RARELY SEEN SHERLOCK HOLMES PHOTOGRAPHS : PC SIGNED STILL COMMANDS GOOD PRICES

HERE ARE THREE rarely seen publicity photographs taken during the making of the BBC television series 'Sherlock Holmes' with #PeterCushing in 1968 during the making of 'A Study In Scarlet'. As you will probably know, most of the episodes were destroyed by the BBC during the great BBC Spring Clean, where hundreds of hours of material were wiped and tapes reused or skipped off to the skip! All that remains of Cushing's episodes, were compiled onto first a VHS then a DVD collection, and are now available to give us a taster of what was a very popular television series, no largely lost . .

SIGNED PETER CUSHING black and white photograph! Caught this on the net yesterday. It's great to see that Peter's autographed pics, can still command a good price and still have value. £365.00 is the asking price for this one Are you the proud owner of a signed Peter Cushing photograph, personalized or just signed?

THE WEEKLY CUSHING TUESDAY TOUGHY PLUS COMPETITION STILL OPEN!

#CUSHINGTUESDAYTOUGHY! WHO is this with Christopher Lee and WHICH Hammer Dracula film, was this image used to promote?? We'll have the ANSWER here on Friday 🙂 Feel free to post your answer and join in the fun over at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE have fun 😉 MEANWHILE below is LAST WEEK'S TOUGHY answer! - Marcus

ABOVE: DON'T FORGET to enter our DRACULA AD 1972 Warner Brothers REMASTERED BLU RAY competition! It's LIVE and OPEN until NOVEMBER 14th 2018!

AND BELOW . . . 

ITALIAN HAMMER FILM PHOTOBUSTAS : REPAIRED LOOK AMAZING!

IT'S A SAD TRUTH that many press kits, photographs and beautifully produced cinema posters, from the films of Peter Cushing some produced over 50 years ago, often aren't in the best of condition, when they arrive at auction or are up for sale on ebay these days. Back in the day, many sets of stills, lobby cards and press stills were produced in their thousands, especially the cheaper black and white, sets. It wasn't unusual for the press office to use cheap photographic paper, thin paper stock for the cinema posters, as many films made on a tight budget, extended their limitations to the money used for the business of publicity, after the film had been finished. Often was the case, there was little to no funding left. Colour photographs were expensive, even when the capture list, was presented to the studio photographer on set, priority was given to stills taken in black and white. The film was cheap, the processing and printing too. So colour stills, were taken for magazines and publication. Also, no one at the time at Hammer, Amicus or any other 1950's or 60's studio press office, had any idea that the films, would go on to be classics, and the press material HIGHLY COLLECTABLE and command high prices!

SO THIS IS WHY, I have been busy at work and burning the night oil, repairing this fine set of Italian PHOTOBUSTA Lobby Stills, Hammer films DRACULA AD 1972. Many parts of Europe at that time, were included in the UK budget for press kits. Although they did get, a set of a few black and white stills, usually a set of eight. Many times, the publicity office in a country would then get them tinted with ink, to give them a little colour. Unfortunately, if the artist had not seen the film or any colour prints from the set, characters on the photographs would be wearing dresses, coats, cloaks and tie, of a completely different colour, to what they wore in the movie. Hence David Peel, appearing often in a dark blue, light blue and one time yellow cloak, in press stills in Europe during the theatrical release of Hammer films, 'The Brides Of Dracula' starring Peter Cushing . . not the grey cloak, he is seen wearing throughout the film.

GREAT CARE has been given in touching up the paint, ink and damage to this set of Italian Photobusta's. I have cleaned them, repaired tears, scratches, pin holes and dent, without comprising the style and vintage of the time. As we shared in a post earlier this week, the Italian press stills, were often quite something. Many were excellent cut and paste poster montages, like the one we see here and other times quite strange and weird. Take a look at last week's The Satanic Rites of Dracula cinema poster, that features a photograph of naked chubby man, behind a tinted photo of Christopher Lee and Joanna Lumley. The man, photograph taken at a very odd angle, was not featured in the film or indeed have anything connection to any of Hammer films!   

PHOTOBUSTERS were produced to enhance the best moments of a film, they were printed usually in colour, using tinted black and white photographs, sometimes managing to out do the drama and presentation of the more expensive and official press photographic promotional materials. Sadly, they were often, as in this case, printed on glossy and thin paper. Easy to bend, fold causing the print and ink to flake off over the years. But one imagines, as in this case, they must have been very eye catching and dramatic, when first released and pinned to the foyer or reception of a cinema. In most cases, they certainly impress me, with their size, colour and collection of images. Today even though, they come with the risk of having been folded and damaged, they still command high prices and are highly sort after by collectors.

