SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW: PETER CUSHING? COMPETITION.

Over at our petercushing.org.uk website, there's a great opportunity to win one of three copies of Peveril Publishing's 'The Peter Cushing Scrapbook'  in our 'So You Think You Know: Peter Cushing ? Competition. Just check out the TEN images with the mutiple choice questions, email us your answer and you could be a WINNER!

THE PRIZES:

There are THREE copies of Wayne Kinsey's fabulous 'The Peter Cushing Scrapbook' up for grabs as prizes. It's a beautiful soft back book, with a  foreword by George Lucas and afterword by Janina Faye. What you get are 328 very nicely designed pages! A4 size landscape, with Full Colour throughout! What Wayne Kinsey has managed to show in his book, is what we all have always suspected.....Peter Cushing as perfectionist in his work and a talented artist in every sense of the word,  with a great sense of humour ....and always a boy at heart! 

The pages are lavishly illustrated with items from every part of Peter Cushing life and career, Annotated script pages, candid photographs, humorous cartoons drawn for his wife, Helen, personal correspondence and letters.Plus material from the estate of Roy Ward Baker, notations for photographs written by Peter Cushing, film props, an alternate script for Captain Clegg, and rare material from two unfilmed Hammer projects to have starred Cushing; Kali – Devil Bride of Dracula and The Savage Jackboot. 

The prizes featured in this competition will be awarded to THREE lucky winners, who answer ALL TEN questions correctly and are pulled out of the 'hat of good fortune' containing all correctly answered entries!

Many thanks to both Wayne Kinsey and Steve Kirkham for making this competition possible

WHO CAN ENTER?:

As with ALL our PCASUK competitions, this competition is open to everyone! Even if you are not a subscriber to this website....

- See more at: http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/so-you-think-you-know-peter-cushing.html#sthash.2sEI1YqW.dpuf

PRIZES:
There are THREE copies of Wayne Kinsey's fabulous 'The Peter Cushing Scrapbook' up for grabs as prizes. It's a beautiful soft back book, with a foreword by George Lucas and afterword by Janina Faye. What you get are 328 very nicely designed pages! A4 size landscape, with Full Colour throughout!



Wayne Kinsey has managed to show in his book, what we have all, always suspected.....Peter Cushing as perfectionist in his work and a talented artist in every sense of the word, with a great sense of humour ....and always a boy at heart! The pages are lavishly illustrated with items from every part of Peter Cushing life and career, Annotated script pages, candid photographs, humorous cartoons drawn for his wife, Helen, personal correspondence and letters. Plus material from the estate of Roy Ward Baker, notations for photographs written by Peter Cushing, film props, an alternate script for Captain Clegg, and rare material from two unfilmed Hammer projects to have starred Cushing; Kali – Devil Bride of Dracula and The Savage Jackboot. A terrific book and an excellent prize.


WHO CAN ENTER?:
As with ALL our PCASUK competitions, this competition is open to everyone! Even if you are not a follower or subscriber to our websites or pages

DEADLINE:
ALL entries must be in by the closing date of this competition: 12 o'clock MID DAY GMT SUNDAY 13TH JULY 2014. The winners names will announced here , at petercushing.orguk and the pcasuk facebook page ONE HOUR LATER.

ENTER AT OUR PCASUK WEBSITE: HERE

 
AND OUR PCASUK FACEBOOK FAN PAGE: HERE

THE PRIZES:

There are THREE copies of Wayne Kinsey's fabulous 'The Peter Cushing Scrapbook' up for grabs as prizes. It's a beautiful soft back book, with a  foreword by George Lucas and afterword by Janina Faye. What you get are 328 very nicely designed pages! A4 size landscape, with Full Colour throughout! What Wayne Kinsey has managed to show in his book, is what we all have always suspected.....Peter Cushing as perfectionist in his work and a talented artist in every sense of the word,  with a great sense of humour ....and always a boy at heart! 

The pages are lavishly illustrated with items from every part of Peter Cushing life and career, Annotated script pages, candid photographs, humorous cartoons drawn for his wife, Helen, personal correspondence and letters.Plus material from the estate of Roy Ward Baker, notations for photographs written by Peter Cushing, film props, an alternate script for Captain Clegg, and rare material from two unfilmed Hammer projects to have starred Cushing; Kali – Devil Bride of Dracula and The Savage Jackboot. 

