#WATCHWITHCUSHING! IN THE PARIS SEWERS THEY CAN HEAR GROWLING! #SELFISOLATEANDWATCH!

TODAY'S  #WatchWithCushing is 1975's 'LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF' at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE! Along with Tyburn's 'The Ghoul' these were films that were produced in a style from another time...and that was the producers intention. Hope you enjoy it! If you have not seen it before, we'd love you to  post your opinions and views on the news thread.

HERE IS PART ONE of our PCAS 'THE MAKING OF THE LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF' feature which includes rare images, quotes and interviews with actor David Rintoul on playing the role of Etoile and the task of applying the make up. There is also quite extensive details from Peter Cushing on how he prepared for the role of Parisian pathologist, Paul Catafanque. Along with details from producer, Kevin Francis it makes an impressive first look into the huge task of making a movie...

ABOVE: THE UK 'LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF' TRAILER, with DANISH subtitles and a narration by the wonderful tv, radio and film veteran, Valentine Dyall!

REMEMBERING CALVIN LOCKHART : BIGGY SMALLS AND THE BEAST MUST DIE

BAHAMIAN BORN, Bert Cooper... soon to be Calvin Lockhart first caught many movie-goers' attention in those now ' a little off centre' maybe, super-slick cliche urban films like Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Halls of Anger (1970) before becoming a fairly steady fixture in the "blaxploitation" movies of the early-to-mid 1970s. It was what it was... Most serious film and TV roles for black actors were scarce at that time, so Calvin moved from the US to Europe.

OUR PCASUK feature and gallery on 'The Beast Must Die' (1974) starring Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing and Marlene Clark, can be FOUND RIGHT HERE! 

GIF ABOVE: BOO! Paul Foote and Newcliffe, play 'a-hunting' in the forest in 'The Beast Must Die' (1974) 

ABOVE: MARLENE CLARK as Caroline Newcliffe in 'The Beast Must Die'

IN ITALY Lockhart soon owned a restaurant and formed his own theatre company, serving as both actor and director. For a time, he also lived in Germany before settling in England, where he became the first black actor to play lead roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Soon he was starting to build up film credits with minor work in such British movies as A Dandy in Aspic (1968) and Only When I Larf (1968). He made news in another racially-motivated project entitled Joanna (1968), which centred around a "mod", interracial romance with 'Genevieve Waite'.

GIF ABOVE: Dr. Lundgren (Peter Cushing) offers to treat Newcliffe's (Calvin Lockhart) dog, 'slight flesh wound' . .  that turns out to be much more . . ! 

IT WAS 1974 when Milton Subotsky, producer and scriptwriter at Amicus films spotted him for the lead role, in a little something different from their portmanteau movies, a wolf-wolf who-done-it . . with a little, if not a wonky nod to the blaxploitation films of Lockhart's past...what resulted for some is one of their Peter Cushing favourites, Cushing playing German (?) Swiss (??) lycanthropy expert in 'The Beast Must Die' famous also for it's 'werewolf-break' the film is a hoot, and like many other Amicus films, has a great cast with Michael Gambon, Anton Diffring, Charles Gray and the lovely, Marlene Clark.

AFTER 'BEAST', Calvin's career grew a little lacklustre, and by the end of the decade, he was resorting to trivial guest parts in such TV shows as Good Times (1974) and Get Christie Love! (1974). He landed a recurring role on the night-time soap Dynasty (1981) In 1974, Calvin married a woman also from the West Indies and had three children! After his career subsided, he decided to return to his homeland in the mid '90s and resettled in Nassau with his fourth wife, Jennifer Miles. There he involved himself with the Freeport Players Guild as a director. He also returned to films after a 15-year absence, completing Rain (2008), a movie shot in the Bahamas, shortly before he suffered a major stroke. 

