GIF WEDNESDAY! PACKED WITH PC ON THE FIDDLE: SHERLOCK : THE GHOUL AND A SLICED ROBIN HOOD : CLIPS AND WHOLE MOVIES

#CUSHINGGIFWEDNESDAY! LOTS OF COMMENTS and messages posted to me here and at our PCAS YOUTUBE CHANNEL these past few weeks on PETER CUSHING in THE GHOUL. EVEN interest in the music that Cushing's character DR LAWRENCE plays to Veronica Carlson's Daphne! Cushing did quite a convincing job, of faking playing, and there have been quite a few times where he has had to do the 'FIDDLE' visually, but I don't ever recall him doing so with a piano, which almost the most common musical fake up on screen ! HOW MANY can YOU THINK OF?

PETER CUSHING as SHERLOCK HOLMES in the BBC version of 'THE BLUE CARBUNCLE'

ABOVE THE ENTIRE CUSHING 'THE BLUE CARBUNCLE ' EPISODE 

from the BBC series in 1968

MUCH OF THE SOURCE MATERIAL FOR OUR WEEKLY GIFS, CAN BE FOUND IN THE ENTIRE UPLOADS OF THE PETER CUSHING FILMS AT OUR PCAS YOUTUBE CHANNEL!

JUST CLICK HERE  and be ENTERTAINED for HOURS! Please support us too and PLEASE SUBSCRIBE!
 

IT'S A GREAT PITY that both PETER CUSHING and DAVID WARNER only got to share such a short time together in a film, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. You can see in that scene, how they both had a chemistry, that complemented each other. IF they could have shared another film together, WHICH TITLE one would you choose?? Here nearing the end of  WARNER'S story in one of Amicus portmanteau movies, his poor character Edward Charlton in THE GATE CRASHER loses his will to find the 'figure' in the mirror, but sadly knows nothing of his own fate....   

CUSHING and WARNER in their very entertaining scene

together in FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

FIND OUT MORE about the Amicus film FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE and other films that PETER CUSHING made with the company through out his career, at THIS excellent EIGHT PART serial on THE AMICUS FILMS OF PETER CUSHING. PART SIX covers FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE and several others from the period of time, including MADHOUSE with VINCENT PRICE! AS usual it's just a click away, RIGHT HERE!

HERE IS SOMETHING EXTRA CONNECTED TO 'FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE' . . MANY THANKS TO ROBIN MCDONALD who provided us with two great items for our #TOOCOOLTUESDAY posts a little while ago, you may have missed.... This artwork was produced as a in joke among the crew of Amicus films 'From Beyond The Grave' with Peter Cushing..the artwork was pinned to the clapper-board during some of the shooting! Robin McDonald, was a clapper operator on many of Peter's films.

AGAIN, MANY THANKS to Robin McDonald . .  who sent us his much treasured cards from Peter Cushing, to share with you. Peter DID so very much love his cuppa tea!!!

BARBARA MURRAY who sadly only died quite recently in September 2014, was an actress who SHOULD have appeared in MORE work of the THRILLER AND SUSPENSE kind with AMICUS or Hammer films. Sadly, she never did. MURRAY was very famous for her TV work and few films. She looks like the kind of actress that BOTH film companies would have employed, but apart from a role as Enid Jason in segment 4 "Wish You Were Here" in AMICUS 'TALES FROM THE CRYPT' it all passed her by. 


RICHARD GREEN  who plays her VICTIM Husband, Ralph Jason, . . . a role that PETER CUSHING was originally going to play in the film, NOT ARTHUR GRIMSDYKE, for which he just about stole the whole film and won much respect and an award for... and the late Roy Dotrice, who sadly left us last year, as her lover. It's a bit of a GORY-STORY, this one for Amicus, considering producer's MILTON SUBOTSKY dislike of any inclusion of BLOOD or sex in his scripts and finished films. BUT Barbara does good and Richard Greene, who also worked with PETER CUSHING in Hammer films, SWORD OF SHERWOOD FOREST, in his famous Robin Hood role . .dies, wonderfully!

SWORD OF SHERWOOD FOREST, was one the CUSHING FILMS that made the GREAT list of TOP FIVE PETER CUSHING NON HORROR MOVIES... TO FIND OUT what titles made the OTHER FOUR  CLICK HERE! 

