#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: PEAS AND PICKLES, BRAM STOKER AND ERIC AND ERNIE!

IT'S A PRETTY PACKED #TOOCOOLTUESDAY THIS WEEK: We start with a #NEW feature, that will be appearing #DAILY here on the website and our PCASUK FACEBOOK FAN PAGE!A New One Every Day !Tell Us True or False and be Our Cushing Geek of the Day! ANSWER TOMORROW, WHEN WE POST TOMORROW'S ... Cushing Geek of the Day!

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY BORN TODAY November 8th 1847 in Clontarf, Dublin, Republic of Ireland… BRAM STOKER, creator of Dracula and a hundred thousand nightmares! Happy Birthday, Mr Stoker! #TooCoolTuesday

#TOOLCOOLTUESDAY: It's February 3rd 1972 and "Live" on television, all glitter and glamour, is the once-a-year event, held in the Albert Hall, when the film and television industry presents awards covering the whole range of the industry . . .. and Peter Cushing is there to present his pals, Morecambe and Wise with their Best Light Entertainment Performance Award, along with their writer, Eddie Braben . . . and no, they didn't bring him his money!

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: Here is a very 'cool' video where Vincent Price is advertising 'Haywards Pickled Onions' from 1977

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'A PARTNERSHIP IN DEADLY DEEDS' A TALENT TO TERRIFY PART TWO

The tide would change in 1957, with the release of The Curse of Frankenstein.  Hammer’s producer, Anthony Hinds, sought to secure Cushing to star because of his reputation as Britain’s first bona fide TV star.  The producer realized that an actor of his popularity would help the picture and was also keen to get away from the policy – previously adhered to by Hammer and other low budget UK companies – of importing fading American name actors to secure US distribution.  Curse was to be a British horror film, through and through, and Cushing was key to this mission.  The actor accepted the role on the strength of remembering how impressed he had been with James Whale’s 1931 version of Frankenstein.

Cushing certainly wasn’t overly impressed by the screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, as Lee would later recall.  The story goes that Lee was going on one day about not having any lines; Cushing would reply, “You’re fortunate.  I’ve read the script.”  Lee won the role of the creature – buried underneath Phil Leakey’s makeup and deprived of any dialogue – after Hinds elected to pass on the similarly tall and lanky Bernard Bresslaw.  It was Lee’s imposing height – up until that time, his greatest handicap – that enabled him to net the role that would put him on the road to international stardom; it was an irony not lost on the actor, who determined to lend as much pathos to the role as he could muster.

Cushing’s portrayal of the icy and amoral Baron Victor Frankenstein is a thing of beauty, of course, but it would be a mistake to underestimate what Lee brings to the role of the creature.  He plays the character like a nightmarish marionette figure whose strings have been cut.  His body refuses obey and his soulful eyes convey suffering when the script doesn’t require him to lash out with violence.  The two actors share very little screen time together, setting a pattern for future collaborations, but they would bond on the set.  It’s unknown if the two even discussed their mutual experiences working for Olivier and Huston, but they certainly found much to laugh about as they discussed their love for cartoons.  The film would become a surprise smash at the box office, and Hammer wasn’t about to not capitalize on their obvious chemistry and audience appeal.

If The Curse of Frankenstein was Cushing’s star vehicle, then Dracula (1958) would be Lee’s.  Jimmy Sangster’s pared-down adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel would give Lee the showcase he had been dreaming for, but stardom came with a price: the role would become his signature, much as it had been for Bela Lugosi, but he was determined not to allow it to control his career as it has Lugosi’s.  It was to be an uphill battle, but it can be argued that he did eventually outlive the character’s shelf life, finding popularity in various other characterizations, even if his tendency to bristle at even discussing the role in recent years has alienated some of his fans.  Truth be told, his irritation with the mantle of Dracula is understandable – after all, he has made hundreds of films and only a few of them involve the character, and truly, how many times can one be expected to answer the same questions over and over again?

