BREAKING NEWS: ORSON WELLES GREAT MYSTERIES : WITH CUSHING LA GRANDE BRETECHE: COMES TO DVD!

BREAKING NEWS: Network has just announced the TV series Orson Welles Great Mysteries is coming to DVD for the first time. Volume 1 will contain the first 13 episodes . . which includes Peter Cushing and Susannah York in the very cool drama, La Grande Breteche!

DETAILS:

Orson Welles Great Mysteries: Volume 1

The legendary Orson Welles hosts thirteen mysterious tales from this much sought-after anthology series.

SHOWCASING a haunting theme by John Barry, these macabre – often supernatural – dramas feature an astonishing array of talent, including Rupert Davies, Eli Wallach, Michael Kitchen, Patrick Magee, Donald Pleasence, Peter Cushing, Susannah York, Michael Gambon, Julie Dawn Cole, Kenneth Haigh, Harry Andrews, Dinsdale Landen, Christopher Lee, Jane Seymour and Ian Holm.

THE EPISODES  featured on this set – including classic tales from Wilkie Collins, W.W. Jacobs, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle : A Terribly Strange Bed, Compliments of the Season, The Ingenious Reporter, The Monkey's Paw,Captain Rogers, For Sale - Silence, La Grande Breteche staring Peter Cushing, An Affair of Honour, In the Confessional, The Furnished Room, Under Suspicion, The Leather Funnel, Trial for Murder

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?

LUST GOES BUST AND INTO DUST : CHRISTOPHER LEE AND STRIBLING IN RARE PRESS PROMO PHOTOGRAPH

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY! THE BRIDE THAT GOT AWAY! Christopher Lee and Melissa Stribling at the premier of Hammer films, 'DRACULA' / 'Horror of Dracula'... Stribling played Mina Holmwood, who falls heart and head over heels for Lee's blood sucking Count.... he almost gets her too! Peter Cushing's heroic vampire slayer, Van Helsing, dramatically pulls the rug AND castle curtains on them! Poor Lee's Dracula goes from LUST to...DUST!

THIS SHOT and pose is probably one of the most iconic images from Hamer's early films... it certainly is very impressive in the additional ADDED and restored shots included in the Hammer DRACULA blu ray from Lionsgate. Love the film, love the blu ray

IF YOU ENJOY the posts here at our website, you would LOVE maybe the opportunity to chat and comment on these posts and Peter Cushing's films at our FACEBOOK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society FAN PAGE. PLEASE CLICK HERE and then CLICK LIKE THERE! You will be most welcome! 

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: SO WHAT IS PETER CAPALDI'S FAVORITE DRACULA FILM?

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY! At the San Diego International Comic-Con 2017, interviewed along side, #StevenMoffat and #MarkGatiss, #PeterCapaldi reveals his all-time favorite DRACULA film . . .with talk of a Gatiss / Moffat DRACULA production in the  next two years, lets hope the guys have been taking notes, from Capaldi's pick of the bunch...!

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: #PeterCushing returns once again to fight the Lord Of The Undead, Count Dracula, #ChristopherLee in this trippy feature from #Hammerfilms. At the time of the film's release, he hip talk and fashion was already out of date by the time the film was released, but over the past ten years the film has at last found a following. We have pushed and pushed this film at #PCAS at every opportunity, since we arrived on the web in 2010... it's great to finally see this film, getting some #LOVE!

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   

ROOM 101 AND MONSTERMONDAY : THEY ARE WATCHING

#MONSTERMONDAY : O'BRIEN. A MONSTER? I've pulled one from the Cushing Gallery of Rogues this week, that goes back to a time before he had even dipped a toe in the waters of 'petrifying pics'! Andre Morell's O'Brien is at the centre of the story of Orwell's classic tale of the world gone to hell in a bucket, ruled by one Big Brother, leaders and others, who use cruelty and torture as their primary method of control. O'Brien is relentless once he gets our man Winston Smith played by Cushing, strapped to a table, in order to, through torture, make Winston "perfect," and to "save" him. But such is the 'power of love' Winston proves a difficult nut to crack..'My poor friend, you are almost well!'..and so with the help of the contents of 'Room 101', O'Brien plays his last card... 

'You once asked me what was in Room 101. It is there we have the means to root out the last lingering deception. What happens in Room 101, is the worst thing in the world. It varies from individual to individual. It can be death by burning, burial alive..or something quite trivial, not even fatal...In YOUR case, we both happen to know 'What The Worse Thing in the World'...happens to be....!' 

WHAT FOLLOWS SHOCKED the tv audiences of the live 1954 broadcast on Sunday 12th December, and also scored the highest tv rating in the UK since Queen Elizabeth's II Coronation! But furious critics and watchdogs complained and campaigned for the second live performance of the play, a few days later to be canceled. Michael Barry head of drama at the BBC refused to concede, the broadcast went ahead and recorded for posterity.

NOTE: JUST SIX DAYS AGO, (Tuesday) the New York Times announced that ' George Orwell's famed dystopian novel of life in a totalitarian state, was suddenly No. 6 on Amazon's bestseller list. On Monday, too, the book hovered between No. 5 and No. 7 on that same bestseller list'. . . It's worth noting that this isn't the first time "1984" has seen a sales spike in recent years. The book also hit Amazon's bestseller list in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the National Security Agency's surveillance program.

WE AWAIT THE RELEASE of the BFI REMASTERED blu ray of Peter Cushing's BBC production of 1984, Andre Morell, O'Brien and all.. THREE times the release has been announced, three times it has been canceled. Rumors put Orwell's estate to blame, for allegedly blocking the release (??) One would have thought that the BFI would have looked into rights issues before embarking on a costly remastering? Maybe that isn't the reason at all? Anyone one would think there's a force who doesn't want us to WATCH it...for whatever reason?? Are they WATCHING us too?

COME FIND US ON ALL THESE MEDIA PLATFORMS AND AT THE OFFICIAL FACEBOOK FAN PAGE OF PCAS : JUST CLICK HERE!

MINA THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY! MELISSA STRIBLING REMEMBERED

REMEMBERING: Melissa Stribling who was born today November 7th 1927. Stribling appeared in just the one film with Peter Cushing...but boy did she pick the right one! She also got to play in one of Hammer films most iconic scenes in their 1958 'Dracula', where Christopher Lee's Count, in the dead of night, visits her home and..without a word.. seduces her. The scene is so super charged with sexual tension, it almost crackles off the screen and as a result got the scissors treatment from the censors at the time.

In 2013, in Hammer's restored print the exorcised footage was replaced, giving us the full picture of what Director Terence Fisher, Stribling and Lee had originally intended and created.