The prizes featured in this competition will be awarded to THREE lucky winners, who answer ALL TEN questions correctly and are pulled out of the 'hat of good fortune' containing all correctly answered entries!

Many thanks to both Wayne Kinsey and Steve Kirkham for making this competition possible

WHO CAN ENTER?:

As with ALL our PCASUK competitions, this competition is open to everyone! Even if you are not a subscriber to this website....

- See more at: http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/so-you-think-you-know-peter-cushing.html#sthash.2sEI1YqW.dpuf

THE PRIZES:

There are THREE copies of Wayne Kinsey's fabulous 'The Peter Cushing Scrapbook' up for grabs as prizes. It's a beautiful soft back book, with a  foreword by George Lucas and afterword by Janina Faye. What you get are 328 very nicely designed pages! A4 size landscape, with Full Colour throughout! What Wayne Kinsey has managed to show in his book, is what we all have always suspected.....Peter Cushing as perfectionist in his work and a talented artist in every sense of the word,  with a great sense of humour ....and always a boy at heart! 

The pages are lavishly illustrated with items from every part of Peter Cushing life and career, Annotated script pages, candid photographs, humorous cartoons drawn for his wife, Helen, personal correspondence and letters.Plus material from the estate of Roy Ward Baker, notations for photographs written by Peter Cushing, film props, an alternate script for Captain Clegg, and rare material from two unfilmed Hammer projects to have starred Cushing; Kali – Devil Bride of Dracula and The Savage Jackboot. 

The prizes featured in this competition will be awarded to THREE lucky winners, who answer ALL TEN questions correctly and are pulled out of the 'hat of good fortune' containing all correctly answered entries!

Many thanks to both Wayne Kinsey and Steve Kirkham for making this competition possible

WHO CAN ENTER?:

As with ALL our PCASUK competitions, this competition is open to everyone! Even if you are not a subscriber to this website....

- See more at: http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/so-you-think-you-know-peter-cushing.html#sthash.2sEI1YqW.dpuf

VINTAGE PETER CUSHING AUTOGRAPHED PHOTOGRAPH UP FOR GRABS AT PCASUK

Here's your chance to win a vintage autographed photograph of Peter Cushing (circa 1965) over at our UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page (HERE )

Please read the competition details carefully! You can ONLY send your answers to us by using the 'message button' at the top of the PCASUK fan page. Any answers or entry posted onto the main wall or news feed will be deleted and not counted as an entry. The lucky winners name will be posted via a video clip here on the PCASUK page on SUNDAY 4th AUGUST 2013. Good Luck Everyone. Have Fun!

- See more at: http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.kQZTMsb9.dpuf

 

Here's your chance to win a vintage autographed photograph of Peter Cushing (circa 1965) over at our UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page (HERE )

Please read the competition details carefully! You can ONLY send your answers to us by using the 'message button' at the top of the PCASUK fan page. Any answers or entry posted onto the main wall or news feed will be deleted and not counted as an entry. The lucky winners name will be posted via a video clip here on the PCASUK page on SUNDAY 4th AUGUST 2013. Good Luck Everyone. Have Fun!

Here's your chance to win a vintage autographed photograph of Peter Cushing (circa 1965) over at our UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page (HERE )

Please read the competition details carefully! You can ONLY send your answers to us by using the 'message button' at the top of the PCASUK fan page. Any answers or entry posted onto the main wall or news feed will be deleted and not counted as an entry. The lucky winners name will be posted via a video clip here on the PCASUK page on SUNDAY 4th AUGUST 2013. Good Luck Everyone. Have Fun!

- See more at: http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.kQZTMsb9.dpuf

2013 CENTENARY YEAR FOR PETER CUSHING: THE GENTLEMAN OF FANTASY CINEMA

Although this site gets it's fair share of Peter Cushing material the UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page and Website petercushing.org.uk, is really where the action is! Here's the society's banner for January, featuring a vintage photograph from a TV MIRROR AND DISC NEWS front cover, July 13th 1957, with Peter posing with a few model solders from his vast collection. If you have a facebook account, why not take a look, click like and join in the next tweleve months of celebration?

