DEAD GOOD PRIZES TO COME! PCASUK HALLOWEEN COMPETITION 2014

Dead Good Prizes... your PCASUK Halloween Competition for 2014.

Stay tuned for details!

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SIMON WARD REMEMBERED : THE BARON'S APPRENTICE!

REMEMBERING: Born today, Simon Ward. If you take a look at the raft of obituaries for Simon Ward who sadly passed away in 2012, it's a common fault that they state that his career was kick started when he was 'plucked from obscurity' and appeared in Richard Richard Attenborough’s 'Young Winston' in 1972. Maybe that is how the press and publicity agents remember it....but for Ward, it was not so.

Ward acknowledged Hammer films 'Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed' made in 1969 as the film 'that started it all' and the generous help and assistance from his co star Peter Cushing, that made anything afterwards possible... In a interview with pcasuk in 1979, Ward acknowledges his debt to Cushing, who he said, '..had time and patience with me. I knew nothing of the technique needed for working with a camera or about the studio floor. Peter was extremely kind, taking time to explain the simple but very important rules of pace and nuance, so the editor can get in there. This and try to not fall over the cables. He did so much for me. Quite extraordinary. I mean, no one has the time to do that, everyone is busy. But he did it for me, many times through out the film. And it's something I've always remembered, and not come across since... a very kind, gentle, gracious man. He really did save my skin'.

Simon Ward sadly left us in 2012.

SHOCK WAVES: ON SET SATURDAY : PETER CUSHING WHITE GLOVE AND MAKE UP!

#onsetsaturday 2# : Peter Cushing in the make up chair getting his character's signature 'scar' in 'SHOCK WAVES' aka 'DEATH CORP' aka 'ALMOST HUMAN'.... soon to be released on blu ray and on limited cinema release!

 

THE GORGON 50TH BIRTHDAY AND A TELLING TALE FROM BARBARA SHELLEY

A great feature by KB Zorka on the life and career of Prudence Hyman with gallery. Just click: HERE

50 YEARS OLD TODAY: HAPPY BIRTHDAY 'THE GORGON'

It's a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to a grand ol lady! It's 50 years today that Hammer films 'THE GORGON' hit the big screen. Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley and Richard Pasco it certainly qualifies as one of Hammer films marquee titles. Made at Bray studios and directed by Terence Fisher. This post is dedicated to our 'number one' resident Gorgon fan, Joshua 'Mageara' Kennedy!

REMEMBERING ROBERT URQUHART : BORN TODAY 1921

REMEMBERING Robert Urquhart. 'Quiet, well-read and a lover of classical music, Robert Urquhart was an actor who grew frustrated with his career as he grew older. It was, he bemoaned, an honorable profession but so much of the material he was offered did not deserve any respect...' Robert Urquhart Obituary. 'The Independent' newspaper, 24th March 1995.

In the early 1950's Urquhart was building himself quite a reputation for his theatre work. A reputation that would eventually bring him to the attention of studio casting agents and land him supporting roles on the big screen. But it was in the medium of film, that Urquhart was not such a happy chap...

That one film was 'The Curse of Frankenstein' with Peter Cushing in 1957 for Hammer film. He detested it. It is said he left the premier screening, refused to make appearances to promote it and only in the last years of his revived career on television, could he find the stomach to even mention it, if it was brought up in interviews.

By 1980, Urquhart had cooled off a little..and appeared in another Hammer production, the Hammer House of Horror' television series, in an episode entitled, - Children of the Full Moon. However, we remember him today for his sterling performance in The Curse of Frankenstein'! 

FAMOUS MONSTERS: APRIL 1977: HAMMER FILMS DRACULA SERIES : THE YEARS OF FEAR!

 

 

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SEVEN FOOT TALL AND ALL FLESH AND BONES! #MONSTERMONDAY TAKES IN 'THE CREEPING FLESH'

This #MONSTERMONDAY we ask you to consider the creep credentials of a skeleton with a difference...It doesn't sound very frightening... a paleontological bag-of-bones discovered in Papua New Guinea....and the 7ft tall skeleton doesn't do very much for the first hour of 'The Creeping Flesh'. However... chop off a digit and 'just add water..!'...and it becomes a flesh creeping, bone chilling tower of revenge. How do we rate this MONSTER?