SADLY CALVIN died of complications on March 29, 2007, and his family are currently in the process of establishing a scholarship fund in his name, specifically for Bahamian students, pursuing an acting or film making career.  Today we remember Lockhart, who put more than a bit of a buzz into a Amicus film. Calvin Lockhart : October 18, 1934 - March 29, 2007

Banner stills: 

Top Right: Peter Cushing and Calvin Lockhart in 'The Beast Must Die' (Amicus 1974)
Bottom Right: Rare promo portrait still for 'The Beast Must Die', featuring Calvin Lockhart and co star, Marlene Clark.
Main Still: Rare publicity portrait of Calvin Lockhart as Tom Newcliffe.
'The Beast Must Die' (1974 Amicus films) Directed by Paul Annett

#MONSTERMONDAY: TYBURN'S LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF ETOILE

#MONSTERMONDAY: WHEN HAMMER FILMS released their one and only 'werewolf' themed film in 1961, The Curse of the Werewolf, Oliver Reed's portrayal of the cursed 'Leon' cast a very large and terrifying shadow over any attempt at that theme for a long time. Maybe it was only in 1981, with the arrival of 'An American Werewolf In London' did the 'go to' reference shift from Olly and Hammer. 

IT WASN'T AS IF there were no other lycanthropic releases until then,far from it, it's just that like many 'Monster pictures'...the film flies or fails on the performance of the actor and without doubt, the appearance and standard of the make up job. Roy Ashton, the artist behind the hammer make up on Curse, did such an amazing job, to take what had been seen sometimes as, 'an actor with a LOT of YAK hair glued to his face.... and make a convincing wolf-man creation, from latex and hair. 

#MONSTERMONDAY: Professor Paul (Peter Cushing) saying goodbye to his sliver cane from Tyburn's Legend Of The Werewolf (1975)

BOTH ASHTON and 'Legend' make up artist Graham Freeborn, favored the 'white timber-wolf' appearance...which somehow gave the man wolf a more neater, groomed and realistic appearance..a far cry from what had sometimes looked like the results of man caught in 'glue pot, freak wind, sweepings from barber shop floor' incident! David Rintoul played the unfortunate Etoile, the lycanthrope of the film's title....who until that time, had never set foot or paw in a film studio.

MORE ON LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF : HERE!

HOW DO YOU RATE Rintoul's werewolf appearance and performance? BTW.....Back in 1978 we were the first to have interviewed David Rintoul about this role and his time with Peter Cushing and Tyburn..... I hope to share this video interview, in it's entirety when we launch the PCAS POD CASTS and on our ever expanding youtube channel later in the year...

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!

#ONSETSATURDAY : THE BEAST MUST DIE : ANTON DIFFRING IN THE MAKE UP CHAIR!

#ONSETSATURDAY This week we visit that Amicus favourite, THE BEAST MUST DIE, with a rare shot of ANTON DIFFRING in the make up chair of Paul Rabiger. An interesting film in the Cushing portfolio, is a horror film, a thriller, a who done it??? The answer is probably, it's all three! With it's excellent 'WEREWOLF BREAK' a quite eclectic cast, headed by Peter Cushing, Charles Gray and werewolf hunter, Calvin Lockhart, who sounds like he's just popped over during a tea break from the Royal Shakespeare company's production of 'As You Like it'. It's not one of my favourites, and the music score I find so bad, I have been known to watch the entire film with the volume down. Amicus films, didn't have those memorable scores, like many of the Hammer films, and went down the route of employing Douglas Gamley (1924–1998) to score this one, and many of the portmanteau films. Just my opinion, but I am not a fan. 

Mind you, he's not quite as bad as Elisabeth Lutyens ...who scored Dr Terrors House of Horrors. Her avant-garde blackboard scrapings, set me on edge. Maybe, that was what they were meant to do??? What is YOUR favourite AMICUS film score??

MORE  on THE BEAST MUST DIE at our 

FEATURE and PHOTO GALLERY : HERE

TYBURN FILMS AND PETER CUSHING : THE MAKING OF TYBURN FILMS LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF

A SUPERB movie from the excellent Tyburn Films in a six part feature series.  Galleries, interviews and starting soon!

STARTING HERE soon!

LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF: 'I AM PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN YOUR WOLVES!'

