telecast, including the host segments by station personality Bill Tush, but I had to wait to watch it until later - fortunately, we had a VCR by then, so I wasn’t too terribly resentful that my dad had whisked my brother and I off to Kennywood for a sunny day at the amusement park, when I could have been inside, huddled in front of the TV set. When I got home, I sat down and watched the film - and it made a tremendous impression on me. The next day, I spoke with my friend - and he told me that Peter Cushing had died. I couldn’t believe it; it must be a mistake! There was nothing in the paper, nothing on the news. Surely his passing would attract some kind of attention? But, he was insistent - Bill Tush said the man had died. Spurred by this, I decided to check out my recording to see if there was any truth to it. Tush made no mention of anything of the kind at the start of the film, but sure enough, after the film was done, he made note that Cushing had died earlier that year. I was crestfallen. Cushing was one of my idols, and he was gone. I grieved for a little while, but life went on.

Imagine my amazement, therefore, when I found out a few years later that he was not only still alive - but he was also granting interviews! I caught up with some pieces on him, and felt like order had been restored. Peter Cushing, the epitome of the English gentleman, the symbol of good in the horror film, was back among the living. I gather Tush’s gaffe did not escape notice; I have no idea if he ever issued a retraction or if indeed he ever gave it much thought altogether…

The third time proved to be unlucky, however. I can remember it well: my dad was watching the news, and he called me to come to the living room. As I entered the room, I noticed a clip playing from Horror of Dracula: the final battle between Van Helsing and Dracula, played to perfection by Cushing and Christopher Lee. Oh no, I thought, one of them has died. A voice over confirmed the worst - Peter Cushing has died at the age of 81. Truth be told, saddened as I was, I wasn’t as devastated as I was when Vincent Price passed away the year before. I had no idea how ill Price was, and I pictured him as he so often appeared on films and TV talk shows - vibrant, full of energy, and loving life. With Cushing, I knew the man had been ill for years. I knew that he had been miserable ever since the death of his wife in 1971. I knew that he was so sickly that he couldn’t even get acting jobs anymore - producers and directors wanted him, but the insurance companies weren’t so keen. Somehow, I knew he was at peace - and though I was not - nor do I remain - a man of religious conviction, he was, on some level, free of years of suffering. It was hard to imagine that he was no longer among the living, and yet - he had had a long life, and he finally got what he really wanted.

Among genre fans, Cushing remains a true icon. Like so many icons, he is sometimes elevated to a level of perfection that no human being can ever truly attain. Some insist upon referring to him as “Sir Peter,” perhaps even believing that he was finally made a Knight before his passing in 1994. The reality is, he was a human being, with flaws and shortcomings like the rest of us; and though he had been honored by his government with being given OBE (Order of the British Empire) status, the Knighthood never did come his way. Perhaps if he had lived a bit longer, the latter might have really occurred. As to the former, far from glossing over his defects and acting as if he never uttered a bad word or ever made a bad move, it’s more instructive to acknowledge his flaws and accept him as a terrific human being - as opposed to a one dimensional saint.

Cushing’s love of his wife is well known; indeed, it has become the stuff of legend. They married in 1943, but Helen’s health was in precarious condition from the beginning. She suffered from emphysema for many years, and Cushing often took on acting roles in order to pay for her mounting medical expenses and treatment. After the success of The Curse of Frankenstein 1957, the actor contemplated the horrors of typecasting - but the realization that steady employment would benefit Helen’s treatments talked him out of any concerns over being “trapped” by his horror roles. Nobody would ever question the man’s adoration of his wife, but by his own admission he “strayed” on several occasions. One can theorize that the nature of Helen’s illness made it difficult - if not impossible - to sustain much of a physical relationship, and that Cushing, being a man rather than a saint, had to turn elsewhere to have these needs satisfied. Cushing apparently confessed his transgressions, and Helen was understanding throughout. Ultimately, it’s not for us to judge him for this - but the fact that his relationship with Helen remained as deep and profound as it was speaks volumes in itself. Really, it only bears mention in this context to drive the point home: Cushing was many things, but he was not above making mistakes. His ability to talk about these mistakes, with disarming honesty, is part of what makes his two-part memoirs such a warm and rewarding read.