For more features, rare photographs, interviews and memorabilia, why not join us at our facebook fan page? Over 18,000 followers worldwide, an extensive image library within the page and posts updated everyday. Just click here: WELCOME  - See more at: http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.KA1hAwTD.dpuf

For more features, rare photographs, interviews and memorabilia, why not join us at our facebook fan page? Over 18,000 followers worldwide, an extensive image library within the page and posts updated everyday. Just click here: WELCOME

For more features, rare photographs, interviews and memorabilia, why not join us at our facebook fan page? Over 18,000 followers worldwide, an extensive image library within the page and posts updated everyday. Just click here: WELCOME  - See more at: http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.KA1hAwTD.dpuf

For more features, rare photographs, interviews and memorabilia, why not join us at our facebook fan page? Over 18,000 followers worldwide, an extensive image library within the page and posts updated everyday. Just click here: WELCOME  - See more at: http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.KA1hAwTD.dpuf

HALLOWEEN COMPETITION 2014 : PETER CUSHING HAMMER FILMS 80TH BIRTHDAY AND MUCH MORE MORE!

The UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Halloween Competition 2014! Launches on FRIDAY OCTOBER 31st .... winners names will be announced on SUNDAY 9th NOVEMBER, the week of HAMMER FILMS 80th Birthday! STAY CLOSE for more details..

For more features, rare photographs, interviews and memorabilia, why not join us at our facebook fan page? Over 18,000 followers worldwide, an extensive image library within the page and posts updated everyday. Just click here: WELCOME 

HALLOWEEN IS A COMIN AND SO IS OUR COMPETITION WITH MONSTER PRIZES

A Grand Competition... with more monsters than you could shake a severed limb at!

STAY CLOSE! Stay very close over the next few days for details here and at our UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Facebook Fan Page.

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SIXTEEN YEARS AND STILL GOING : PHOTOPLAY FILM MONTHLY 1972: CUSHING AND LEE

Two most successful actors in the movie business are currently celebrating a rather special anniversary. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing have embarked on their 21st film together. Who would have guessed sixteen years ago when they worked together on The Curse of Frankenstein that their flexible partnership would prove so popular and so durable, in a series of first rate macabre thrillers, which have made fortunes at the box office throughout the world?

They are a contrary pair and yet their very differences are probably one sound reason for their success.: where Christopher Lee is assertive, slightly remote, majestically assured, Peter Cushing is gentle and perhaps more reserved.

I spoke to them both while they were making 'The Creeping Flesh'. I met Christopher Lee at his elegant Belgravia flat, Mr Cushing I met on the set at Shepperton studios.

In this highly competitive field both rank as undisputed kings (with Vincent Price) of the horror film - although they shy away from the tag 'horror', claiming it an inaccurate label more applicable to war or films purporting to be anti-violent.

'I have said it before, and I will say it again,' said Christopher Lee, 'there is not as much violence in all my so-called 'horror films' as there is in one of the current films.'

I asked Christopher why he and Peter Cushing work so well together? 'Peter and I do seem to make a lot of films together, but we go for three, four, five years without making a film together. Now it happens that we've made three in a row. I don't believe in double acts or teams, but we have a good working relationship. We anticipate each other and know how the other will react.'

Their relationship continues to flourish because it is based on a mutual respect and regard: both these men are professionals and one cannot imagine their ever working with anyone whose attitude, in this area, was not the same.

'We have worked together for sixteen years,' Peter Cushing said gently, 'After all that time you know a person very well. We are friends, apart from our work, but if we are busy on other films we tend not to see each other. That's the thing with this profession: you might go months without seeing someone and then suddenly you're working with them and you carry on where you left off'

Christopher Lee has made a great virtue of his insatiable need to work and he does not limit himself to one medium. When he entered the acting profession after the war (he was initially considered too tall - 6ft 4in - for films!), he built up a fine reputation as a distinctive leading man, but it was Hammer's invitation that he play opposite Peter Cushing in The Curse of Frankenstein which proved a major turning point in his career.

No one at that time would have laid strong bets that this film would have lead to an incredible revival for Frankenstein, Dracula and their many permutations. A revival that would keep both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in more or less permanent employment.

Lee's monsters and villains fpr Hammer have included Dracula (although he argues with the cloak and claims the characterisation quite untrue to Bram Stoker's original), Fu Manchu, Rasputin, not to mention The Mummy.

But Lee's fascination with Dracula goes beyond the Hammer films. He recently visited Transylvania on a virtual pilgrimage of the haunts of the real Dracula - a disreputable character know as Vlad the Impaler.

His visit was for a television documentary, which shows Lee as three versions of Dracula, (the original Vlad, Hammer's Dracula and the Spanish Dracula which is more faithful to the Stoker concept) in addition to appearing as himself wandering the haunts of Vlad the Impaler.

An interesting tie-in to the documentary is a new authenticated book written by three professors in America who have been researching Dracula for ten years. Lee is going to America for a series of lectures connected with this. He talks enthusiastically about the possibility of making a film about the real Dracula., but says he doubts it will ever be made.

He has now formed his own production company and after due consideration has ventured in Nothing But The Night, a modern suspense film which stars him with Peter Cushing and being directed by the immensely talented Peter Sasdy.

