A MUG AND SOME MYSTERIOUS INITIALS : ON THE SHERLOCK TRAIL OF CUSHING'S DESK TOP

#petercushing A WONDERFUL GIF of Peter Cushing featuring his role as OSRIC in the Sir Laurence Olivier directed classic of 1948.... Another rare chance to see Peter's gift of comedy.

 

#‎sherlocksunday‬ ONE OF THE PROBLEMS with the BBC's Cushing Sherlock series was it's slightly staged appearance '... but when the script called for Cushing to react or quicken up the pace... I guess he was gagging to get going .. in this gif..he does just that!

#SHERLOCKSUNDAY: PETER CUSHING'S NIC-KNACKS, A CASE FOR DETECTION: This is the table top of a small portable desk top, that Peter used in his home study...displayed as a exhibit for visitors inspection at the PeterCushing@100 exhibition at Whitstable museum back in 2013. Some interesting items here, the Sherlock Holmes business card, and magnifying glass, headed not paper for Peter and Helen's address in London, pack of Peter's favourite cigarettes, some undelivered personal correspondence, a note for the newspaper shop, two photographs of Peter with his wife, Helen...BUT two curious things here, a china 'mug'. I can't ever see Peter drinking from a mug! Can you? A man who would not use or frequent tea rooms or restaurants that used sugar cubes, or those little foil packed squares of butter, would not, I think...drink from a mug! Second, that desk calendar? What do you suppose the initials of FBT would stand for??? Hmmmm?

 JOIN US at our FACEBOOK FAN PAGE . JUST CLICK THIS LINK!

#ONSETSATURDAY DALEKS ASYLUM AND BANDAGES

#‎onsetsaturday‬ :RARE AND EXCLUSIVE behind the scenes on Peter Cushing's second DALEK DR WHO feature film, Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD. Here at Shepperton studios the pyrotechnics are about to go off and take the deadly Daleks with them! NOTE bottom left corner, a film camera operator with camera, crouched to shoot the action..!

#onsetsaturday : Producer Milton Subotsky, actors Richard Todd and Sylvia Syms and director Roy Ward Baker, stop for a break... and maybe, discuss the best way of chopping up a body and storing it in the chest freezer! Brrrr Yikes!

#onsetsaturday : IT'S TOUGH being the title role, of a Hammer film... Christopher Lee wrapped from head to toe in latex and bandages as Kharis in Hammer films THE MUMMY... the suit did have eye fasteners at the back..but, boy that latex, glue, tissue paper and bandages sure pulled on your eye brows, come taking it ALL off at that end of the day!

TRADING CARDS HAMMER COMICS AND FIERY GIF!

#‎frankensteinfriday‬ Over at our Facebook Fan Page we are asking ...DID you or DO you collect Hammer Trading Cards? There have been many sets of Hammer films trading cards issued over the years, some very good, others not so. I have never understood the 'sketch cards' series? I'd love to know which card did you have most annoying doubles of?

#NEWS : TITAN PUBLISHING has announced a release date for their first issue of a joint venture with Hammer films... ' a brand-new mini-series that reanimates the characters, as imagined by legendary Horror studio, Hammer films...' Halloween 2016 will see the first of their stories, 'The Mummy', ' written by the legendary Peter Milligan, drawn by Ronilson Freire, with cover art by John McCrea. Their press release says, ' ...the line will see the publication of brand-new comic stories, featuring classic Hammer properties, as well as wholly original Hammer stories, produced by Titan.' Hmmm those of us expecting something along the lines of a 'House of Hammer' comic strip story and artwork revival..maybe a little disappointed . . . 

#frankensteinfriday : The final scenes of #frankensteinmustbedestroyed is probably the most dramatic of all the Hammer Cushing Frankenstein films... out is a blaze. Milton Subostsky once said, that to end a film with an explosion or fire was a bit of a cop-out, the mark of what writers do when they can think of nothing else, or when the budget calls for a quick end... maybe, but in this case the drama and fire are so well executed, it creates a tension you can't help but get caught up in...and that surely is the mark of a great film???

