REMEMBERING CARRIE FISHER TODAY

#REMEMBERING Carrie Fisher . . . it's a year today since Carrie Fisher last birthday... these are the visuals I used on her birthday banner last year. It's still very sad. No one could ever have guessed, that something so tragic would happen just a few weeks later... We Remember Carie Fisher today, on what would have been her 61st Birthday . . . .Many of you are sharing your thoughts and memories over at  our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE POST ... Please come and join us . . .

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  . . 

ALL CHANGE : LAST CALL FOR FRANKENSTEIN AND MONSTER MONDAYS

#FRANKENSTEINFRIDAY! A lovely and rare transparency of Peter Cushing with 'that head' from the 'Curse of Frankenstein' (1957) served up on a background platter of the ultra rare press-book from the same film... This is our last #frankensteinfriday post today, and in fact for a little while. I am putting the day away to bye byes. I think you are all a little Frankenstein Friday'd OUT! SO a new themed day next FRIDAY and also NEXT MONDAY #MonsterMonday has a long well earned sleep too, so TWO new Cushing Themed DAYS next week. - Marcus

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 . 

THE ZOO GANG : LESSER SEEN CUSHING SEASON : REMEMBERING SIMON WARD

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY! Here's the SECOND in our weekly series of 'lesser seen Peter Cushing Roles'. Last week, 'Some May Live' this week, it's an episode which some of you in the UK may remember, from the tv series The ZOO GANG, called The Counterfeit Trap (1974) Peter Cushing plays Judge Gautier . .. . another accent! Let us know what you think about this little gem! BTW Our season is playing out at our PCAS YOUTUBE channel and PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGEtoo . . . .

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 PCAS 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'.

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 .

VINCENT, KATY, EDDIE AND PETER ARE SHOCKED! GIFS! GIFS!

#SILENTBUTDEADLY! Here's #VINCENTPRICE as 'Sinister Man' in probably one of his sharpest put-downs on film in 'Blood Bath At The House Of Death' (1984), an interesting little black comedy staring Kenny Everett . . he is SHOCKED, and the line he delivers, is sadly unrepeatable here . .  our silent disposition serves us well!  I thought his jibbing before the delivery, was well worth posting . . .

#SILENTBUTDEADLYWEDNESDAY!: KATY WILD IS SHOCKED! But sadly her character, BEGGER GIRL, is MUTE! Hey, thought Anthony Hinds, she can't speak, she doesn't NEED a name! But Cushing gets it. There's nothing like a 7foot tall ex wrestling champion, in mashed-up make up, wearing diving boots and a mean look . . . carrying a wrought iron spear, to sharpen the senses. This leads into one of those scenes, that you can see, Cushing REALLY enjoyed. A right royal scuffle, with crushing grips, heroics, floppy fringe flying and Cushing's Baron comes out looking hair ruffled, but still sharp and smart! It's a pity the girls didn't get to play though... I just love the way, Cushing flings our poor 'Begger Girl' out...of..frame....! 'The Evil of Frankenstein' (1964), certainly is from the good ol days, when monsters were mean and big, and girls screamed, until a CHAP stepped in...!

#SILENTBUTDEADLY!: In #STARTREK lore, there's a there's a theory. If a cast member in the 1960's tv series was wear a red top as part of their uniform, they were for the chop. After they had set down on the planet, while checking out the sandy desert terrain, you could count the seconds before a scream went up, and the red top guy, had bought it! Dead. Not so the case with the 1966 Cushing film, 'Island of Terror'. Actor Eddie Byrne was the go to guy in the late 50's early 60's, if you wanted a strong, straight talking, serious detective, police office or doctor. Here he plays Dr. Reginald Landers, strong, straight talking, serious and tentacled silicate, tea time snack! You can see the shock in his eyes. Who could have known? In Hammer films, 1959 The Mummy, Bryne had played the SSS Detective Inspector Mulrooney. For him it was double added value, playing to his strengths Police AND IRISH! He played it very well, feeding Cushing's British archaeologist all the right questions, that lead us through a complicated flash back story about how, Christopher Lee's High Priest Kharis had ended up minus his tongue and wrapped in enough bandage, to stretch to Tut's tomb and back! So, that he should die, for me was a surprise and sad. I am not one of these cinema goers who spends their time wasting my ten bucks, trying to find the clues to end of the film, when I have paid good lolly, for them to tell me. I also happen to be a fan of Eddie's work. so, for him to leave film three quarters in, was a downer. Still, he died well. Convincing audiences you are being SUCKED to death, could be a tall order for some actors. Not Eddie. He's a strong, straight talking, serious doctor here. He was never going to suck in this role.....

#SILENTBUTDEADLY! 'Corruption' (1968) is a motion picture that is full of SHOCKS, and that's even without the CENSORED shock shots! Here Cushing shockingly bites the dust. It's interesting, despite how carefully director Robert Hartford Davies set up this clever shot, so that we get the full impact of the Laser Zap on PC, my dear ol Mum, when she saw this many years ago was distracted. 'Hasn't Peter Cushing got really BLUE eyes!', she exclaimed. And yes, he DOES. The weird thing is, if you look at at Cushing's death pose as Gustav Weil in Hammer films, 'Twins of Evil' (1971) and the last death shot of Cushing's Sir John Rowan . . .they are uncannily similar!