 

As an actor, Cushing was arguably one of the greats - his friend and colleague Sir Laurence Olivier was even moved to remark that he was one of the country’s best screen actors. He was not, however, beyond reproach. Like any other actor, he had his limitations. He was not especially convincing when it came to accents - he had a peculiar theory that audiences would accept it if the actor threw the accent in on occasion, just to remind them that they were playing a foreigner - and he seemed ill at ease in roles that deprived him of any shred of charm or affability. He could play villains beautifully, but they needed to have a bit of depth - “cold fish” characters, by contrast, simply didn’t gel with him. He could deliver a putdown with rapier wit, but when he played broad comedy, he seemed terribly strained. Cushing was always a very mannered actor, one prone to indulging in little bits of “business,“ but when he went too far with these mannerisms and quirks, it could seem a bit phony and arbitrary. On the whole, however, he was a compulsively watchable actor. At his best, he was brilliant. Truth be told, his “dud” performances are few and far between.

Cushing’s long career saw him making triumphant appearances on stage, on film, and on television - but it was the latter that first made him a bankable name. Legend has it that, at the peak of his popularity as a TV star in the 1950s, Cushing could empty the pubs, because everybody wanted to be home to see him in whatever play he was appearing in on “the telly.” Like so many actors, Cushing struggled to find a reputation on film - he started off by going to Hollywood, where he was given his first (minor) break by British director James Whale. The irony of Cushing being given his start by the director of the most iconic screen version of Frankenstein (1931) cannot go unremarked, but there was nothing remotely “horrific” about his early screen appearances. He scored some nice notices for a flashy supporting role in the three-hanky melodrama Vigil in the Night (1941), but his screen career never really took off until the 1950s, boosted, in no small measure, by his triumphant appearance on so many landmark BBC teleplays of the era, including Nigel Kneale’s then-shocking adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 (1954). 

Hammer Horror helped to make Cushing a known property worldwide, but for many critics, he was limited by his associations with such gaudy fare. Genre magazines would extol his talents, but more mainstream publications would adopt a cooler attitude. There was no denying the man’s talents, yet critics with an axe to grind against the genre seemed to view him as a once-fine actor who was content “slumming” his way through B-and-Z-grade horror films. There would be no recognition from the British or American Academy Awards, though smaller, fantasy-oriented festivals would festoon him with prizes for his nuanced work on such titles as Tales from the Crypt (1972). If Cushing’s health had stood up better, he may have been able to parlay his reputation into appearances in films by fans-turned-filmmakers - just as his good friend and colleague Christopher Lee is continuing to do to this day. Alas, it was not meant to be. Worsening health and a general contet to enjoy the quiet life in his seaside abode in Whitstable took Cushing away from the limelight. Fans would continue to seek him out, and being a true gentleman of the old school, he always tried to make time to speak with them and sign countless autographs.

I, myself, never had the privilege of meeting Peter Cushing - but I did manage to make some contact with him. In 1993, inspired by the passing of Vincent Price, I decided I had better put my thoughts to paper and send Peter Cushing a fan letter. I was able to pass the letter on to his agent, having been given contact information by a fanzine, and I still shudder with embarrassment to think of my commenting on how he never won an Oscar (but deserved several!) and asking if he could autograph a picture of himself (maybe one with Christopher Lee!) and mail it to me. Most celebrities would have tossed this aside, but much to my amazement, I received a letter from the UK. I didn’t get an autographed picture, but he did see fit to write me a brief little note - with his autograph attached. I’m sure it was just a standard letter he sent out at this stage in his life, as he was certainly too ill to do much beyond just an autograph. Even so, it was a classy gesture that filled me with joy. It was almost surely one of the last autographs he ever did. It remains one of my most treasured possessions and has been displayed proudly on the walls of every home I have lived in since that timeframe. For me, there is no need to attach phony honors or attributes to the man as a sign of respect. Warts and all, he was a class act - a great actor, a decent human being, a loving husband, a true philanthropist. There’s no need to enshrine him as some kind of a wannabe saint - I prefer, rather, to think of him as he was: as a man to be respected and admired for his many good points.