#DRACULAAD1972, is slowly starting to get the respect and interest it maybe should have received on it's release SOOO MANY years ago, by Hammer films. We have relentlessly posted about it in FEATURES and GALLERIES since we first arrived on the net back in 2010. There is ONE particular scene, that we have dug around in for a LONG time. The DEATH OF BOB. For those of you, those of you not so familiar with the character played by, PHILLIP MILLER, Bob was a bit of limp boyfriend of CAROLINE MUNRO"S character LAURA BELLOWS. Bob was a kind of hip but sensible version of  FRED from the epic children's cartoon series SCOOBY DOO, but unlike Fred...DIES! It's not long before he too, falls under the spell of Christopher Lee's DRACULA and those two pointy teeth, until he is found denim's creased and he lifeless in the cemetery of St Bartolph's Church, by PETER CUSHING'S,  Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing. BUT HOW he got there OR died was never explained in the film. It was only when studying some CONTACT SHEETS in the PCAS archive, that we came across the solution . . . READ BELOW! What FUN!

ABOVE: COME WITH US in a GREAT BEHIND THE SCENES DOCUMENTARY on the MAKING of DRACULA AD 1972, in this upload from our PCAS YOUTUBE CHANNEL!

 AND TO WRAP WITH FOR THIS WEEK: HERE is a GREAT PCAS CAROLINE MUNRO Dracula AD 1972 and EARTH'S CORE GALLERY! RIGHT HERE CLICK!

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PC AND HITCHCOCKS PSYCHO! THIS WEEKS TUESDAY TOUGHIE!

HERE IS THIS WEEKS PCAS TUESDAY TOUGHIE! As the banner says, it ISN'T a connection with writer ROBERT BLOCH who did a great job of adapting and writing the scripts for a few of the AMICUS films that PETER CUSHING appeared in down the years. IT IS'NT the film THE SKULL which has an interesting BONE HEAD not unlike the preserved HEAD of  MRS BATES. Amicus films THE SKULL also has some nasty STABBINGS with DAGGERS and KNIVES, but they are not the connection either. SOME OF YOU may guess it, some of you will be MILES out, though it's nothing to do with distance, but certainly if you use all your SENSES, you might get it! THere's no prizes for guessing, but do feel free to drop us a link a petercushingpcas@gmail.com if you think you can SEE IT! Otherwise, ANSWER NEXT WEEK !

DID YOU CATCH Callum McKelvie's SUNDAY CUSHING FEATURE this WEEKEND? IF NOT, NOW is your chance to click and catch it! FULL of GIFS, PICS and Callum's story on how he first came to SEE and REALLY appreciate Hammer films, BRIDES OF DRACULA and PETER CUSHING. JUST CLICK  HERE!

LOST IN THE FOG! MOMENT OF TERROR MONDAY : PETER CUSHING

#MOMENTOFTERROR MONDAY! ONE OUR MOST POPULAR uploads on our PCAS YOU TUBE CHANNEL is any uploads from the Peter Cushing Tyburn film 'THE GHOUL' considering how unpopular the film appears to have been for so many years, I find it typical of how FACEBOOK works and well this website and YOUTUBE works. So often, over the many years of managing the PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE, an often vague and really quite unsupported opinion was posted by a member of the public AGAINST a certain Hammer film or indeed CUSHING film. Within a few hours, that opinion would influence so many other posts and comments, that if challenged would go very quiet. Happily, the once negative Facebook tide about this film slowly started to change direction too in the last two years, before we parted ways with Facebook last month.

PERSONALLY, I'VE FOUND if you look down the 92 films in Peter Cushing's filmography, and look for roles the like of Dr Lawrence in THE GHOUL you won't find many. . . Cushing played many evil characters, whose reputation was either formed by other appearances in past productions like Frankenstein. The likes of roles like Sir John Rowan in 'Corruption' and Dr Nararoff in 'The Gorgon' too . . were motivated by the progress of medicine. The Ghoul's Dr Lawrence is different. In this scene, where we first meet Lawrence, we see a man who is cautious, with good reason, and helpful . . with intentions. What makes his performance so interesting and entertaining also is, for the first time, Cushing also brought in emotional factors from his own personal life. It presents us with a much more credible character. Crushed by grief and driven by a most horrendous secret. 

WHAT HELPS here too is, every cast member is very good too. John Hurt's Tom Rawling's is every females nightmare. Creepy, lusty and dangerous. The despite Rawling's totally unattractive and frightening drive, the fatal physical horror and terror will be cranked up and is really yet to come. Here in this five minute clip . . we see the traps set, the lies shared and what appears to be the charity of a new friend... become many moments of terror . . .

#CALLUMMCKELVIE SUNDAY! THERES NO DRACULA BUT BRIDES STILL HAS A LOT OF BITE!

COUNTINUING MY TRIPS down memory lane, I’m going back a little earlier than my l piece as week on HORROR EXPRESS (1973). As I said previously.  When I came across Horror Express, I was already well acquainted with the work of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and the gothic horror movement of the late 50’s- 1970’s. The subject of today’s piece, The Brides of Dracula, was one of the first films I encountered on my journey into this world and the first that really made me take notice of Cushing as an actor. 