HAMMER FILM PRODUCTIONS: OUT ON BLU RAY OCT 22ND : RASPUTIN: THE MAD MONK.FULL REVIEW AND GALLERY

CAST:
Christopher Lee: Grigori Rasputin, Richard Pasco: Dr Boris Zargo, Barbara Shelley: Sonia Vasilivitch, Francis Matthews: Ivan Keznikov, Suzan Farmer: Vanessa Keznikov, Dinsdale Landen: Peter Vasilivitch, Renee Asherson: Tsarina Alexandra, Derek Francis: Innkeeper, John Bailey: Dr Zieglov, Michael Cadman: Michael, Fiona Hartford: Tania

PRODUCTION: 

Director: Don Sharp, Screenplay: John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer: Anthony Nelson Keys, Photography: Michael Reed, Music: Don Banks, Music Supervisor: Philip Martell, Makeup:  Roy Ashton, Production Design:  Bernard Robinson. Production Company:  Hammer Films/Seven Arts.

PLOT: The wild and filthy monk Grigori Rasputin stumbles into an inn. Upon learning that the innkeeper’s wife is ill with a fever that no doctors can cure, Rasputin heals her with his hands. But immediately after doing so Rasputin drinks wildly, tries to force his way with the innkeeper’s daughter, severs her fiance’s hand after he tries to intervene and is forced to flee by an angry mob. When the villagers approach his bishop over this incident, Rasputin is ordered to leave the monastery. He heads to St Petersburg where he falls in with a disbarred doctor. In an inn Rasputin meets Sonia, a handmaid to the Tsarina. After having his way with Sonia, Rasputin hypnotizes her into contriving an accident for the young prince heir Alexei and then recommending him to the Tsarina. He is able to heal Alexei and is acclaimed as a result. Rasputin becomes a confidant of the Tsarina and uses this influence to gain advantage and manipulate the court. But when he callously discards Sonia and hypnotizes her to kill herself, her brother and others plot to kill Rasputin and bring down his diabolic influence over the crown.

In the late 1950s, Hammer Films exploded onto the world stage and created a revolution in horror with their bold, richly colourful revampings of the horror perennials with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula / Horror of Dracula (1958). This inaugurated a major British horror industry with Hammer at the forefront. In the next few years, Hammer remade most of the other Universal horror classics and covered fairly much all the major themes in horror. By the mid-1960s Hammer were starting to sequelize their Frankenstein and Dracula films as well as looking around for new horror themes.

While the Hammer name is incontrovertibly intertwined with horror, less well known is their production of historical films. They made quite a number of these, including swashbucklers and historical adventure films like Dick Turpin – Highwayman (1956), Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), The Crimson Blade (1963), The Brigand of Kandahar (1965), A Challenge for Robin Hood (1967) and The Viking Queen (1967); as well as various WWII films – The Steel Bayonet (1957), The Camp on Blood Island (1958), Yesterday’s Enemy (1959) and The Secret of Blood Island (1964). They seemed particularly fond of historical films that could be pushed towards horror or at least have an emphasis on the lurid and sadistic, as with the likes of The Stranglers of Bombay (1959) and pirate films like The Terror of the Tongs (1961), Night Creatures (1962), The Pirates of Blood River (1962) and The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964). Rasputin the Mad Monk sits somewhere here, although quite clearly one that has been mounted as far more of a horror film than it ever has as an historical film.

Rasputin The Mad Monk focuses on the true life character of Grigori Rasputin. Rasputin is a figure that holds an undeniable fascination in history, as much for the myth that surrounds him – his reputed healing powers, the intensity of his wild man presence (it was claimed that he never bathed), his reputation as an orgiast, his sinister influence over the Russian crown, his almost supernatural-seeming defiance of death – than any historical detail, which often disputes many of these claims. Rasputin’s origin and birthplace is uncertain. He gained a reputation as a holy man and healer of reputedly mystical powers. His fame came in 1905 when Alexandra, the wife of Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, came to seek help with their son Alexei who suffered from haemophilia (the inability of blood to clot and cuts to naturally close over and heal). It is unknown how but Rasputin managed to heal Alexei. Both Nicholas and Alexandra soon readily sought Rasputin’s advice, even taking notice of the prophetic visions he made claim to. This gave Rasputin much influence over the court and he began to demand the firing and appointing of officials. Rasputin was also reputed to be engage in wild orgies and to bed numerous wives of the aristocracy, although many of these claims may have been made up by rivals who sought to blacken his reputation. This came to a head in 1916 when a group of aristocrats invited Rasputin over and attempted to kill him. Exactly what happened is debated but by their later published account several attempts were made to kill Rasputin – they feeding him poisoned cakes and wines, then shooting him and attempting to club him to death, all of which kept having no effect until he was finally dumped into the nearby river.