 

Peter Cushing as police pathologist and amateur detective, Paul Cataflanque in 'Legend of the Werewolf' (Tyburn 1975)

.....'..Cushing seems to be enjoying himself enormously - almost all his scenes, until the last have a ghoulish humour about them. It is never forced, it is just a witty, clever, concentrated performance. Cataflanque is eating his tea as the newest cadaver is brought in. 'Ooh dear,' Cushing clucks, with his mouth full, peering under the sheet, 'that's very nasty...' He gets rid of his pompous superiors by mischievously presenting them with a gullet and when he does a bit of undercover research in the local brothel he is left bashfully holding a frilly garter!'
( David Miller, The Peter Cushing Companion. 2000)

'LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF' RON MOODY AND PETER CUSHING

Ron Moody Remembers Peter Cushing:
 

"Some scripts are so terribly over the top, there's a terrible temptation to send them up" I said to Peter Cushing. We were sitting in the late summer sunshine outside a very realistic French bistro on the lot of Pinewood studios, between takes on Tyburn films, 'Legend of the Werewolf'. I was playing the zooo keeper, and regarded the whole thing as a bit of a half term holiday, so i was decked out in a stove pipe bowler hat, a black embrosse wig, a ten o'clock shadow and set of buck teeth that made me look like a Neanderthal throwback! Actually, I rather thought I looked like Humphrey Boart. Anyway, if the hero could be a werewolf, why shouldn't the zoo keeper be an ape? Here, I must add, Freddie Francis, the director, thought it was a very funny idea.

Peter didn't. He surveyed me quizzically for a moment, his eyes twinkled. "If you were sending it up" he said, "We wouldn't have you on the film." And he MEANT it. For this sweet-natured, gentle man, dangerously on the verge of sainthood, there could be no mockery of his beloved craft. He played every one of his 'horror roles' with no less dedication then he had applied to his earlier classical career and the stream of powerful dramas that had established him as television's leading actor. His total belief and immersion in everything he did lifted these fantasy / horror tales from the banal to the believable, he commanded respect for the genre, lifted it up, almost single highhandedly, to the level of credibility that made everyone of them a minor classic!

Working with a great actor, something always brushes off! My zoo keeper, hair, hat, teeth and all, was never sent up! In fact, I like to think that my animal man was totally believable, completely identified within film, and had, dare I presume to say it, a touch of Cushing

BOWING OUT WITH A WOLF AND A MOLE: THE AMICUS FILMS OF PETER CUSHING: PART SEVEN : TROY HOWARTH

Looking to put the debacle of Madhouse behind them, Amicus looked to another short story for inspiration.  Subotsky settled on “There Shall Be No Darkness” by James Blish.  It is, in essence, a conflation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (aka, Ten Little Indians) and Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game, with elements of the werewolf mythos stirred in for good measure.

In the hands of first time director Paul Annett (who would later go on to direct some good episodes of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett), The Beast Must Die rattles along at a pretty good clip – but sadly, it falls short where the werewolf itself is concerned.  Sooner than make up the actor playing the werewolf (no spoilers here, folks!), they elected to try and make a friendly looking pooch look intimidating with some extra fur and “creepy” lighting and camera angles.  It doesn’t work. Thus, the finale doesn’t have quite the punch that it really should.

As usual for Amicus, there’s a good cast on display. The lead role went to African-American Calvin Lockhart when the original choice, Robert Quarry (Count Yorga, Vampire), proved to be unavailable; much like Vincent Price, who had been forced to pass on The House That Dripped Blood, Quarry rankled when his boss at American International Pictures refused to release him to do a horror film for a “competitor” such as Amicus.  According to Annett’s commentary track on the DVD release of the film, Lockhart proved to be difficult to deal with, as he resented that the role was not conceived for a black actor and he believed that the producers were simply trying to cash in on the then-popular Blaxploitation movement.  In response to this, Lockhart played up the character’s wealth and culture, resisting the urge to fall into any kind of an ethnic stereotype. It’s an enjoyably arch performance, but one can sense the actor struggling against the material, and one is left regretting that Quarry was not allowed to do the picture instead.

Amicus surrounded Lockhart with some wonderfully accomplished performers, including Charles Gray (Diamonds Are Forever), Anton Diffring (Where Eagles Dare) and, of course, Peter Cushing. Cushing is cast in his usual savant role, but the whodunit nature of the material ensures that he, too, comes under suspicion of being a werewolf. Cushing doesn’t have a great deal to do here, and he adopts a somewhat inconsistent Norwegian accent, but he’s still a welcome presence. Diffring, often cast as icy villains, is enjoyable in a warmer-than-usual role, as Lockhart’s sardonic surveillance expert, while Gray is his usual acerbic and amusing self as one of the reluctant houseguests. The film also contains an early appearance by Michael Gambon, later to achieve fame as the hero of Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective and numerous films by Stephen Frears, Tim Burton, and others. Beautiful Marlene Clark (Ganja and Hess) is the only other black actor in the production, and she gives arguably the film’s strongest performance, as Lockhart’s long-suffering wife.