 This year marks the centernary of Peter Cushing.  He's been gone for 19 years - though, for me, it seems like just yesterday that he passed - but his legacy continues to inspire and create new fans.  His acting style remains fresh, his appeal undiminished.  For me, he remains one of the most purely enjoyable actors to watch when he's at the top of his game.  I'm still catching up with a few titles that have eluded me, but by now I've seen all of his major credits - and I've revisited favorites from Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and The Mummy to Cash on Demand and The House That Dripped Blood more times than I can calculate.  Truth be told, he's not my favorite actor - but he runs a very close second to his most beloved co-star, Christopher Lee.  To read of his life and his ups and downs - the true version, not the airbrushed one perpetuated by some blinkered sections of fandom - is to be inspired to be a better person - and in a business not exactly renowned for its moral backbone, he remains one of the truly "nice" people about whom seldom a negative word is uttered.

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PETER CUSHING: ISLAND OF TERROR : THE SILICATES ARE COMING!

Success invariably leads to imitation. With all the attention (and box office grosses) Hammer Film Productions was attracting in the 1960’s, it was inevitable that Hammer wannabes would start sprouting up like mushrooms from the loamy, light-starved soil of the English movie industry. Amicus and Tigon are probably the best known of the Hammer clones, but there were other studios out there playing Monogram to Hammer’s Universal. One of the most utterly forgotten was Planet Film Productions, the studio responsible for bringing us Island of Terror/Night of the Silicates/etc. The amazing thing about Planet was that they were able to pull off the very same trick as their richer, higher-prestige competitors, and dip into the Hammer talent pool. Amicus you expect to be able to pay Peter Cushing’s or Terrence Fisher’s price; a little fly-by-night operation like this is another matter altogether. And almost equally remarkable is the particular aspect of Hammer that Planet chose to copy— rather than producing knockoffs of the somewhat sensationalized gothics that Hammer is best remembered for today, Planet’s stock in trade (at least as far as genre movies were concerned) seems to have been clones of the clever little sci-fi flicks Hammer used to make in the mid-to-late 1950’s.

Which brings me to Island of Terror. The movie was very much a throwback to a bygone era even when it was made. This is the kind of thing Jack Arnold and Bert I. Gordon were doing on their side of the Atlantic ten years before. Director Fisher realized this, however, and was smart enough to craft his movie in such a way as to take advantage of the audience’s familiarity with the formula, rather than pretend that ten years’ worth of monster rampage movies had never happened and expect you to be surprised by more than a couple of details in the story. You can see this at work in the very first scene, which foreshadows all the doom and devastation of the next hour and a half with just a few deft gestures. First we meet a scientist named Philips as he takes delivery of a shipment of laboratory equipment. Near him on the dock, three men— Dr. Reginald Landers (Eddie Byrne, from Devils of Darkness and Hammer’s version of The Mummy), Constable John Harris (Sam Kydd, from The Projected Man and Up the Chastity Belt), and a farmer named Ian Bellows (Liam Gaffney)— are bitching about the hardships of life on tiny Petrie’s Island. There are no phones there, and only one boat a week from the mainland. Otherwise, the people of Petrie’s Island have almost no contact whatsoever with civilization. You see what I mean about the filmmakers using audience expectations to their advantage here, right? Here we are less than five minutes into the movie, and already we can see exactly how messed up these people are, and we have a pretty good idea why, too. And moments later, when we learn that Philips is rushing ahead on some super-advanced cancer-related research without checking with his colleagues in Rome, New York, and Tokyo, our suspicions only deepen. Then, when Philips’s experiment is interrupted by the main title display and the sound of breaking glass, we know without even needing to be shown that something has gone disastrously wrong.

