COMPETITION THE AMICUS COLLECTION : MUNRO AND ANDRESS RARE PICS!

#COMPETITION! ARE YOU READY TO PLAY . . .AND WIN?

STARTING NEXT WEEK! #CUSHINGFEMMEFATALESFRIDAY! We had planned to kick start this NEW THEMED DAY, today. Alas some annoying technical problems, got the better of us. So, NEXT WEEK it is then!

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  . . 

#GETTHECUSHIONITSCUSHINGSUNDAY: THE MAKING OF THE BEAST MUST DIE: WE ARE HAVING YOU FOR DINNER!

#GETTHECUSHIONITSCUSHING: TODAY WE FEATURE a scene from The Beast Must Die (1974) from Amicus. One of their non-portmanteau films and their only werewolf one. The story is, in essence, a conflation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (aka, Ten Little Indians) and The Most Dangerous Game, with elements of the werewolf mythos stirred in. One of its unquie features is a 30-second break called "The Werewolf Break", where the audience is asked to guess the werewolf's identity, based on clues from the movie.

WHILE NOT AS HIGHLY regarded or well known as most of Amcius's films, and despite its budget restraints, it remains a fun film with some unique ideas and has a steller cast with Peter Cushing, Calvin Lockhart, Michael Gambon, Anton Diffring, Charles Gray. Are you are fan of the film? and did you guess the IDENTITY of the WEREWOLF, the first time you watched it?

HAVE A CUSHING QUESTION? Ask our resident expert, ASK ARTHUR.. post it to us at our email OR join us at our Peter Cushing appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page Here!

If you LIKE what you find posted here . . Please visit us at our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE and help 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. 

#SILENTBUTDEADLY: THE WEEKLY REQUESTED GIFS GALLERY

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY!: YOU MAY HAVE noticed from our previous post today, where we mark the two year anniversary of Sir Christopher Lee . . . among his many, many roles in the fantasy genre field, the character of Prof Sir Alexander Saxton in the film, 'HORROR EXPRESS' is one of best! Somewhere in the same field as Colonel Bingham in 'NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT', a kind of Duc de Richleay-lite! Authoritative, but no nonsense roll your sleeves up and get stuck in to 'the monster' sort of guy.

I REALLY ENJOY watching this film, not only because you have Cushing and Lee almost on the same side, but Lee really looks to be enjoying himself. Maybe he was happy that he managed to talk his old friend into staying and making the film. Within days of getting to the studio in Spain, Cushing still deeply effected by the passing of his wife, Helen, was in no hurry to unpack his bags and was ready to catch the next plane back to blighty!

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY!: Requested by Mandy Edwards is this shot from Hammer's 'THE VAMPIRE LOVERS' with Ingrid Pitt pouncing and Ferdy Mayne, fighting for his life! Though the edit of this GIF doesn't quite show that. A few seconds further in, and the whole match becomes a lot rougher and desperate. 

UNFORTUNATELY, here it looks like Carmilla is in a playful mood and giving Ferdy's Doctor, who doesn't want to play, a teasing tickling! Cushing flies in and out of this one, but still gets the pay-off scene with the beheading of the sleeping Karnstein!

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY: YOU KNOW THAT FEELING when in the movie, they've played the scene where 'the monster' has been destroyed, and everyone relaxes then, something happens suddenly, and you discover, nope it ain't dead at all? Well, that's what happens in this shot from Amicus films, 'The Beast Must Die'.

IT TAKES quite a time to get to the point where, the identity of the person who is 'werewolf' is revealed, and then the story tips on it's head. It's well timed in this case, and the almost double take from Cushing and Calvin Lockhart, almost takes their heads off! Requested by Bill 'Bertie' Cleverly!

IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Please Us Help 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. 

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: BEHIND SCENES ON AMICUS WEREWOLF FLICK AND THE BIG SHOCK!