Regardless, in 1958, the character was still new and fresh – and his take on it would help to make the film a box office triumph.  Lee has often spoken of the film’s US premiere, with various tipsy industry big wigs tittering with laughter at the opening titles with its melodramatic, booming James Bernard soundtrack.  Lee, sensitive to criticism at the best of times, was rightfully panic-stricken: this was his ticket to the big time, and they were laughing at it.  He turned to Cushing, telling him that they were dead in the water and that he was going to leave.  “We have to say this through,” Cushing assured him.  Then came the big moment: Dracula’s introduction, in silhouette, at the top of the stairs – an effect underlined by Bernard’s signature three-note “Dra-cu-la” theme.  The audience roared.  Lee sank into his seat, thoroughly defeated.  But then something happened… as Lee briskly descended the stairs and walked into close up, speaking his lines in a clipped British accent, and looking every inch the handsome European noble gentleman – the audience went silent...

While Sangster’s script had called for Dracula to be wearing a top hat and to have fangs jutting conspicuously over his bottom lip, Lee and director Terence Fisher sensibly decided to make the character as realistic as possible.  It was a judicious move, one which played off in spades for Lee.  From that moment, the audience was hooked.  The film won the preview audience over, and they went from jeering and cat calling to reacting in shock and surprise.  Cushing may have claimed over-the-title billing, but this was Lee’s shining moment – from that point on, he would be a name actor.

Hammer, for their part, continued to give Cushing the starring assignments, but they weren’t about to not use Lee, as well.  They would reteam later in 1958 for a new version of The Hound of the Baskervilles.  This retelling of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle classic cast Cushing in what would become one of his signature roles: Sherlock Holmes.  On the face of it, Lee would have been decent casting in the role as well – indeed he would go on to play the character in 1962, in a rather disappointing film directed in Germany by Terence Fisher called Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, before donning the deer stalker again in 1991 in two indifferent mini-series, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and Sherlock Holmes and the Incident at Victoria Falls.  While Lee’s portrayal in the German film is hard to assess fairly (he would be dubbed into English by another actor), his turn in the mini-series would prove to be rather disappointing: listless and a bit stiff.

 

With this in mind, Cushing’s dynamic performance is to be savored all the more. He does overdo his mannerisms a little bit here and there, resulting in a few moments that can be viewed as hammy, but this also serves to underline the character’s somewhat theatrical disposition.Cushing’s take anticipates Jeremy Brett’s celebrated turn for Granada TV in the 1980s and 90s, but he stops short of becoming as over the top as that. Cushing invested himself in the role with enthusiasm and had hoped to play the character in further adventures, but the film’s disappointing box office put paid to that idea. If Lee felt the least bit slighted by not being cast as Doyle’s sleuth, he relished the chance of playing the film’s romantic leading man, Sir Henry Baskerville. Lee’s brash and imposing presence adds color to what could have been a dull character and he has a few moments which allow him to register stark fear and terror; his account of being terrified by a real tarantula during one scene may well be nonsense (if you look at how the scene was shot, it’s clear that the hairy critter was never in the same shot with him) but it makes for a nice anecdote, and besides, he really does look terrified in his close ups during the scene in question.

The two actors were nearly reunited under similar circumstances – with Cushing as the dynamic protagonist and Lee as the somewhat colorless “hero” – in The Man Who Could Cheat Death, but Cushing, citing exhaustion, incited the wrath of Hammer’s managing director, Sir James Carreras, by begging off at the last second.  German actor Anton Diffring (who would perfect his “mad medic” persona in the following year’s Circus of Horrors for Anglo Amalgamated) would inherit the role of the lovelorn medic who finds the secret to eternal youth and life, while Lee would don a waxy mustache and have very little to do as the hero, Dr. Gerard.

Their next teaming would occur in 1959, with The Mummy.  Jimmy Sangster would pretty much ignore Karl Freund’s 1932 original with Boris Karloff, drawing more inspiration from the series of “B” sequels that Universal churned out in the 1940s.  Cushing would again claim top billing, though Lee played the title character.  Lee again demonstrated an uncanny ability to convey emotion and pathos underneath tons of makeup, while Cushing would add depth to the theoretically boring character of the intrepid archaeologist who becomes the victim of an ancient curse.