Ian Bellows finds out just how disastrously that same night as he makes the rounds of his northernmost field. He hears the strangest sound emanating from a narrow cave in the cliff-face overlooking his field, and goes to check it out. Big mistake there, Ian. Something we don’t see grabs him, pulls him into the cave, and starts slurping while Ian screams. When Ian doesn’t come home, his wife informs Harris of his disappearance, and the constable goes out to look for him in the more remote corners of the island. Harris finds the cave where Ian ran afoul of the slurping thing, and what he discovers there isn’t pretty. The body in the cave is Ian’s, alright, but something has rendered it all soft and squishy in ways that no vertebrate body should ever be. Faced with a corpse that has been maltreated in ways he’s never even heard of before, Harris does the sensible thing, and fetches Dr. Landers.

Once he’s had a chance to look at what’s left of Bellows, Landers confirms what you had probably already figured out for yourself: Bellows hasn’t a single gram of bone left in his body. Well that would certainly explain the slurping, wouldn’t it? The doctor has never seen the like of it, so he takes the tiny motorboat that is the islanders’ only means of communication with the mainland between the big boat’s weekly visits, and sets off for England to see the nation’s most distinguished pathologist, Dr. Brian Stanley (the ubiquitous Peter Cushing). Stanley is as perplexed by Bellows’s symptoms as Landers, so he recommends a visit to yet another doctor, a renowned expert on bone diseases by the name of David West (Edward Judd, of The Day the Earth Caught Fire and The Vault of Horror). West is busy trying to get laid when Stanley and Landers arrive at his flat, but their description of the case is so fascinating that he’s willing to postpone the consummation of his date with Toni Merrill (The Curse of the Fly’s Carole Gray)— clearly, West is a man of great professional dedication. Toni’s a tricky girl though, and she comes up with a way to keep herself in David’s company. You see, with time as vital a concern as it is, Landers strongly favors flying back home, rather than taking the motorboat he road in on, and Toni’s rich father happens to own a helicopter. And if the doctors will agree to take her along with them, she thinks she can persuade Daddy to part with his chopper and pilot for a few days. As it happens, she’s only half right, in that her father’s business commitments prevent him from releasing the helicopter for more than the amount of time it will take to fly Toni and company out to Petrie’s, but at least the arrangement gets the doctors to the island.

All the clues seem to point to Philips and his lab, so the doctors understandably want a word with the reclusive researcher. Either he isn’t in or he isn’t receiving visitors when they come calling, but in light of the urgency of the situation, Stanley feels justified in looking for a way to sneak into the huge old mansion where Philips has set up his operation. That way, if the scientist is at home, Stanley will be able to force him to see them. But while Stanley is poking around in the mansion, he trips over (that’s right) another boneless body! There turn out to be more in the lab proper, and the fluid-filled tank that Philips had been messing with when we last saw him lies shattered into hundreds of pieces scattered on the floor. Using Philips’s more sophisticated gear, the doctors are able to determine that all the bodies are covered with thousands of microscopic puncture wounds, but it isn’t clear whether they were made by something entering or exiting. (Or maybe a little bit of both?) Then West and Stanley gather up all of Philips’s notes, and head back to their rooms at the inn.

     

Thus they aren’t around when Harris comes looking for them in response to a call from a farmer who found one of his horses de-boned in its pasture. The Philips place isn’t quite empty, however. Down in the basement, as Harris will soon learn to his great misfortune, is something green and tentacled, with an empty stomach and a taste for human bones. West, Stanley, Landers, and Toni will get their introduction to the bone-slurpers not much later, when Harris’s absence leads them back to the lab. The monsters (and there are a lot of them) turn out to be gray-green humps of hard, knobby matter roughly the size and shape of the shell of a Galapagos tortoise, with a single, suckered tentacle snaking out from their front ends. And as Landers demonstrates (just before he gets eaten by one of the creatures), their skins are axe-proof. The only reason the things don’t suck down anyone else’s skeletons just then is that they’re too busy undergoing mitosis while Stanley, West, and Toni make their break for safety.

