Tag Archives: peter cushing

Cushing Curiosities is the Pick of the Week

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Like probably most people my age from America I first discovered Peter Cushing playing Grand Moff Tarkin in the original Star Wars film. But he was so much more than that.

I’ve come to love him as the star of numerous Hammer Horror films, but he was more than that too.

Severin Films is releasing this week a collection of six rather obscure and slightly different films from the great actor and I am all for it. I love that more and more Blu-ray companies are putting together this type of set filled with films one might not usually buy or even know about. I’m happy to make it my pick of the week.

It is a very big week this week as we are ever so close to Christmas. So buckle up as we move our way through it all.

Bollywood Horror Collection: I know absolutely nothing about Bollywood movies. It is a huge gap in my cinematic knowledge. There are just so many of them that it is hard to know where to start. This package from Mondo Macabre, which features 6 movies from the Ramsey Brothers might be the place to start.

Blue Rita: Jesus Franco directs this movie about a nightclub owner who is actually a spy and who delights in torturing men for information.

Jailhouse Wardress: Another Jesus Franco flick. This one deals with Nazis who have escaped capture and are now living in South America. Being a Franco joint it also entails a laboratory that creates beautiful women for the Nazi’s pleasure.

Goodbye Dragon Inn: This Taiwanese film is an ode to going to the movies, to the simple pleasures of sitting in a movie theater watching cinema on the big screen. It is a beautiful, strangely hilarious film. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

Passages: Ben Whishaw and Adèle Exarchopoulos star in this drama about two gay men who have been together for fifteen years and what happens when one of them has an affair with a woman.

The Quatermass Xperiment: Hammer Studios existed for nearly two decades before making this film. For those years they mostly made super cheap, forgettable little films. But with this, they were put on the map. Its popularity allowed them to make more science fiction and horror films and within a few years they were a powerhouse. I’ll have my full review up at Cinema Sentries in a day or two.

House of the Long Shadows: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Vincent Price star in this film about a writer who goes to a remote Welch cottage on a bet – can he write an entire novel in 24 hours? But when he arrives he finds it full of quirky oddballs.

The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse: The Red Balloon is a delightful little film about a boy chasing a red balloon through the city streets. It had been decades since I watched it and yet it remains a pleasant memory in my mind. The Criterion Collection presents it and four other films from the same director in this set.

Anna Christie: Greta Garbo stars as a prostitute who returns home to her father and tries to make a new life. Garbo is terrific in this.

Madame Bovary: Vincent Minnelli directs Jennifer Jones, James Mason, and Van Heflin in this adaptation of the Flaubert classic novel.

Long Arm of the Law Parts 1 & II: 88 Films present this double feature of these Hong Kong action flicks. I don’t know anything about them, but I love me some HK action.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio: I gotta admit I’m not a huge fan of del Toro’s films and I can’t think of a reason we need another adaptation of Pinocchio, and yet this looks pretty cool. And since it is the Criterion Collection putting it out it is definitely worth a mention.

Weird: The Al Yankovich Story: Danielle Radcliffe stars as the brilliant song parody writer that nearly every juvenile discovers and loves at some point. Apparently, the film is entirely fictitious which is exactly what you want from an Al Yankovich biopic.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: How are these things still popular. They were huge when I was a kid some twenty years ago.

The Mandalorian: The Complete First Season: I’ve not loved this Star Wars series, but I do appreciate that it is mostly telling a story outside of the Skywalker Saga (yes I know it isn’t completely outside, but it is mostly its own thing) and I’m always happy to see streaming shows get a physical release.

The Creator: Science fiction film about the war between humans and AI. The reviews have not been great, but I’ll eventually give it a try.

Five Nights at Freddy’s: My daughter loved this movie about a night at a Chuck-E-Cheese-style pizza place where the animatronics turn evil.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Island of Terror (1966)

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On a remote island off the coast of Ireland, a man is found dead with his bones missing. He’s all squishy flesh. The film’s budget doesn’t allow us to see much of that but what we get – a rubbery, flabby face – is pretty great. Constable John (Sam Kydd) calls the island’s physician Dr. Reginald Landers (Eddie Byrne) but his skills are limited and after an autopsy doesn’t pull up much in terms of answers he scurries to London to discuss the matter with imminent pathologist Dr. Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing), who in turn calls on bone specialist Dr. David West (Edward Judd). He’s busy with his lady friend Toni Merrill (Carole Gray) who as luck would have it happens to have access to a helicopter that can take them to the island straight away (although it must return to London immediately after thus stranding them on the island for a few days.