The production looks classy enough, provided one can accept the very 70s fashions.  Jack Hildyard (an Oscar winner for films like Bridge on the River Kwai) handles the cinematography, which is slick if not especially memorable; some bad day for night photography betray the haste with which the film was shot, however.

Douglas Gamley contributes a funky score which has been derided in recent years as being dated… Films inevitably reflect the period in which they were made, however, and the music is no more distracting in this sense than the bell bottoms and butterfly collars which are evident throughout.  Annett handles the material with smooth efficiency, milking maximum impact from a few key suspense scenes.

By this stage in the game, it became apparent that Amicus was on the decline.  Subotsky’s relationship with Rosenberg was deteriorating rapidly and while he didn’t realize it yet, the writing was on the wall.  Even so, they plunged ahead with an ambitious production which appealed to Subotsky’s interest in fantasy and science fiction.

At the Earth’s Core (1976) was the second of three films that Amicus would make based on the stories of Edgar Rice Burroghs. Best remembered today for Tarzan of the Apes, Burroghs (1875-1950) wrote a number of colorful action-adventure stories, many with a strong fantasy/sci-fi component. At the Earth’s Core, first published in 1914, was the first of his “Pellucidar” series of stories.  “Pellucidar” was a hollow version of the Earth, populated with various tribes and assorted creatures; in the story, David Innes and eccentric inventor Albert Perry burrow into the center of the Earth thanks to one of Perry’s inventions and encounter plenty of action and intrigue.



The success of the story lead to several followups: Pellucidar (1915), Tanar of Pellucidar (1929), Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1929), Back to the Stone Age (1937), Land of Terror (1944), and the posthumously published Savage Pellucidar (1963), which gathered together several unpublished short stories that continued the mythology.

Taken in the spirit in which it is intended, At the Earth’s Core is innocuous fun. Director Kevin Connor does the best he can with a juvenile script and production values which, while adequate, fail to adequately come to grips with the ambitious mythology of the subject matter. The film looks professional enough, but the special effects are tacky—very much of the stuntmen in rubber suits playing monsters school—and there’s never any real sense of menace generated. Cinematographer Alan Hume does what he can to create a bit of atmosphere and Mike Vickers contributes a passable soundtrack.

The handsome but bland McClure makes for a handsome but bland hero, while the normally splendid Peter Cushing falls down rather badly in one of his grating “silly old man” characterizations.  Perry, as presented by Subotsky, is an absent minded professor type and Cushing is true to this—but it really doesn’t work very well and his constant calling out of his sidekick’s name becomes grating.  Caroline Munro looks absolutely gorgeous, of course, as the Pellucidarian who becomes the object of McClure’s affection but she doesn’t have much to do beyond uttering some idiotic lines and doing her best to look threatened by the rubber monsters.

Sadly, this would prove to be the end of the line, Amicus-wise, for both Cushing and Subotsky.  Subotsky would relocate to Canada for a time and gamely tried to carry on the anthology tradition with such films as The Uncanny (1977) and The Monster Club (1980); Cushing would come along for the former but passed on the latter, as did Christopher Lee—one can hardly blame them.  Subotsky would secure the rights to some Stephen King properties in the 1980s and got a credit on the King anthology film Cat’s Eye (1985), but it didn’t amount to much.  His final credits, again based on King properties, would be released posthumously: Lawnmower Man (1992) and Sometimes That Come Back … Again (1996). Subotsky died in 1996.

Rosenberg would follow in 2004. The end may have been contentious and fraught with difficulties, but the films these two men produced together in the 1960s and 70s stand as some of the most engaging and appealing British genre films ever made.  For Peter Cushing, they would represent some of his most interesting character work, as well. On that level, for sure, it proved to be a match made in heaven.

The Amicus Films of Peter Cushing was written by Troy Howarth

with images and artwork by Marcus Brooks.

 Find out MORE about THE BEAST MUST DIE:

HERE