     

Obviously, we have now reached the point in the movie where the Proper Authorities must be called in. But unfortunately for Petrie’s Island, its Proper Authorities aren’t very proper— just an older farmer named Roger Campbell (Niall MacGinnis, from Curse of the Demon and Viking Queen) and his sidekick, Peter Argyle (James Caffrey). Just about all Campbell and his men are good for is helping the scientists figure out what else doesn’t hurt the monsters: guns, Molotov cocktails, and dynamite, for example. There’s a pretty good reason for this, as it turns out. Philips’s monsters aren’t carbon-based life at all, but rather silicon-based. That’s why their exoskeletons are so hard; chemically speaking, the creatures’ skins aren’t that different from sandstone. But there is one thing that can kill the “Silicates” (as Stanley and West dub the nasty things). In Island of Terror’s most striking nod to the monster movies of the 50’s, the Silicates prove to be vulnerable to radiation. All you have to do is feed them some animal whose bones have been contaminated by radioactivity. So with a lab well stocked with Strontium-90 (check out the radiation suits Stanley and West have to wear in order to handle the stuff!), and an island inhabited by hundreds and hundreds of cattle, it looks like there might just be hope after all, and at the scientists’ direction, Campbell and his men round up all the islanders into town hall, and all the cattle into the nearby pen. That way, the Silicates will have no choice but to eat the contaminated cattle, and Campbell will have an easier time keeping an eye on his people. On the other hand, Strontium-90 isn’t exactly a fast-acting poison, and the town hall proves to be somewhat lacking in its efficacy as a fortress, so there’s every reason to fear that the human population of Petrie’s Island will have shrunk significantly by the time the radioisotope does its job.

     

If there is one thing my life as a consumer of culture has taught me, it is that fate does not distribute fame and obscurity in a remotely equitable manner. Whether it’s movies, books, music, or anything else we’re talking about, we’ve all seen it happen again and again: some unworthy piece of shit will capture the public’s attention like some kind of cultural panji pit, while works of vastly superior merit fade from the scene unnoticed. You disagree? Then tell me this— did you see Ravenous back in 1999? No, I didn’t think so. You saw The Mummy, though, didn’t you? Very well, then. I rest my case. Island of Terror provides another example of the phenomenon. If you weren’t alive in 1966, chances are you’ve never heard of this movie— hell, I only learned of its existence recently, and I’m the kind of guy who makes a point of seeking this stuff out. And yet Island of Terror is one of the very best monster movies to come out of Great Britain in the 1960’s.

Not only do its script and direction give the audience credit for a great deal of B-movie erudition, it isn’t overly protective of its main characters (some surprisingly nasty things happen to some surprisingly important people in this movie), and its monsters, though none too convincingly realized, are an extremely imaginative departure from the mutant lizards and gigantic bugs we’re accustomed to in the genre. And it would seem that this film made at least a little bit of money for Planet during its initial release, as the studio’s later Island of the Burning Doomed/Night of the Big Heat duplicated great glutinous masses of Island of Terror— everything from the monsters’ basic body-plan to such plot details as having the creatures’ first victim fall to some unseen thing in a cramped, narrow cave. Even some of the sets in Island of the Burning Doomed recall those in Island of Terror. But as usual, the template is far superior to the copy— and to quite a number of other contemporary sci-fi/horror/monster flicks, I might add. Maybe with all the reissuing going on these days, Island of Terror will finally get some of the attention it deserves. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

REVIEW: SAM ASHLIN

IMAGES: MARCUS BROOKS

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