Christopher is happy with last last three films - Dracula AD 1972, Horror Express and The Creeping Flesh. He rates one of his best performances in the little seen I Monster, which was shot in an experimental 3D method. Lee is particularly disenchanted with the treatment this film received. I imagine he is a hard taskmaster : he admits he's constantly insisting on changes and won't let the movie men get away with inaccuracies.

He is right too. After all, you don't work in a business for 25 years without gaining some fair measure of esteem: particularly if you work as consistently as Christopher Lee. He worked abroad prodigiously for years. ( he is fluent in five languages) and finds now that he is better known outside of Britain.The incongruity of this situation does not escape him and he comments wryly, 'The prophet is unheralded in his own land' He is has one of the strongest fan clubs of any actor - a British chapter opened recently and receives some 18,000 letters a year, all of which are answered, for he views his responsibilities to his fans seriously.

That he is versatile has never been in question; Billy Wilder's Private Life of Sherlock Holmes changed the attitude of some people; the western Hannie Caulder did too. But it is horror that endures. Why?

'There are some actors- a mere handful - who are still getting incredible money, but their films do not bring people into the cinemas. People want to enjoy themselves. They come to my films knowing they can  suspend belief, be terrified by something that could never happen to them.' 

Peter Cushing's introduction to horror films resulted, ironically, from his brilliant award winning performances in Orwell's '1984' as Winston Smith. Ironic, because Smith was the last hero in the brave new future under the all powerful Big Brother. However, there was a terrifying scene with rats....

Peter, the most gentle exponent of the sinister, had become a household name via his numerous television performances. His earliest ambition to be an actor was in childhood when his bicycle substituted for tom Mix's horse. An early stint in repertory led to America. 'It was marvelous, it measured up to all my expectations!'

Youthful enthusiasm sustained him and whatever kept body and soul together was negligible. When war broke out, he was overwhelmed with homesickness but found the homeward journey a difficult one., dogged with obstacles. Finally, after eighteen months, he managed to get aboard a banana boat. Returning to England, he met his adored wife Helen, the woman he credits with all his success. Sadly, Helen died last year.

When Peter was on the point of giving up acting, Helen insisted he carry on. 'She had such faith in me. She insisted I keep acting.'

Helen it was who wrote to every name listed in the Radio Times saying that Peter was available for television. When he became a television star, she told him that he must stop riding on the underground. 'She told me that people expected more when they saw you on television and the one thing they wouldn't want was seeing you with holes in the soles of your shoes on the tube!'

As with Lee, Peter Cushing's success could be measured with the rising popularity of the horror film. In films with Lee, Cushing is usually the force of good as opposed to Lee's force of evil. 

When his wife died last year, Peter Cushing, after his initial solitude, involved himself in work, work and more work. He is still a changed man and one senses that life for him can never again be truly complete.

'Work is the only therapy,' he told me. 'Luckily, I have kept working constantly ever since and I like to be occupied. Time is the worse thing. It doesn't mean that I think less about her. Only the knowledge that we will meet again keeps me going. You have to believe in the next life or you could never reconcile the injustices in this one. I used to love spare time - we did so much together, but I find now there are so many things i can't enjoy doing. Helen was everything to me.'

When he isn't busy on a film, Peter records tapes of famous books for the blind, a project to which he devotes much time and energy. He is an accomplished artist. In happier times it was one of his favourite hobbies. I am glad to say it is one he seems to be going back to, because actor Joseph O'Connor has written a book of children's stories which he has asked Peter to illustrate.

Peter admits that he still gets a thrill seeing his name in print. You sense the genuine pleasure he still gets from acting: it is his job and he loves it.

I am convinced that the reason Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee lead the field is that they believe in what they do. Unlike young actors who romp thorough horror films with a slight smirk on their faces, Lee and Cushing play it as though it were Shakespeare. Their serious attitude is the only thing that could have kept us convinced for so long.

Happy anniversary - and many more

Susan d'Arcy

Photoplay Film Monthly

June 1972

ANNOUNCED DELAYED POSTPONED ANNOUNCED DELAYED: THE TROUBLED JOURNEY OF 1984 : THE DVD.

NEWS: Yes, sounds like the kind of announcement you may hear on any train station platform up and down the UK... 'The 19:84 from Scunthorpe to London, has been delayed until 20:15. We aploogise for the delay..! No this is news that the BFI DVD of '1984', (Remastered and Restored) adapted by Nigel Kneale, produced by Rudolph Cartier and starring Peter Cushing, has been delayed until March 2015.

This official release has been a long time coming, though groggy-fuzzy bootlegs from Spain and the US have given us a tantalizing taster over the years. Though I will tell you that this release has been on the table and had several false starts since 2004!