 

SEE THIS GALLERY AND FEATURE AT OUR WEBSITE : CLICK HERE!

COMING SOON is our competition, MARKING THE RELEASE FROM WARNER BROTHERS the ALSO REMASTERED BLU RAYS of both DRACULA AD 1972 and THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. We'll be offering you the chance to win copies of both films and other HIGHLY collectable AD and SATANIC prizes! MISS IT AND MISS OUT!

OCTOBER DRACULA MONTH : COMICS AND MAGAZINE WEDNESDAY PLUS CAN YOU IDENTIFY THIS?

HAJIME ISHIDA'S MONSTERZINE made a wonderful return in 2013. I know little about Ishidma, except that he edited a very popular and quite excellent magazine / fanzine for fans of the fantasy genre during the 1980's. Sadly, as with many such mags, it bowed out and looked never to return. But like, what appears to be his favorite Horror film character, it CAME BACK, from the GRAVE. And what a return! MONSTERZINE covered an array of monster movies, the classic Universal film catalogue and also the brilliant Godzillia flicks. But, it's the subject of #HAMMERFILMS that seems to hold Hajime's attention and passion. And in particular, their Dracula series of films

TO BE QUITE FRANK I am not not a lover of books on Hammer films, with ACRES of reviews of said films. I quite like to make my own mind up about a film and unless the opinions of the flick, are giving by people who were involved with the production of it, I glaze over. Now I know there are MANY who LOVE reviews, that's why I post them. But me? I am a visual chap. I still like to spend a Sunday afternoon, grazing through my children's picture books, minus the text and a story. A box of crayons, I am game! Simple? Yes, I am. AND YES, it STILL remains a mystery as to how, I EVER got my Degree's and Masters. So, when I first opened a Ishida magazine, I thought I had found the Ambrosia of Hammer Film books. MASSES OF PHOTOGRAPHS. 

YOU SEE, I am also a collector of stills and images. Ishida, edits and publishes the kind of books that present Hammer films, in the most of attractive ways, visually. During 2011 and 2013, MONSTERMAGAZINE also released TWO Photo Album Books. Volume one on the Hammer Dracula series and Volume Two dedicated to the Hammer Frankenstein's. Lovingly Lavish, Sensibly Presented and not shy on sharing a few rare photographs too. The regular MONSTERMAGAZINE also contains a news and features section, but there are still many many pages of images. The dedicated Photo Album's have very little text. Which is just as well, as what there is, is in Japanese. If you LIKE the experience of turning the page and going 'Ooooh!' at the content, The Hajime Ishida's Photo Album's are for you!

IT'S WORTH MENTIONING, that it was HAJIME ISHIDA who for many years, religiously pushed the idea that Hammer films 1958 DRACULA DID contain a shoot of the melting Christopher Lee's Count, in the films final moments. Hajime went along to see the film in the 1960's with a still camera, hidden away on his person and snap a blurred shot of the burning face of Dracula AND the passionate scene with Christopher Lee and Melissa Stribling. Many experts and fans, still refused to listen and insisted the scenes did not exitst, only as still publicity photographs, taken by the set photographer. ALL these amazing shots WERE finally included in the Lionsgate Blu Ray remaster of the film in 2103. They were all cleaned and remastered from a Japanese print, just like the one Hajime saw decades before . . . 

WHAT IS THAT THING???  Yes! It ain't pretty is it? In our continuing dip into Collectable Comic, Mags and Posters featuring the work of Peter Cushing, comes THIS very odd cinema poster for, 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula'. The film had a long tour and presence in cinemas around the globe after it's stunted release in 1973 and with it came weird posters, titles and press kits. In some cases like this one, posters were quickly and cheaply made up, with limited images and resources. I am not absolutely sure of the country where this 'art attack' was displayed and used.

THE STUCK ON WHITE FANGS are 'interesting', also Lee's glowing eyes, but personally, that isn't what has puzzled me most about the pasted up images, that were cobbled together and used to make this poster. Can ANYONE identify and tell me, what is THAT behind the photo of our frantic king vamp?? For years, I have blown up the image, studied it and have drawn a blank! Anyone??? IF you have a suggestion, please come join us at  our post on this NOW at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE!

CONTACT SHEETS : HAMMER HORROR : DRACULA'S DARKNESS AND REVENGE : THE BEST OF!

AND SO, HERE WE ARE with another Saturday, which for THIS website, means something CHRISTOPHER LEE connected, to meet your #ChristopherLeeSaturday shopping list!! LAST WEEK we started our short season of CHRISTOPHER LEE: THE HAMMER DRACULA FLICKS: THE MOMENTS WE LOVE, and dipped into 'Dracula Has Risen From The Grave' and 'Scars Of Dracula', and very popular they were too! Thank you! This week, we have PART TWO and another two Hammer Dracula films. 