MY INTEREST IN THE GENRE went something like this; finding Quatermass and the Pit (1967) through references in Dr Who magazines and then researching its background. From there I saw Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964), chosen due to my interest in Egyptology (and the fact that it was the easiest Hammer-Mummy film to get on region 2 at the time) and the other Quatermass films. Then, I started to dip my toes into Hammers other franchises, Amicus films and the work of contemporaries like Roger Corman. I would do this by heading along to the UK HMV store and picking a random title or two, fortunately for me Halloween usually involved a sale on the horror section and two for £10. 
 

I BELIEVE IT WAS HALLOWEEN 2008 when, in the very early days of my hammer collecting, I grabbed both The Devil Rides Out (1968) and Brides of Dracula. I’d been after Devil for some time, but Brides I knew very little about and indeed only chose it to see an example of Hammer’s Dracula series. Rushing home with my two purchases, I had a habit at this age of turning any film I really wanted to see into something of an ‘event’, buying snacks and leaving it until late evening. The film I gave that honour too was The Devil Rides Out, but deciding I wanted to watch something however, I popped the disc of Brides into the player.

I THINK, IN MANY WAYS Brides of Dracula, is the perfect film in which to fall in love with both Hammer and Cushing. Whilst the script, can at times be a little messy, it is the atmosphere and performances that set this film apart. Visually the film is somewhat different to 1958’s Dracula, the slightly rougher aspects of that film are completely gone, primarily anything shot on location.

IN DRACULA , this was beneficial atmospherically as for the most part that film functions as a thriller in the guise of a horror movie. Think about it, a man hunts down an evil villain and dies in the process, a relative and the man’s accomplice in his mysterious work then embark on a cat and mouse chase with the villain. Of course I am being a little ignorant in this description of the gothic atmosphere and various staking’s etc., etc.

HOWEVER PURELY in terms of its various script beats, Dracula follows a classical thriller mould. Brides on the other hand is a fairy-tale, a dark fable of a girl who enters a strange country and rescues a prince (well Baron) only for him to turn out to be cursed. It is up to a brave hero (Van Helsing) to save the day. Perhaps reacting to this, Terrance Fisher opts to shoot Brides as mostly stage bound with very little obvious location footage. The set design is far more extravagant and what results is an utterly beautiful self-contained gothic world. The blacks and browns used in a lot of the sets in Dracula, are replaced with vibrant purples and reds. As a young horror fan, I fell in love with this gothic fairy-tale landscape.

A HUGE COMPONENT of this is David Peels performance as Baron Meintser, a character who somewhat divides the fans. Honestly, whilst I adore Christopher Lee as Dracula, I think it’s very unfair to compare that performance to this one. What is being exercised in the two movies are two very different portrayals of the ‘Dracula’ type character. 

WHILST CHRISTOPHER LEE gets his brief ‘refined gentleman’ moment in the opening scene of the earlier film, his Dracula is an animalistic, vicious character. The sexuality comes from that, with Lee's Dracula presented as a highly sexualised creature, not in a romantic way but a lustful and primal one. Peel on the other hand, feels as if the Hammer team were going for an entirely different approach, presenting him as a suave and debonair figure. For the most part he spends his time talking and being legitimately charming, as opposed to Lees snarling and hissing. This works within the films ‘fairy-tale mould’, after all the wonderful opening sequence in which the character of Marianne ‘frees’ him, wouldn’t work as well unless the character was a romantic one.

IN MANY WAYS, Peel's performance pre-empts the take that Frank Langella would have on the character many years later. And then of course there’s Cushing himself, giving what is perhaps his best performance as Van Helsing. I remember being utterly captivated by the determination in his performance, most notably the celebrated scene where he is forced to use a branding Iron on his neck to save himself from the curse of Vampirism.

THE SHEER FEAR mixed with determination presented here gives Van Helsing a warmer presence than he had in the earlier film (Teddy-bear coat scenes aside) and his bond with Marianne does hint at a romance between the two. It’s the performance that made me fall in love with the man and I quickly hunted down several of the Frankenstein entries to see more.

RETURNING TO MY little story of how I discovered Brides, whilst I did enjoy The Devil Rides Out, the film that really stole my heart that Halloween was Brides of Dracula. For me, it’s the only film to watch that time of year and I’m always ready to immerse myself in its rich gothic atmosphere again and again. Whilst I of course adore Dracula, in many ways Brides is a superior film and for me is Fishers masterpiece. If you ever want to indoctrinate anyone in the ways of Hammer, this is the one to go for- after all it worked for me!

AND WHAT ABOUT YOURSELVES dear readers? What were the films that really made you fall in love with Cushing? If you have any comments, suggestions or feedback about this or ANY of my features here at PCAS you can contact me HERE at spookycallum58@gmail.com

PART ONE OF OUR Femme Fatale Feature on YVONNE MONLAUR 

star of BRIDES OF DRACULA can be found HERE!