In 2004, it was announced that it the BBC 1984 television play would be released by DD Video. This was followed by a press release from  DD and with the news that considerable effort had been made in order to present the programme in the best possible quality.

The DD Press release of 2004:

BBC CLASSIC SF DRAMA PAINSTAKINGLY RESTORED

Classic TV specialist DD Home Entertainment claims to have set a new quality benchmark on its restoration work for the 1954 BBC drama Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This early landmark of British television, which will be available for the first time ever on DVD and video on November 8th, required extensive work on it, but viewers will – according to DD – find the restored picture even better than when it was first transmitted.  In December 1954 videotape recorders (even for broadcast use) were two years away and existed, if at all, only in prototype form in research laboratories.

Since 1947 BBC engineers had been able to make crude recordings of TV pictures simply by pointing a film camera at a monitor screen.  However, dramas were not recorded until 1953 and Nineteen Eighty-Four remains one of the earliest surviving examples of the art-form. It was recorded at the time using an ingenious system of modified telecine machines.

New transfers of the film recording were commissioned from BBC Resources using its highest quality Spirit Datacine equipment. Special arrangements were made with the BBC Film and Videotape Library for access to the archive master material, which cannot normally be used.

The new copies of the play were graded. This is the process of taking each shot (or even part shot) and adjusting the brightness and contrast. Dirty cuts (where a frame is made of superimposed and distorted pictures from two cameras) were removed or, where possible, repaired using paintbox techniques.

Nineteen Eighty-Four will be available from November 8th 2004

Needless to say, the  DVD never arrived in November 2004, the word was there had been 'problems' and a dispute with author George Orwell's estate. Things went very , very quiet for  a long time.....

Then in July 2014, the BFI announced that they would be releasing the 2004 restored DVD as part of their 'Days of Fear and Wonder' SF season... but that too has now been postponed until March 2015. 

Orwell estate trying to claw the last few few bucks from their rights to the material, before it slips into from their ownership? BFI busy putting together some worth while extra features? Who knows...

Until March of next year, we sit and wait...

Another slice of buffet car coffe anyone?  

DONALD PLEASENCE : REMEMBERED TODAY

REMEMBERING: Actor Donald Pleasence who was born today in 1919... Pleasence appeared alongside Peter Cushing in a surprising amount of titles. From the quite early on brilliant BBC production of '1984' to the not so brilliant 'The Devil's Men', 'Flesh and the Fiends', 'Trial By Combat' and 'From Beyond The Grave' In a very lengthy career, with many highlights, Pleasence was always entertaining, especially with nervous, evil obsessive characters. Pleasence is probably best know for his role of Dr. Sam Loomis in the 'Halloween' films...a role interestingly enough that Peter Cushing was originally approached to play....

More on Donald Pleasence and the film Beyond The Grave in The Amicus Films of Peter Cushing Part Six : CLICK HERE

THE CASE IS SOLVED : AND WE HAVE OUR WINNERS : SHOCK BASKERVILLE BLU RAY PRIZES

CONGRATULATIONS to our FIVE WINNERS! Last night we launched the second of our two 'The Hound of the Baskerviles' competitions in conjunction with Shock Video.. we asked you to spot a missing item in a publicity still from the 1959 #hammerfilm starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee... under the banner of a bit of fun, we told you a thief had stolen the item, and entitled our little competition caper, The Case of the Disappearing Gift of Africa and the Race Against Time...which in itself was a clue to the missing item, that you had to find within a time limit. It was tricky....

The FIVE WINNERS have each bagged themselves a copy of #hammerfilms 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' from Shock Video... the FIRST time available on blu ray....a smashing blu ray / dvd combo pack!

AND THE WINNERS ARE: JOHN JOHNSON, TATYANA DYBINA, SEAN CORRIGAN, KEN HILTON and FAY SAINSBURY. WELL DONE!

THE SOLUTION AND ANSWER:

There were many, many of you who spotted the missing item in the publicity photograph...though for some it was a little more tricky. Some though Christopher Lee's ring had vanished, a wrist watch (?) had moved. One or two answered that we had moved our logo at the bottom right of the pic!

But, what we were looking for, was a detail in Sir Henry's costume... that in fact, wasn't really part of Sir Henry's costume at all ! Christopher Lee, since he was a young man has worn a bracelet made of 'Elephant Hair' on his right wrist. It was a gift given to him while serving with the SAS in South Africa during World War Two.... ('Gift' and Africa'...the title to comp, see what we did there? ) You can spot it in many of his films, Dracula (1958), Rasputin (1966), The Devil Rides Out (1968) ... often it is hidden with costume cuffs and jackets, but it's always there, because according to Lee, he has never taken it off since the day he first tied it to his wrist....

So, there you go... Look out for news about a GREAT competition we have lined up for Halloween over the next few days...

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