Rasputin The Mad Monk was directed by Don Sharp, who had made various Hammer films including Kiss of the Vampire (1962), The Devil-Ship Pirates and their last theatrical film The Thirty-Nine Steps (1979). At the time that he made Rasputin the Mad Monk, Don Sharp had then just come from the success of the lush period version of The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), starring Christopher Lee for Anglo-Amalgamated. Sharp is one of the less celebrated directors in Anglo-horror. Mostly his career was marked by dreary hackwork like The Curse of the Fly (1965), Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon (1967) and Secrets of the Phantom Caverns/What Waits Below (1984), although he did make a number of other minor ventures into Anglo-horror with the likes of Witchcraft (1964), the quite demented Psychomania (1972) and Dark Places (1972). When he was given a decent opportunity, as in Kiss of the Vampire and particularly here and The Face of Fu Manchu, which remain his two best films, Sharp showed that he could really do something. Indeed in these outings Sharp brought a touch that made him perhaps the one other director working in this era of English horror to closest approximate the lush floridness that Terence Fisher imprinted on the genre.

Sharp creates a fabulous and quite unforgettable opening to the film:– the doctor is seen departing from tending the innkeeper’s wife, shaking his head, whereupon Christopher Lee barges in through the inn door, looking like a wild man, and then goes up and touches his hands to the wife’s face and heals here, mostly it seems doing so with the piercing intensity of his eyes. And then he subsequently returns downstairs, getting drunk and dancing, taking the innkeeper’s daughter off to the barn to have his way with her, her fiance breaking in and tussling with Lee, where Lee manages to sever the fiance’s hand with a scythe and then immediately returns to force his way with the innkeeper’s daughter, before the angered locals return in a mob, forcing Lee to flee through the barn roof and away on horseback, where we then see him scale a wall to return to a monastery. The abrupt juxtapositions that these scenes require – between healer and drunken lecher, between wounding a man and returning to force his way onto the man’s fiancee, between the carnality we have just seen and the revelation that the character lives in a monastery – are really quite breathtaking. In the subsequent scene, Christopher Lee is brought before his bishop by the accusing villagers and offers up a superbly arrogant response: “When I go to forgiveness I don’t offer God petty sins, I offer sins worth forgiving.” The scenes in the Cafe Tsigani also have a superb dramatic power – the drinking competition between Rasputin and Richard Pasco’s discredited doctor; Christopher Lee turning on Barbara Shelley after she laughs at his dancing, demanding with piercing intensity: “You will apologize for laughing at me ... You will come to me and apologize.” And a couple of scenes later we see Lee on a balcony looking out over the city, seemingly commanding with his eyes that Barbara Shelley hear his call and return to him.

As one can see this is the Rasputin story rather effectively mounted as a horror film. Indeed Hammer’s Rasputin is really another face on the character of the carnal demoniac figure that Christopher Lee incarnated in their Dracula films. Rasputin, like Hammer’s Dracula, is a diabolic force personified, with powers of supernaturally magnetic intensity and representative of a brutish animalism that bursts forth to disrupt polite society. (One of the most interesting dichotomies, one that remains unexplored in the rest of the film, is the contrast between Rasputin as a holy man with divine healing powers yet a pure devil figure in his deeds). There are probably few actors better suited to playing the role of Rasputin than Christopher Lee, who was one of the undisputed cornerstones of Hammer’s success. Lee, aside from physically looking the part, has a commanding regal power and a piercing intensity that is not unlike what the historical Rasputin is credited with having.

The latter half of the film is less interesting than Sharp’s superb opening. The machinations that go on among the Russian aristocracy are dreadfully standard British upper-class costume drama. Certainly Sharp makes the murder of Rasputin into a dramatic climax, passing through poisoned chocolates and wine, a syringe stabbed in the neck and Rasputin then thrown out of the window. The scene is well drawn out, although one feels that the film is somewhat pinned in by the adherence to the historical facts – watching Christopher Lee engorge himself on chocolates and wine is not a very dramatically intense climax. (Although even here the film does depart somewhat from historical fact).