Director Terence Fisher and cinematographer Jack Asher would make this into one of Hammer’s most enjoyable and stylish offerings and Lee’s athletic portrayal of the mummy, Kharis, would add some real life and menace into a creature whose shambling in earlier ventures could sometimes come off as unintentionally humorous.  A flashback scene would at least allow Lee some dialogue and “face time,” but if he was growing weary of wearing elaborate make ups, he had yet to vocalize it.  The Mummy would prove to be another hit with audiences (it not critics) and Lee would soon begin branching out into European films – partly to better establish himself with an international audience, and partly to escape the bane of his existence: the British taxation system.  Cushing, ever the homebody, would begin to find himself confined more and more to horror films.

As part of Lee’s “European campaign,” he would take part in a couple of the then-popular Edgar Wallace “krimis” produced in Germany.  The first of these, The Devil’s Daffodil, was to be shot in two versions: one in German, one in English.  The latter would utilized some different actors, with William Lucas stepping in for Joachim Fuchsberger, who starred in the German version.  Multi-lingual Lee would play the role of the Chinese detective Ling Chu in both versions; a truly incongruous effect in the German version in particular, it has to be noted.  Given that the film was shot in London, it had no trouble in initially attracting the participation of Cushing as well – but for whatever reason, he would bow out before filming any scenes.  For Lee, the film is best remembered as being the reason why he couldn’t have a honeymoon right after marrying his wife, Gitte; the production commenced on a Monday following their weekend wedding ceremony.  Oh well, over 50 years later, they remain happily married, so no harm, no foul.

Lee and Cushing would finally reunite in 1963, for The Gorgon.  This uncommonly romantic and atmospheric Hammer horror would become one of director Terence Fisher’s personal favorites.  It is also regularly cited as a favorite by many who normally don’t care for Hammer Horror.  The reasons for this are obvious: the film’s lyrical atmosphere sets it apart from the rather more blunt films they were better known for.  The film also inverts typical casting by putting Cushing into the role of the icy and duplicitous Dr. Namaroff, while Lee gets to play the charming and funny “Van Helsing role,” Professor Meister.  Lee is burdened with an Einsteinian mop of hair, a bushy mustache and a not-terribly-convincing “old man” makeup job, but his hunched countenance and blustery demeanor help to sell the character.  It’s one of his best performances for the company, offering proof of his ability to breathe life into characters with a bit more dialogue and screen time than the usual Dracula assignment.

Cushing comes off less convincingly as Namaroff, largely because his inherently likable persona clashes with the character’s cool machinations.  Cushing seems a bit constrained by the role and falls back on his favored mannerisms as a means of trying to give him a little humanity.  It’s not a bad performance, by any means, but it doesn’t rank high on his list of accomplishments, either.  The central romance is beautifully enacted by Barbara Shelley and Richard Pasco, however, and Fisher’s elegiac approach to the material helps to enable one to forgive the less-than-special-effects work involving the gorgon at the end of the picture.  Audiences reacted cooly, however, prompting Hammer to retreat back to their standard Dracula and Frankenstein formulas for a period.

Part THREE ' A TALENT TO TERRIFY' SUNDAY 22ND DECEMBER 2013

A Talent To Terrify Is Written by Troy Howarth
with Images and Artwork by Marcus Brooks

ON THIS DAY: CAMERA TURNED ON FIRST DAY OF PRODUCTION OF A VAMPIRE CLASSIC

Today, fifty six years ago, the camera turned on the first day of production of Hammer Films 'DRACULA' (US: HORROR OF DRACULA) at BRAY STUDIOS.

CAST:

Peter Cushing (Dr Van Helsing), Christopher Lee (Count Dracula), Michael Gough (Arthur Holmwood), John Van Eyssen (Jonathan Harker), Melissa Stribling (Mina Holmwood), Carol Marsh (Lucy Holmwood), Valerie Gaunt (Vampire Woman)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Terence Fisher, Screenplay – Jimmy Sangster, Based on the Novel by Bram Stoker, Producer – Anthony Hinds, Photography – Jack Asher, Music – James Bernard, Special Effects – Syd Pearson, Makeup – Phil Leaky, Art Direction – Bernard Robinson. Production Company – Hammer Films

SYNOPSIS:

Posing as a librarian, erstwhile vampire hunter Jonathan Harker travels to Castle Dracula where he is welcomed by the courtly Count Dracula. Harker attempts to kill Dracula and eliminate the vampire menace that Dracula spreads but the sun sets before he can do so. Jonathan’s body and diary are found by his friend Dr Van Helsing who stakes him and takes the sad news on to his fiancée Lucy Holmwood. There Van Helsing finds that Lucy has become Dracula’s prey. Joined by her brother Arthur, Van Helsing begins a search for Dracula, to stake and kill him before Lucy is fully claimed as a vampire.