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 . . 

GOODBYE TO ROY DOTRICE OBE 1923 -2017

VERY SAD TO READ that actor ROY DOTRICE passed a few days ago. Dotrice has one of those acting CV's that crosses all genre's, generations, trends and all arts disciplines, all of which he excelled in . . . he has a tenuous connection to Peter Cushing in that he was in the cast of Amicus films, 'Tales from the Crypt' (1972) in the 'Wish You Were Here' story, with Richard Greene and Barbara Murray. But I want to mention his passing here as more of a note to myself, and maybe you too, that Roy like Christopher Lee before him, is one of the last of our actors who stood for something special. In most cases their work, as they got older, should have come with a 'Quality Reassurance' stamp!

DOTRICE PLAYED so many good roles, very well during his long career, that's it's almost impossible to make a choice of the best... but stand outs would be Leopold Mozart in 'Amadeus' (1984), John Aubrey in Patrick Garland's 'Brief Lives', a one-man show that saw Dotrice on stage for more than two-and-a-half hours. 

A WEALTH BRIT TALENT: Rehearsing for a show at the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm is Foreground Barbara Windsor, and Max wall, a bearded Roy Dotrice, George Baker, Liza Goddard, Fenella Fielding, Amanda Barry, Anna Quayle, Melvyn Hayes, Bob Todd and Miriam Karlin! 

INTERVIEW: Roy Dotrice discuses recording the audio book of George R.R. Martin's A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

DOTRICE ALSO DID a terrific job of playing the title role in the television mini-series 'Dickens of London' in 1976. Followers of the 1980s American TV series 'Beauty and the Beast' will know him as the adopt-father of Ron Pearlman's character.

AMAZINGLY HE EARNED a place in the Guinness World Records in 2004 for the highest number of character voices by a single actor for the first book in the series of, 'A Game of Thrones' (in which he voiced a total of 224 characters). He also narrated many storybook adaptations for Disney Records, including 'The Little Mermaid', for which he was nominated for a Grammy award. In 2000 Dotrice won much acclaim for his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance in the revival of 'A Moon for the Misbegotten' and in 2008 was appointed to the Order of the British Empire for services to the world of theatre and drama.

BACK A FEW YEARS ago, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Roy at the BBC rehearsal rooms in Acton, London. He was relaxed, unpretentious, extremely friendly..and blessed with that same grace, manner and composure that Mr Lee and Mr Cushing also lived by... a gentleman, an outstanding talent and presence in his profession. Roy Dotrice OBE 1923 - 2017.

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 . .

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: HAMMER HORROR SCRIPTS AND GUY HENRY BIRTHDAY!

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY! #NEWS: To celebrate the long-awaited arrival of Hammer House of Horror in High Definition Network have announced they are giving away a facsimile of an original script with each Blu-ray set ordered only direct from them.These specially printed reproductions contain the original Hammer shooting scripts together with the additional pink amendment pages introduced during production, all courtesy of the Hammer archive at de Montfort University, ITV and Hammer Film Productions.

THE ARE JUST 500 copies available of each of Children of the Full Moon, The Silent Scream, The Mark of Satan and The Two Faces of Evil and these will be dispatched separately to your Blu-ray before the end of November. Your Blu-ray will be dispatched on or before the release date.

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY! What a great way to start our themed TUESDAY, marking the birthday, that just two years ago, was an actor busily working in a UK soap drama... and then last December was thrust into the spotlight, following huge anticipation for the arrival of the STAR WARS movie, #ROGUEONE. Henry wasn't just playing any character though, it was a role that would split the opinion of Cushing fans, movie goers and Star Wars Followers, the world over.... A Job Well done, Mr Henry 😉 A VERY Happy Birthday to you, have a great day!  

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 . . 

 

WHAT A BOUNDER! CHEAT AND CAD! MONSTER MONDAY : PAUL KEMPT

#MONSTERMONDAY! If I may borrow from the late, Terry-Thomas, What A Bounder! Paul Kempt, assistant to Cushing's Baron in Hammer films, #thecurseoffrankenstein. At the Baron's hour of need, just minutes away from the guillotine, he begs for his friends help.... Cushing pulls out the stops in his emotional pleading . It's a cracking scene, made all the more powerful by Paul's cold stand off behavior. Should he have helped the his friend, Frankenstein?? What a monster! You DECIDE . . .

AROUND THE 48 SECOND MARK, Cushing applies quite a clever technique... for just a second, he looks at the camera, deliberately. He breaks, THE FOURTH WALL, in order to connect with the viewer. It's pretty neat, and something I had not noticed before today, while looking at the clip. If you take a look at a similar scene at the end of his performance as Winston Smith in the BBC 1984 (1954), he does it there too, to brilliant effect. 

(THE FOURTH WALL is a theatrical term for the imaginary “wall” that exists between actors on stage and the audience. ... The same effect often occurs in movies, only the fourth wall in that instance is a camera lens.)

#petercushing #frankenstein #hammerfilms #wow! #didntknowthat #bounder

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 . .