The film is often called historically inaccurate. In fact though this is a case that has been overstated and the film adheres to the Rasputin story much more so than many might give it credit for. Aside from the aforementioned death scene, there are no outstanding scenes where one can see the film, at least in terms of what it does depict, blatantly fictionalizes the Rasputin story. Certainly the film regards Rasputin’s powers as actual, but in that nobody really has any clear idea of how it was that Rasputin managed to heal Prince Alexei and many did believe that he have such powers, this can be an acceptable dramatic licence. The biggest departure from history is the reasons for the murder of Rasputin. The film contrives a fiction that this was revenge by the brother of a woman that Rasputin hypnotized and made kill herself after he had finished with her, whereas in fact Rasputin’s assassins were a group of aristocrats who wanted to remove him from influence over the crown.

Rasputin The Mad Monk’s main problem however is not so much historical inaccuracy as it is historical omission. There’s no mention of Alexei’s haemophiliac condition, instead the film is happy to give the impression that Alexei is a perfectly healthy child that Rasputin sets up with an accident in order to get close to the royal circles. And perhaps as a result of a desire not to cross over into any issues concerning Communism, there is no mention whatsoever made of the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution that was occurring around the time, during which Tsar Nicholas was unseated and he and his family murdered. The Tsarina is also made into a fairly minor character – she only gets about two scenes – and we see nothing of Tsar Nicholas II at all.

The film has been beautifully shot on rich sets (and given a superb restoration on the dvd release). The sets one might note are also the ones that Hammer used around the same time in Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1965). In particular, the mansion exterior with its iced-over lake where Alexei falls and Rasputin meets his end is the same one where Christopher Lee’s Dracula was finally despatched in Prince of Darkness.

Other screen incarnations of the character of Rasputin include:– the silent German Rasputin The Black Monk (1917), the silent German Rasputin (1928), the Hollywood version Rasputin and the Empress (1932) starring John Barrymore, the German Rasputin, Demon with Women (1932), the French Rasputin (1938), the French Rasputin (1954), the French The Nights of Rasputin (1960) starring Edmund Purdom, the French I Killed Rasputin (1967) wherein one of Rasputin’s assassins Prince Felix Yusupov played himself, the Russian-made Agony: The Life and Death of Rasputin (1981) and Rasputin (tv movie, 1996) starring Alan Rickman. Rasputin has also appeared as a supporting character in the historical film Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) where he was played by Tom Baker, as a black sorcerer in the animated Anastasia (1997) and as the chief villain in Hellboy (2004). There was also the Australian Harlequin (1980), which updated the story of Rasputin to the modern day and had Rasputin played by an appealingly ambiguous Robert Powell. Other oddities include the Boney M disco song Rasputin (1978) and one of the mutants in Marvel’s X-Men series who is named Peter Rasputin aka Colossus.

Review: Richard Scheib
Richard's Site Here
Images: Marcus Brooks

PETER CUSHING: UPDATED THROUGH OUT THE DAY

THE UK PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY ESTABLISHED IN 1956 AND STILL GOING STRONG ON FACEBOOK AND AT IT'S WEBSITE PETERCUSING.ORG. UPDATED THROUGH OUT THE DAY WITH RARE PHOTOGRAPHS, MEMORABILIA AND FEATURES. IF YOU HAVE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT PLEASE GO AND SAY HELLO!

THE UK PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY: PETERCUSHINGAPPRECIATIONSOCIETY.COM AND PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE

You'll find quite a few features, photographs and posts on PETER CUSHING at theblackboxclub.com but if it's full features, whole galleries of lobby stills and publicity material you're after...then our companion sites at PETERCUSHINGAPPRECIATIONSOCIETY.COM and the PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE will keep you happy for many a long hour. 

The PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY is the oldest established PETER CUSHING society founded back in 1956. Many items have been colleted in all those years and both sites benefit from a vast collection to draw on. Do come and join us. You'll be most welcome! Please click here for the website: PETERCUSHING.ORG.UK   and here for the FACEBOOK FAN PAGE:  PETER CUSHING FACEBOOKFAN PAGE

YVONNE ROMAIN : OLIVER REED: HAMMER FILMS: THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF 1961 LOBBY STILLS AND REVIEW!