COMMENTARY:

Dracula – usually better known under its American retitling, The Horror of Dracula – is the cornerstone of the Hammer Films legend. Although The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) the year before was beginning of Hammer’s success, The Horror of Dracula was the one that set Hammer on the map and marked the beginning of Hammer’s domination over the horror scene for the next fifteen years. The Horror of Dracula’s status, certainly in Anglo-horror fandom, is sacrosanct and its importance near mythic. The essence of what the Hammer film was all about is here – the darkly magnetic presence and aristocratic haughtiness of Christopher Lee; the commanding, straight-arrow rationalism of Peter Cushing; the florid shock hand of director Terence Fisher; the essential British repressions of sexuality and convention that Anglo-horror would pierce a stake right through; and the laughably dated shocked critical outcry.

Where then to view The Horror of Dracula today? Hammer films, particularly the early ones, have not dated well. Today their pace seems slow; the shocks that caused such a critical outcry (and then quickly transformed into the expected mainstay of this particular genre) seem absurdly mannered, even laughable. The rich and floridly colourful sets seem flat and stagebound and James Bernard’s celebrated scores loud and unsubtle. Yet The Horror of Dracula holds undeniable effect. One must understand exactly what it represented to audiences back then. To an audience raised on the Bela Lugosi Dracula (1931) and the cardboard, melodramatic figure that Dracula became among the Universal monsters line-up in the 1940s, The Horror of Dracula must have had an incredible shock value. For one, it was in colour – which meant that one could see the blood in its rich, overripe scarlet detail – and that alone made it an immediately different film to the Bela Lugosi version. For another, it was not as stagebound as the Lugosi version – Terence Fisher’s camera is kinetic and alive, always on the move.

As an attempt at adapting Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), The Horror of Dracula is never any better or worse than any other version. Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster liberally sacrifices parts here and there for the economy of plot and budget – out go Renfield and the asylum (although these later appeared in Hammer’s Dracula – Prince of Darkness [1966]). Gone too is the magnificently ambient opening journey to Castle Dracula, the pursuit climax and set-pieces like the crashing of the Demeter. Gone too is Dracula as a supernatural being – “It is a common fallacy,” says Van Helsing, “that vampires can change into bats and wolves,” which conveniently does away with having to create costly effects sequences. (Although said fallacy seemed to have been disproven by the time of later sequels). Despite the liberties he takes with Bram Stoker, Jimmy Sangster nevertheless preserves the essence of the book.

The remarkable sexual element present in the Bram Stoker book (wherein Dracula essentially became a sexual predator, plundering the prim, virginal heroines and turning them into sexually aggressive and irresistible creatures), which was only fleetingly touched on in the Lugosi Dracula, is clearly brought out here – Mina sits up in bed in a V-neck nightgown that does a remarkable job of holding in more than one would ever think possible with her window open waiting for Dracula, and at other points the women invitingly tilt their necks up in anticipation. “It is established victims consciously resent being dominated by vampirism but are unable to resist the practice,” Van Helsing states. The Bela Lugosi version bled the film and its women dry of any sexual vitality but here Dracula had well and truly emerged from the Victorian closet. Part of the shock value that The Horror of Dracula had was its very wantonness in this regard.

In person, Dracula was 6’5” Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee incarnated Dracula as a haughty, imposing nobleman (in real life Lee traces his ancestry back to the Emperor Charlemagne). Bela Lugosi was a puffed-up ham, all stuffed-shirt menace; Christopher Lee, going back to the Stoker book, is introduced as a perfect gentleman who with shock rapidity turns into a ravening animal. When this Dracula is enraged, he is an animal, hissing, his eyes turning scarlet red. Not even Bram Stoker managed to show Dracula with this kind of raw lasciviousness. On the side of good was Peter Cushing who makes the definitive Van Helsing. Thankfully gone is the Dutch accent that Stoker gave Van Helsing and Peter Cushing is able to bring his customary genteel and commanding authority to the role. There is no greater sense in cinematic vampire mythology of Van Helsing as a man of reason who sits astride both science and religion with equal ease, holding society safe against primal forces than there is in Peter Cushing’s performance.