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

Last week, I also received a few emails asking, why is a Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website, giving so much space to films that AIN'T really anything to do with Mr C? Well, even before Lee passed, we were already making regular space and time, to covering Lee's career, and why? The Official Christopher Lee Fan Club, sort of folded and with that so did any regular official internet presence. Good Lee photographs can be rare and expensive, so no 'official fan' was going to be posting and sharing their goodies. Lee of course made twenty two great films with Peter Cushing, plus he and Peter were very close and long time friends. So, I tested with the posting of Lee material at our now, closed PCAS Facebook Fan Page, and the results were good. On posting the series of rare clips called, THE LAST MEETING where Cushing and Lee worked and met for the last time, it proved there was much interest and many many people who came to PCAS, who wanted to see more from THE LAST MEETING and basically ANYTHING that connected to Christopher Lee.So, as always I give you, what you ask for. AND here it is! This week we are looking at the BITS WE LIKE from another two GREAT Christopher Lee Hammer Dracula films. I hope you like this week's contents! 

THE AMAZING CAST: Andrew Keir (Father Shandor), Christopher Lee (Count Dracula), Francis Matthews (Charles Kent), Barbara Shelley (Helen Kent), Suzan Farmer (Diana Kent), Charles Tingwell (Alan Kent), Philip Latham (Klove), Thorley Walters (Ludwig)

THE TERRIFIC PRODUCTION CREW: Director – Terence Fisher, Screenplay – John Sansom, Story – John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer – Anthony Nelson-Keys, Photography – Michael Reed, Music – James Bernard, Music Supervisor – Philip Martell, Special Effects – Bowie Films Ltd, Makeup – Roy Ashton, Production Design – Bernard Robinson. Production Company – Hammer/Seven Arts. UK. 1966. 

DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS dramatically opens with the final sequence from Hammer Films 1958 'DRACULA', showing the spectacular demise of Christopher Lee's Count Dracula at the hands of Peter Cushing's Van Helsing. This sequence is enclosed in a smoky frame because the earlier movie was shot in a different aspectic ratio  - DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS was one of the few Hammer movie to be shot in 'scope. Little did they know, come the release of the LIONSGATE blu ray of the film, the smokey ratio would cause a few probs, that would how ever be solved.

EVERYONE in this DARKNESS, does a very good job and has their time in the LIGHT!! Maybe the pace of the first half of the film, lays out time, for us to understand the characters and beleive the performances, Something that most Hammer films, hardly ever did, for anyone other than the top layer of performers. CHRISTOPHER LEE as DRACULA, is very good, BUT not quite as feral and rabid as in his first performance.  

THE KENT'S trip and their time on the journey finally arriving at CASTLE DRACULA does take a little time . . . it ALL takes time.

DRACULA,PRINCE OF DARKNESS DOES take a little while to get started, but once the the FIRST SPATS of BLOOD start following, director Terence Fisher makes sure the horror pace doesn't stop. Personally, I feel the long fist half of the film without DRACULA, I think was probably caused by several thing, two nothing to do with the script and building tension, more maybe to do with Lee's opinion and resistance to play the Count again for Hammer, and maybe the COST per scene, of actually getting him to do that! 

OVERALL IT EMERGES as a fine sequel to Hammer's first DRACULA / HORROR OF DRACULA. Andrew Keir as Father Sandor makes a fine character, stepping in as the Vampire Hunter, as Peter Cushing did as Van Helsing, in the previous movie. It's kind of a shame that Hammer didn't run two series in parallel, one with Dracula against various savants and one with Van Helsing against various villains, but I guess Cushing was already quite busy with their FRANKENSTEIN series.

AS FOR MOMENTS WE LIKE . .  one of the most remarkable sequence in the film is the scene where Barbara Shelley is held down on a table, hissing and writhing, as a stake is hammered into her heart by the dispassionate priesthood. It is perhaps the most potent image of sexual repression in all of British horror cinema. Indeed, Dracula - Prince of Darkness, more than any of the Hammer Draculas, embodies the recurrent image of sexual repression threatening to emerge to tear Victorian society apart and its dispassionate elimination by men of reason.

THE TRAVELERS, played by Shelley, Farmer, Matthews and Tingwell are deliberately set up as representatives of 'English genteel' in order to be torn apart – the strongest image of this polarity is the turning of the prim, uptight and anxious Barbara Shelley into a voluptuous vampire, begging Francis Matthews “Give us a kiss.” The sexual overtones in the scene where Christopher Lee causes Suzan Farmer to kneel and drink from the cut he opens with his fingernail in his chest are incredibly vivid.

