GRINDHOUSE RELEASING: WIN A COPY OF PETER CUSHING'S 'CORRUPTION' BLU RAY DVD COMBO

The clock is ticking over at the UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page! There's a pair of Peter Cushing's 'CORRUPTION' blu rays up for grabs with just SIX HOURS  to enter the competition. Winners names to be announced tonight at MIDNIGHT. Fiendish question and worth a try!

UNPUBLISHED CUSHING INTERVIEW AND AMICUS RICE BURROUGH'S FEATURE CINEMA RETRO ISSUE 27

Heads Up! The very classy magazine, CINEMA RETRO current issue 27, features John Exshaw's UNPUBLISHED interview with Peter Cushing plus a very nice in-depth feature of the Amicus Edgar Rice Burroughs film adaptations The Land That Time Forgot, At the Earth's Core and The People That Time Forgot. If you've never purchased a copy of Cinema Retro, it's well worth every cent of your hard earned lolly. Every issue is packed with well researched features and illustrated with more often than not, with photographs of the 'not-often-seen' kind. They are shipping the issue now!http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php

CHRISTOPHER LEE: COME TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA: HAMMER FILMS GALLERY :

CAST:

Geoffrey Keen (William Hargood), Linda Hayden (Alice Hargood), Anthony Corlan (Paul Paxton), Christopher Lee (Count Dracula), John Carson (Jonathan Secker), Peter Sallis (Samuel Paxton), Ralph Bates (Lord Courtley), Isla Blair (Lucy Paxton), Martin Jarvis (Jeremy Secker), Gwen Watford (Martha Hargood), Roy Kinnear (Weller), Michael Ripper (Cobb)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Peter Sasdy, Screenplay – John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer – Aida Young, Photography – Arthur Grant, Music – James Bernard, Music Supervisor – Philip Martell, Special Effects – Brian Johncock, Makeup – Gerry Fletcher, Art Direction – Scott MacGregor. Production Company – Hammer.

SYNOPSIS:

Three Victorian men who lead upstanding and moralistic lives, sneak out to a brothel on the pretext of conducting charity work. Their pleasure is interrupted by the libertine Lord Courtley who offers to show them far greater pleasures. He takes them to an antique shop where he gets them to purchase Dracula’s cape, signet ring and a vial of his powdered blood. Courtley then conducts a black mass ceremony in an abandoned church. However, when he asks the men to drink the blood, they are disgusted. Drinking it himself, Courtley collapses. The men kick and beat him to death and then flee the scene. However, Courtley’s spilt blood revives Dracula who swears vengeance on the other men for killing his disciple. Dracula then seduces each of the men’s children, making them vampires and turning them against their fathers.

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THE MADELINE SMITH GALLERY : MAID IN ENGLAND PART ONE

Madeline Smith (born 2 August 1949) is an English actress. She was a model in the 1960s, and appeared in many television series, Hammer horror and comedy films from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

Smith was born in Hartfield, Sussex. Her father owned an antiques shop near Kew Gardens, while she had a temporary job working at Biba's boutique, a fashion house in Kensington High Street, London. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Smith was frequently the subject of cartoons by J Edward Oliver, which made constant admiring reference to her disproportionately large bust. Smith first worked for Hammer films in Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969) as an East End prostitute, a non-speaking role. In 1973 she played the Bond girl Miss Caruso in the post-titles sequence of Live and Let Die, the first James Bond film starring Roger Moore, and The Angel Sarah, in Hammer Films  'Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell  with Peter Cushing and Shane Briant in 1973.

Her television credits include Doctor at Large (1971), The Two Ronnies (appearance in the serial "Hampton Wick" 1971), Clochemerle (1972), His and Hers (1970) with Tim Brooke-Taylor, Casanova '73 (1973) with Leslie Phillips, and The Steam Video Company (1984). She was a member of the regular cast for the BBC2 series The End of the Pier Show (1974) and In The Looking Glass (1978), along with John Wells, John Fortune and Carl Davis. Smith made her last film, Eric Morecambe's final work, The Passionate Pilgrim, in 1984.

FROM WINSTON SMITH TO FRANKENSTEIN: PETER CUSHING A CELEBRATION @ 100

POSTING EVERYDAY AT OUR WEBSITE AND THE UK PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE

Peter Cushing had a career that spanned over six decades and over ninety films. He is fondly remembered as "the gentleman of horror" that brought to life both the creator of evil, Baron Frankenstein, and the destroyer of evil, Professor Van Helsing. He was also perhaps the greatest Sherlock Holmes ever to grace the screen. Peter Cushing was honoured with an OBE in 1989 for his services to the film... industry. Interestingly he was also a dedicated artist, and was taught to paint under the guidance of British artist Edward Seago. Some of his works have sold for in excess of £12,000.

 

Peter Cushing trained at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama and began his career in prewar Hollywood in The Man in the Iron Mask (US, d. James Whale, 1939) and made several films there before starting in Britain with Hamlet (1948), as a vividly exquisite Osric.

In the early 50s, he worked mainly in the theatre (he was in Laurence Olivier's 1951 St James Theatre season), had a TV triumph in Nineteen Eighty-Four (d. Rudolph Cartier, 1954), and was very moving as Deborah Kerr's cuckolded husband in The End of the Affair (d. Edward Dmytryk, 1954).

His film career took off when he played the eponymous over-reacher in Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein (d. Terence Fisher, 1957), establishing him at once as a cult hero of the horror film aficionados, with Christopher Lee as the monster. These two names, along with director Terence Fisher, now evoke the output of this most successful British studio. As well as playing the Baron half a dozen times, he also memorably incarnated Dr Van Helsing in several reprises of the Dracula myth, including the wonderfully stylish The Brides of Dracula (d. Fisher, 1960).

His chiselled features, refined, even ascetic speech and bearing, his intense belief in the scientific mumbo-jumbo he was given to say, are now so firmly embedded in the public mind that it is an effort of will to remember that he played many other roles, including Sherlock Holmes. It is arguable, though, that his most incisive performance is as the thin-lipped bank manager under fearful strain in the excellent B thriller, Cash on Demand (d. Quentin Lawrence, 1961).