#TBT DALEKS HOUSE CALLING CARD : MORE TEA? : OPERA OUTING AND HIDE BEHIND THE CUSHION CUSHING

#‎TBT‬ Remember that time when..... the #daleks made a house call to your home????

DEDICATED TO EVERYONE  and everyone who has ever stopped by Peter's favourite stop.. the Whitstable #TUDORTEAROOMS...Cushing and Lee stop for tea!

#tbt #throwbackthursday 'That time when....'. Peter Cushing attended the a gala performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Phantom of the Opera' in 1987, with Joyce and Bernard Broughton. ..yeah THAT'S what they looked like!

#TBT : OK. LET'S EXPLORE your own personal Peter Cushing Throw Back! The first Cushing film ever saw was Dr Who and the Daleks, at a cinema when I was six...after that all Cushing films I caught, until the age of video, where on tv. Can you remember the FIRST Cushing film you ever saw on tv and when?

WE ARE ON FACEBOOK PLEASE JOIN US ALONG WITH OVER 25,000 OTHER BY CLICKING HERE. EASY! 

SHANE BRIANT LAST LEAD STANDING

The above titled image is a caption that would I am sure, upon reading it, would have Shane Briant allowing himself a titter! As the title of his autobiography tells us, not only is he is always 'the bad guy', but today on his birthday, he stands as the only remaining lead male actor, from the the final days of that most treasured British institution and regal house of horrors, Hammer studios, still working. 

Looking at the titles of many of Shane's  films and characters, you quickly begin to understand that, he may be still standing, but often he has left our nerves on the floor,  shocking us with his young and deranged Peter Clive in 'Straight On Til Morning', Simon Helder in 'Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell', all for the Hammer studio, but Norma in the landmark BBC production of 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975, Sir Clifford Chatterley in Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1980, and Dr. Trayso Talnell / Kaarvok in tv's 'Farscape', prove that Shane is no stranger to the tormented and the slightly skewed and has brought us a feast of 'fabulous fiends', that often stand, hold rank and quite comfortably keep company , with some of cinema's best! 

We invited Uwe Sommerlad, to take a step back and take an over view of the man who has brought us many chilling chaps in the black hat, but in life, couldn't be a more charming, friendly and sensitive man. Shane Briant

Happy 70iest Birthday to Shane Briant! The British actor studied law before he decided on a, hm, less theatrical career as an actor, making his professional debut as Hamlet in Dublin. He then played in London with the splendid Yvonne Mitchell in "Children of the Wolf", winning the Best Newcomer Award.

He played several small parts on the screen before Hammer took him under contract, hoping that he would become a new major Hammer star. Alas, Hammer was going commercially downhill by then, and the four movies Briant did for them - the underrated psycho thriller STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING (1972; dir. Peter Collinson), the strange Freudian Gothic DEMONS OF THE MIND (1972; dir. Peter Sykes), the experimental CAPTAIN KRONOS - VAMPIRE HUNTER (1974; dir. Brian Clemens, with Horst Janson) and Terence Fisher's last movie, FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (1973, with Peter Cushing) did not do very well at the box office.

In between Briant went to Hollywood and played Dorian Gray in the TV adaptation THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1973; dir. Glenn Jordan), but no horror stardom followed (with Briant not really suited for the "slashers" and Zombie movies to come), but a solid career as a character actor in various movies and on TV. He was a killer in John Huston's THE MACKINTOSH MAN (1973, wiith Paul Newman and James Mason) and Jack Palance's evil son in the trash classic HAWK THE SLAYER (1980; dir. Terry Marcel).

He played a cross-dressing homosexual in the Quentin Crisp biopic THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT (TV 1975; dir. Jack Gold, with John Hurt), not LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER (1981; dir. Just Jaeckin, with Silvia Kristel) but her wheelchair-bound husband, and was suspicious in the Agatha Christie adaptation MURDER IS EASY (TV 1982; dir. Claude Whatham, with Bill Bixby). 