ANOTHER GREAT MOMENT would have to be Farmers shock and terror, on seeing Lee's Count, unknown to her, standing in the room. Personally, I fond her reaction THE most genuine and terrified reaction I have EVER see. Totally convincing. AND there is of course DRACULA bowing out horribly in the ICY RUNNING WATER . . .

AND WE MUST MENTION Thorley Walters. I have seen some odd comments on blogs and websites, annoyed that Walters doesn't play a very good, RENFIELD. Well, firstly that is because, this isn't the character of Renfield, it's LUDWIG, and second, this is Thorley not Dwight Frye. Take a faff through the flicks featuring vampires, as well as DRACULA and you will often find a suspect individual who isn't called Renfield, BUT does eat FLIES!

OUR SECOND DRACULA FEATURE has several fine moments and a great cast. TASTE also has moments where the  story and reasons, do drift and stray from what made the previous Hammer DRACULA's so great. The element that makes TASTE fall short, is the fall out from some of the pre production problems that effected the script and stability of the film. Sadly, we don't get to see  Christopher Lee as DRACULA, as many times as we should, and when we DO it's those preproduction issues, that make his presence wobble . . 

THE CAST:
Geoffrey Keen (William Hargood), Linda Hayden (Alice Hargood), Anthony Corlan (Paul Paxton), Christopher Lee (Count Dracula), John Carson (Jonathan Secker), Peter Sallis (Samuel Paxton), Ralph Bates (Lord Courtley), Isla Blair (Lucy Paxton), Martin Jarvis (Jeremy Secker), Gwen Watford (Martha Hargood), Roy Kinnear (Weller), Michael Ripper (Cobb)

ABOVE: A RARE CONTACT SHEET of photographs from TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA taken on set by the production photographer

PRODUCTION CREW:
Director: Peter Sasdy, Screenplay: John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer: Aida Young, Photography: Arthur Grant, Music: James Bernard, Music Supervisor: Philip Martell, Special Effects: Brian Johncock, Makeup: Gerry Fletcher, Art Direction: Scott MacGregor. Production Company: Hammer.


SYNOPSYS:
Three Victorian men who lead upstanding and moralistic lives, sneak out to a brothel on the pretext of conducting charity work. Their pleasure is interrupted by the libertine Lord Courtley who offers to show them far greater pleasures. He takes them to an antique shop where he gets them to purchase Dracula’s cape, signet ring and a vial of his powdered blood. Courtley conducts a ceremony in an abandoned church. But when he asks the men to drink the blood, they are disgusted. Drinking it himself, he collapses. The men kick and beat Courtley to death and then flee the scene. But Courtley’s spilt blood revives Dracula who swears vengeance on the other men for killing his disciple. Dracula then seduces each of the men’s children, making them vampires and turning them against their fathers.

ABOVE ANOTHER RARELY seen never shared, CONTACT SHEET from TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA

TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA was the fifth of the Hammer Dracula films and by for many fans, it was the last Hammer Dracula worth seeing. It saw the entry of a promising new director Peter Sasdy. A Hungarian immigrant, Sasdy had come from noted tv work during the 1960s, including episodes of the sf anthology series Out of the Unknown (1956-71) and the acclaimed BBC adaptation of Wuthering Heights (1970). The problem with Taste the Blood of Dracula is, like many it doesn’t always work – as usual with the Hammer Dracula sequels, the script has difficulty coming up with worthwhile motivation for Dracula. The vengeance theme that drives the story,  isn't well connected – it does seem overly generous of Dracula to swear vengeance for Ralph Bates's Courtley’s murder, having not even MET Courtley! 

CONSIDERING that Courtley’s death was necessary for him to be resurrected it does seem slightly irrational of Dracula to then swear vengeance on Courtley’s murderers. Further it makes Taste the Blood of Dracula into a Hammer Dracula, that is something really different from the other Hammer Drac films. It now becomes a film about vengeance rather than one about vampirism. Throughout the focus is on Dracula corrupting the children and turning them against their parents and the usual business of blood-letting hardly even figures at all. 

BUT AGAIN, LIKE ALL the Hammer Dracula films that followed the 1958 production, it's MOMENTS and VISUALS that make the films watching. I have selected several of these moments in our GIFS and images, of the moments that worked for me personally. IF you have seen either of these films, MAYBE you would like to send me an email, about your thoughts and opinions..and I will ADD THEM to this feature, as they arrive. I hope you have enjoyed our latest DOUBLE BILL of Hammer Dracula Flicks. We have just one MORE DOUBLE next week... Please JOIN US then!