CAST:

Oliver Reed (Leon), Clifford Evans (Don Alfredo Carrido), Catherine Feller (Christina), Richard Wordsworth (Beggar), Yvonne Romain (Jailer’s daughter), Antony Dawson (Marquis Siniestro), Hira Talfrey (Teresa), Warren Mitchell (Pepe Valiente), Josephine Llewellyn (The Marquesa), Justin Walters (Young Leon)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Terence Fisher, Screenplay – John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Based on the Novel The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore, Producer – Anthony Hinds, Photography – Arthur Grant, Music – Benjamin Frankel, Special Effects – Les Bowie, Makeup – Roy Ashton, Production Design – Bernard Robinson. Production Company – Hammer/Hotspur.

SYNOPSIS:

A beggar goes to the wedding banquet of the Marquis Siniestro. The cruel Marquis treats the beggar as an object of amusement and then has him thrown in a dungeon. Forgotten for many years, the beggar is treated with kindness by the jailer’s daughter. However, the beggar is overcome by loneliness and rapes the daughter. She runs away and is taken in by the kindly Don Alfredo Carrido where she gives birth to a son on Christmas Day and dies shortly afterwards. The Don adopts the child, calling him Leon. As he grows up, Leon demonstrates a strange liking for the blood of animals. When a shepherd shoots an attacking wolf, Leon is later found with bullets in his body. Growing into manhood, Leon takes a job with wealthy landowner Don Fernando and soon becomes attracted to Don Fernando’s daughter Christina. But when his instincts are aroused by a whore, Leon turns into a werewolf. Terrified, he tries to persuade Christina to marry him in the hope that her pure love might overcome his animal nature.

COMMENTARY:

England’s Hammer Films found considerable recognition with the twin successes of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958), both remakes of Universal genre classics of the 1930s. This success spurred them onto conduct remakes of other classics including The Mummy (1959), The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962). But when Hammer turned their attention to updating the werewolf legend they ran into a problem – the wolf man character that became a staple among Universal’s Famous Monsters lineup in the 1940s following The Wolf Man (1941) was one of the few characters that Universal had created specifically for the screen, rather than adapting from a novel as they had with most of the other classics. So instead of purchasing the rights to remake the screenplay of The Wolf Man, Hammer turned to a novel The Werewolf of Paris (1934) by Guy Endore. [Guy Endore himself had some fame during the 1930s as a screenwriter with films like Mad Love (1935), Mark of the Vampire (1935) and The Devil-Doll (1936)].

As with Hammer’s reworking of the abovementioned classics, The Curse of the Werewolf is a thoughtful and substantial reworking of the werewolf myth. In his screenplay (which varies substantially from the Guy Endore novel), Hammer producer Anthony Hinds roots werewolf mythology firmly in Spanish Catholicism. Indeed, The Curse of the Werewolf is perhaps the only werewolf story to treat lycanthropy as something that is not passed by a bite, but as a divinely cursed state. In order to set this up, Anthony Hinds creates a lengthy preamble to Leon’s story – it is over 50 minutes before we get to see Oliver Reed and over an hour before Reed becomes the werewolf. It comes filled with crashingly heavy symbolism at times – the child is born on Christmas Day, the font boils over and thunderclouds amass as he is baptized. But this is by far the more interesting half than the second, which travels in more traditional areas. Nevertheless, the second half is a reasonable werewolf story with a young, then unknown Oliver Reed standing up well in the part and Roy Ashton conducting a fine makeup job.

Most Hammer films (particularly those made by Terence Fisher) are rooted in a British upper-class assumptions. They create a divide between civilized reason and brutal animal passions. The wolf here represents brutish passions, which the film sees can be kept in restraint by a good society, even the love of a pure-hearted girl. Notedly, Leon’s animal instincts are stirred up when he strays outside the confines of ‘decent’ society and goes to visit a ‘bad’ girl – a whore. As with Dracula, we see that civilized reason and religion as conquering the dangerous forces of unrestraint.

Terence Fisher’s other genre films are:– the sf films The Four-Sided Triangle (1953) and Spaceways (1953), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), The Mummy (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Gorgon (1964), Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), The Devil Rides Out/The Devil’s Bride (1968), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973), all for Hammer. Outside of Hammer, Fisher has made the Old Dark House comedy The Horror of It All (1964) and the alien invasion films The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), Island of Terror (1966) and Night of the Big Heat (1967).