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: 1974: The very first whispers I heard about a films called 'Confessions of a Blood Drinker aka The Big Shock aka La Grande Trouille . . .was in 1975, the word was, chaos. Rumbling, Shambolic, Rubbish. Then I received a set of beautiful colour mat finish press photographs..you can see them in out feature at the website...then House of Hammer magazine ran a black and white feature, made no sense. It wasn't until 1985 that I finally saw a print, with subtitles. It made no difference. It was still everything they said it was...and more. A delux car crash in movie making. Everything that you THOUGHT Cushing stood for in his art, this one flies in the face of! It wasn't the only time Cushing made a dead duck, where the best thing to come out of the venture, were the press photographs! And here is one now . . .

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: 1974 Director Paul Annett talks about directing the 1974 Amicus films, 'THE BEAST MUST DIE' starring Peter Cushing, Charles Gray, Anton Diffring, Calvin Lockhart, Marlene Clark and Michael Gambon. Behind the scenes stills and clips . .The story is, in essence, an intersting mix 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 with .... The Werewolf Break, being the cherry on the top!

 

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: 1974 As usual some of posts here are also posted, a little earlier at our Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page , and after posting the one at the top of this thread first on facebook, about Peter Cushing's film, 'Tendre Dracula' . . I received a message from Andre Toutlinee, who suggests that, 'I can't believe that Tendre Dracula could be THAT bad a film! I mean how bad was it it for you to say that it was a car crash of a movie??' Well, Andre... How bad was it?? It was THIS bad, (see pics above) Peter looks interesting as a vampire...but the film's cinema poster??? What...were..they...thinking??? OR smoking???

 

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#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

PETER CUSHING'S ENCOUNTERS WITH THE HELL HOUNDS

Peter Cushing's Hounds From Hell:
 

A: Colonel the Great Dane from Hammer's The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1959)
 

B: Colonel in action wearing his rubber mask
 

C: The Uncredited German Shepherd in The Beast Must Die
 

D: The German Shepherd getting dressed in his werewolf fur coat

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'THE BEAST MUST DIE' REVIEW AND STILLS GALLERY: AMICUS FILMS 1974 GROWLINGLY GOOD WHO-DONE-IT.

Egomaniacal big game hunter Tom Newcliffe (Calvin Lockhart) invites a disparate group of friends and associates to his rambling mansion for a weekend getaway; little do they realize that it’s a ploy engineered by Newclife, who believes that one of them is a werewolf… and he’s anxious to add just such a specimen to his trophy case…

By the mid-70s, cracks were beginning to appear in the foundation of the Amicus House of Horror.  Producers Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky had achieved success in the 60s with a string of low budget horror films with classy production values, but their run was bound to come to an end.  It wasn’t just Amicus who was suffering, either.  Hammer Films, the reigning Kings of British horror, were also on their way out.  The horror genre was changing, and the success of pictures like Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) signaled that the old school of horror filmmaking was beginning to look a bit passé.

Subotsky and Rosenberg responded much as Hammer had done, by adding a bit more graphic gore and sex to pictures like And Now The Screaming Starts! (1973), but it proved to be a cynical move that did little to improve their box office favors.  When the time came to do The Beast Must Die, they decided to fall back on the William Castle school of gimmicky filmmaking by adding in a “werewolf break,” wherein the film literally freezes for half a minute just before the last act, thus giving audiences a chance to make one final guess on the identity of the werewolf… as if the identity was really all that hard to guess, anyway.  No matter – it was a silly gimmick, and it did little to improve the film’s box office takings.  The Beast Must Die, like the aforementioned And Now The Screaming Starts!, broke from the Amicus “formula” by sticking to a single-plot narrative structure.  And it, too, failed to garner much enthusiasm from audiences, thus helping to speed the company towards its inevitable oblivion.

The screenplay was adapted by screenwriter Michael Winder from a story called “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), it 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.

Amicus’ classy production values are much in evidence, despite some unfortunate shortcuts here and there.  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.

The Beast Must Die would be Amicus’ one and only foray into the werewolf subgenre, and it would mark the first of only two films on the subject in which Cushing appeared (the second would emerge the following year, with Tyburn’s Legend of the Werewolf, itself a clumsy retread of Hammer’s Curse of the Werewolf).  It may not rank among their finest achievements, but it remains a fun and well paced item on its own terms.

Written by Troy Howarth
with Images and artwork by Marcus Brooks    

'THE BEAST MUST DIE' : PETER CUSHING AND THE WEREWOLF BREAK