Most of all, The Horror of Dracula belongs to Terence Fisher who subsequently became Hammer’s most prominent director and developed a considerable critical cult within genre fandom. Fisher has no time for Bram Stoker’s Romantic imagery (or even subtlety) and heads straight for shock effect with all guns blazing. There is a shock scene where Valerie Gaunt tries to sink her teeth into Jonathan’s neck as he comforts her, only to be interrupted as Christopher Lee bursts in through a door – in this moment, Terence Fisher shock-cuts to a closeup of Lee’s face, eyes wide-open, blazing blood red and two trails of blood dripping from his fangs, and then has him leap across a table to throw both of them aside. The climax offers a stunning battle between the forces of light and darkness and is an indelible image in horror film – Van Helsing pursues Dracula into the library and leaps across a table to rip the curtains open, exposing an area of sunlight, then jumps on a table and grabs two candelabra to form a cross, which he uses to drive Dracula into the beam of sunlight, causing him to crumble into dust that is then blown away by a mysterious gust of wind as the end credits roll. It is a set-piece that even outstrips the climax in the book.

Hammer’s other Dracula films are:– The Brides of Dracula (1960), Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Scars of Dracula (1971), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of Dracula/Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride (1973) and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires/The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (1974). Christopher Lee appears in all except Brides of Dracula and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Peter Cushing plays Van Helsing again in Brides of Dracula, Dracula A.D. 1972, Satanic Rites of Dracula and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Countess Dracula (1970) is a Hammer film but not a Dracula film and in fact tells the legend of Countess Elizabeth Bathory.

Other adaptations of Dracula are:– the silent classic Nosferatu (1922); Dracula (1931); Count Dracula (1970) a continental production that also featured Christopher Lee; Dracula (1974), a tv movie starring Jack Palance; Count Dracula (1977), a BBC tv mini-series featuring Louis Jourdan; Dracula (1979), a lush remake starring Frank Langella; Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) with Klaus Kinski; Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), featuring Gary Oldman; the Italian-German modernized adaptation Dracula (2002) starring Patrick Bergin; Guy Maddin’s silent ballet adaptation Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002); Dracula (2006), the BBC tv adaptation starring Marc Warren; the low-budget modernised Dracula (2009); and Dario Argento’s Dracula (2012) with Thomas Kretschmann as Dracula.

Terence Fisher’s other genre films are:– the sf films The Four-Sided Triangle (1953) and Spaceways (1953), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), The Mummy (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Gorgon (1964), Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), The Devil Rides Out/The Devil’s Bride (1968), Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973), all for Hammer. Outside of Hammer, Fisher has made the Old Dark House comedy The Horror of It All (1964) and the alien invasion films The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), Island of Terror (1966) and Night of the Big Heat (1967).

Jimmy Sangster’s other genre scripts are:– X the Unknown (1956), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), The Mummy (1959), The Brides of Dracula (1960), the psycho-thrillers A Taste of Fear/Scream of Fear (1961), Paranoiac (1962), Maniac (1963), Nightmare (1963), Hysteria (1965) The Nanny (1965) and Crescendo (1970), and Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966), all for Hammer. Sangster’s non-Hammer scripts are the medical vampire film Blood of the Vampire (1958), the alien invasion film The Trollenberg Terror/The Crawling Eye (1958), Jack the Ripper (1959), the Grand Guignol psycho-thriller Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1971), the tv movie psycho-thrillers A Taste of Evil (1971) and Scream, Pretty Peggy (1973), the occult tv movie Good Against Evil (1977), the occult film The Legacy (1979), the spy tv movies Billion Dollar Threat (1979) and Once Upon a Spy (1980), the psycho-thriller Phobia (1980) and the story for Disney’s The Devil and Max Devlin (1981). As director, Sangster made three films:– The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), the lesbian vampire film Lust for a Vampire (1971) and the psycho-thriller Fear in the Night (1972), all at Hammer 

Written By Richard Scheib

Images and Banner: Marcus Brooks