After learning that a cancer specialist had set up shop on the island they go to visit him hoping to gain his help as well, but find him dead and boneless like the other guy. His lab assistants are all squishy as well. But the dude had a really nice lab which allows our heroes to do some nice science-y stuff. They do some autopsies and look at things under a microscope and say a lot of words that don’t make much sense even if you have a medical degree.

Eventually, they find the monsters. They look like slimy Jell-O molds with tentacles. They are impossible to kill and use the tentacle to inject their victims with bone-dissolving liquid. Our guys chop them with an axe, shoot them with rifles, torch them with Molotov cocktails, and even throw dynamite at them, but like I say those creatures are indestructible.

To keep the rest of the islanders safe they lock them all into one room which only causes mass panic when the lights go out. Meanwhile, these brilliant scientists finally decide that they should inject some cows with some radioactive fluid (I told you that the cancer guy had a well-stocked lab) figuring that the monster will eat the cows and then die of radioactive poisoning.

All of this is taken absolutely seriously by our actors and filmmakers. I love these old British horror films from the 1960s. They are so full of absolute silliness with ridiculous plots and poorly built monsters, but the actors perform like they are doing Shakespeare (and no doubt many of them are trained Shakespearean actors). It is wonderful. Just wonderful.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Brides of Dracula (1960)

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Some of the best Hammer Horror films are the ones where they essentially remake the classic Universal Horror movies. Remake isn’t really the right word for the Hammer versions of the classic Universal Monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolfman) often differ greatly from their Universal origins. The Hammer films were much more violent and sexual than the original films, and just as stylish. They all appear a bit tame by today’s standards, but realizing that many of them were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s it is fairly astounding that they got away with so much.

The Brides of Dracula is the first sequel to Horror of Dracula (1958) (they made several more). Christopher Lee was great in that one as Dracula, but he died at the end so they couldn’t put him in this sequel (he is very much missed here and so he shows up again, despite being dead, in the next movie). Peter Cushing does return as Dr. Van Helsing.

A French school teacher, Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) takes a position at an all-girls school in Transylvania. She takes the usual rickety coach through the usual creepy woods in the usual middle of the night. When they stop off at a little village for a bite to eat, the coach driver gets spooked and abandons her.

The innkeepers fret about, warning Marianne that she can’t possibly stay the night in their village alone. Just about that time in walks Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt). She’s old and creepy but kindly offers to put Marianne up for the night in her castle. Despite the innkeeper’s warnings, she agrees.

There she finds a strange servant and the Baroness’s son Baron Meinster (David Peel) locked in his room and chained to the wall. The Baroness warns that he is ill and maybe a bit crazy, but he’s nice to Marianne, and handsome so she unlocks him.

Of course, he’s a vampire. Of course, he pretty quickly starts turning the pretty ladies of the village into his brides and has his eyes on Marianne.

This is where Van Helsing comes in. He does his usual thing which eventually leads to a showdown with the vampire. I won’t spoil it but it has one of the best vampire kills in all of vampire moviedom.

The thing is I generally find Hammer Horror films to be slightly tedious in terms of plot and pacing. The Brides of Dracula is no different. The plot just kind of plods along. It takes ages for a vampire to show up and ages still for Van Helsing to come along. Even then the action is often broken up by too much talking.

But the real thing is that I don’t ever really mind. I love Hammer Horror movies. They always build these incredible sets and costumes. They light it spectacularly with all of these lovely reds, blues, and greens. Their films always look amazing. The men are always dressed in these fabulous suits and the women are draped in the most marvelous flouncy gowns.

I love Peter Cushing (he is so much more than Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. He’s surprisingly athletic in this film, running and jumping all over the place. I love Christopher Lee, too and he is greatly missed in this movie (try as he might but David Peel is the palest of imitations).

So, yeah, plotwise The Brides of Dracula isn’t great, but it is so much fun to look at and watch I don’t really mind.