Briant went to live in Australia in the Eighties, where he continued to appear in movies and TV shows, including the horror movies CASSANDRA (1986; dir. Colin Eggleston) and OUT OF THE BODY (1989; dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith), thrillers GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM (1988; dir. Mark Joffe) or TUNNEL VISION (1995; dir. Clive Fleury, with Patsy Kensit) and episodes of SF series TIME TRAX (1994) and FARSCAPE (2001 - 2003). He also became the main villain in children's TV series, namely MISSION: TOP SECRET (1994 - 1995) and SEARCH FOR TREASURE ISLAND (1998 - 2000).

Shane Briant has also turned to writing and had seven novels published between 1994 and 2011. His short film A MESSAGE FROM FALLUJAH, loosely based on Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge", won the "Best of the Fest" award at the 2005 Los Angeles International Short Film Festival and was in the final mix of ten shorts for consideration for an Academy Award. In 2013 he played Major Lawrence Miller in seven episodes of the HBO serial, Serngoon Road and last year competed work on the tv mini series GALLIPOLI as Sir Frederick Stopford.

JOIN US AT OUR PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY FACBOOK FAN PAGE 

NOW WITH OVER 25,000 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS

GIF GALLERY WEDNESDAY IS GIMMETHEGIFWEDNESDAY

SO HERE WE ARE... with our SECOND #GIMMETHEGIFWEDNESDAY! Keep those requests a-comingand we will do our best to, find that clip and make that gif!  What makes a great gif? Here are two of the things to consider when choosing your gif, the best gifs are a short section of film with no dialogue...remember a gif plays without any audio. Maybe some thing that has high drama or action... a gif can be only 5 to 12 seconds long...

GIFS below are from 'Flesh and the fiends', for Bella Podtetenieff. 'Horror Express'  for Tom Boulton and 'Legend of the Werewolf' for Lexi Conroy. 

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY : KELLY SHARES A NEW FIGURE

A NEW MICHAEL RIPPER sculpt is in the works from KELLY GODEL. Premièring here at the Peter Cushing Appreciation Society and and at our FACEBOOK FAN PAGE too! Kelly tells us that, 'The previous Michael Ripper figure was inspired by Ripper's character in Hammer films, Scars of Dracula. This is more of a "Tom Bailey" but without the beard (yet)!

Although Kelly is still working on this figure, I could see this one already had all the signs of being just as excellent as his last Michael Ripper, and I think it will being sought after by figure collectors. I Kelly him how would someone go about ordering one?. 'I don't have any selling plans other than if anyone wants one they message contact me--and there are more to come. I can be contacted at, kgodel@show(dot)ca or they can facebook message me.'

I never really saw Michael very often after he retired. Even though when he was working, he always made time for fans and was, in all this attention, an extremely humble man. He admitted he was a little confused and enormously flattered by the interest that his work with Hammer was now receiving. I once joked and said he might be surprised yet, should they erect a statue of him in honour of his work. He smiled and actually blushed! 

During our chatting on facebook today, I mentioned to Kelly that it was great to see this figure was up to his usual excellent standard. And that I was pleased to see he had chosen to make another Michael Ripper figure! Within seconds, Kelly's reply came through on the chat box...it said, 'I haven't forgotten that you said, Michael Ripper would be "over the moon" to have had a statue made of him, so I had to do two!' 

Hmm, I think Michael would have liked that..!

CELEBRATE #TOOCOOLTUESDAY HERE AND

AT OUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE JUST CLICK HERE!

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: PETER CUSHING BRONZE BUST

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY : NOW AINT THAT TOO COOL?

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY : CONTACT PRINTS are ALWAYS cool!Clock-wise: Peter Cushing MADHOUSE, Onset Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Vincent Price publicity portrait for Comedy of Terrors, Peter Cushing at book signing 1986 — with Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and Hammer Films

PLEASE JOIN US AT OUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE