Monday, 19 December 2011
Sunday, 18 December 2011
Saturday, 17 December 2011
Friday, 16 December 2011
Thursday, 15 December 2011
CHRISTOPHER LEE AND PETER CUSHING: THE MUMMY VINTAGE MAGAZINE FEATURE
VINTAGE FEATURE FROM HAMMER FILMS 1959 THE MUMMY. A BIT OF PROMO FOR PETERCUSHINGBLOG.BLOGSPOT.COM POSTING FEATURES AND CONTENTS WILL START SOON BUT THE BLOG IS OPEN FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS PLEASE JOIN US!
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
PETER CUSHING AND CHRISTOPHER LEE DRACULA: NEW PETER CUSHING BLOG: WITH MORE HI RES VINTAGE IMAGES LIKE THIS!
PRICE LEE AND CUSHING: THE GANGS ALL HERE! SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN / THE OBLONG BOX DVD REVIEW
MGM's Midnite Movies series is now delivering twice the thrills with double feature DVDs, and most of these movies appear to be strategically and intelligently paired. Take for instance this pairing of THE OBLONG BOX and SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN. Both star Vincent Price and were the first two AIP films directed by Gordon Hessler with screenwriting credits going to Christopher Wicking.
Whether you like their work or not, Hessler and Wicking brought a fresh tone to AIP's gothic horrors, an attitude that was expressed with throat cutting and acid slinging. Changing with the times, the gore was much more generous than in the previous Roger Corman/Poe series, which Hessler's works were often compared to. The pictures were downright serious and they always ended in doom, even the more heroic characters rarely escaped with their lives.
The first film on this disc, THE OBLONG BOX, was originally to be directed by Michael Reeves who was very uninterested in the project and committed suicide shortly thereafter. Because of this situation, critics and fans accused Hessler as unable to follow in Reeves' footsteps, as if he was meant to do so (Reeves' last film was the masterful CONQUEROR WORM (1968), one of the greatest horror films of all times). This negative sentiment stuck with OBLONG, tagging it a disappointment by those who saw it as a follow-up to CONQUEROR. People have a hard time appreciating OBLONG for what it is--a minor but stylish and interesting gothic foray that will be most likely be better appreciated on DVD.
Based on a short Poe story (Wicking re-wrote the original screenplay by Lawrence Huntington), OBLONG eerily delivers a tale of revenge and betrayal as an Englishman is cursed during an African voodoo ceremony for a crime that revealed at the conclusion. Now living in England, Sir Edward Markham (Alister Williamson) is diseased, mad and kept locked up by his brother Julian (Price). His plans to fake his death are foiled in the wake of nearly being buried alive, causing him to murder the men who tricked him, and just about anybody else that gets in his way. There's great support from the likes of Peter Arne, Rupert Davies, and Harry Baird as an unpredictable voodoo witch doctor, as well as the females in the cast: Sally Geeson as the flirty housekeeper, Uta Levka as a malicious prostitute and Hilary Dwyer as Price's innocent bride.
OBLONG confirmed that Hessler could handle period horror. He respectively carried on the Poe series that Corman started a decade earlier, effectively updating the graphic intensity while maintaining a mood that was closer to Hammer than AIP. The impressive sets at Shepperton Studios, along with the beautiful English countryside, enhanced the production. Ironically, his next film, the only non-period horror he would direct for AIP, is arguably his finest work due to an imbalance of reason.
Re-vamping Peter Saxon's novel "The Disoriented Man," Wicking again wrote the outrageous screenplay for SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN. Here, Hessler masterfully gives us a fascinating and chaotic blend of science fiction and horror circling around a plot about a mad scientist creating synthetic beings. The mad scientist is played of course by Vincent Price.
This expected casting displays a form of parody. In an out of control fantasy world, we would most likely visualize Price as the mad perpetrator of these doings. With his limited screen time, Price is able to underplay it by showing the character to be intense, yet reserved. This is best depicted in the scene where the police arrive at his home with the news that his cleaning girl has been raped and mutilated. The sorrowful look on his face is brought upon from him actually knowing who did it: Keith, one of his creations gone berserk. His disappointment is invoked by the fact that his experiment failed-- he has no remorse for the dead girl.
The film manages to explode with confusion by shifting to seemingly unrelated events--a collapsed jogger who is periodically dismembered, a humanoid who viciously takes over a Nazi-like organization, the stuffy police who endlessly chase the vampire-like humanoid Keith, and Price, who as Dr. Browning, is questioned from time to time. These scenes make better sense when the central characters interact with one another during the latter part of the film. The stirring climax entails a showdown in Dr. Browning's operating room, where various beings--both human and humanoid--either escape or are pushed into an acid vat.
Along with Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are also present. Lee's role is small, and Cushing's scene is nothing more than a cigarette break. Lee is a British intelligence head, and Cushing is ironically cast as the leader of the pseudo Nazis who commands Konratz (Marshall Jones) to lessen his torturous habits, only to be killed by him. Jones showed up in Hessler's next two films, but he was best put to use here. As Konratz, he pretty much holds things together as the crazed synthetic being who wipes out anyone who interferes with his politically tyrannical intentions. Michael Gothard is also well cast (looking somewhat like the Mick Jagger of Altamont ) as the humanoid "vampire killer" Keith, stalking and mutilating women in fashionable mod England. Best of all is Alfred Marks as Superintendent Bellaver in a scene-stealing performance full of choice dialog.
Both THE OBLONG BOX and SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN are presented on DVD in their original 1.85:1 aspect ratios with Anamorphic enhancement, and the letterboxing really compliments John Coquillon's cinematography. The transfer on THE OBLONG BOX is simply stunning, and the film looks more beautiful than ever before. Colors are rich and vibrant, and the source material is in immaculate condition. The Dolby Digital Mono soundtrack presents an extremely clear mix, with dialog sounding especially crisp. This version of the film is the longer cut, with brief nudity and dialog not seen in the theatrical release and previous video releases.
While THE OBLONG BOX never faired well on VHS and laserdisc in the past, SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN has always looked pretty decent on home video. While its DVD transfer is not as impressive as OBLONG, it still looks excellent. While some nighttime scenes are a bit dark, on the whole, it's much brighter, more colorful and better detailed than previous video incarnations. Despite the back cover stating "musically edited version," the impressive Dolby Digital Mono soundtrack does indeed contain David Whitaker's jazzy score, as well as two pop numbers by British rockers The Amen Corner as originally intended. Both titles include English, French and Spanish subtitles.
REVIEW: GEORGE REIS. YOU CAN READ MORE OF GEORGE'S REVIEWS AT HIS EXCELLENT BLOG: CLICK HERE!
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
PETER CUSHING: PETERCUSHINGBLOG.BLOGSPOT.COM: THE UK PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY GET IT'S OWN BLOG! THIS WEEK!
JUST OPENED, THE UK PETER CUSHING APPRECIATION SOCIETY CURRENTLY POSTS AT FACEBOOK GROUPS AND AT THEBLACKBOXCLUB.BLOGSPOT.COM. NOW, THIS WEEK IT OPENS IT'S OWN BLOG. SO, IF YOU'RE FAN, PLEASE DROP BY AND MAYBE SHOW YOUR SUPPORT BY SUBSCRIBING. SEE YOU THERE!
MARCUS BROOKS
Monday, 12 December 2011
PETER CUSHING AND CHRISTOPHER LEE: THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD
The British company Amicus found a niche with omnibus horror films that started in the mid 60s with DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS and TORTURE GARDEN. The later was comprised of stories by author Robert Bloch (Psycho), who also supplied the literary source and screenplay for 1970’s THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. By this time, the series had found the look and feel that made them so appealing, and it became a notable hit in the U.S. and it helped spawn the rediscovered trend of “House” movies In the 70s. Amicus was now churning anthologies out one after the other for a good five years.
“The House” that the exploitive title refers to is a creeky old gothic residence that links four stories together--all renters face a gloomy fate. All of the previous inhabitants have met death while residing there, as the real estate agent, Stoker (John Bryans), will tell you. While investigating the disappearance of an actor, a police inspector (John Bennett) is told of the aforementioned grisly happenings. First, in "Method For Murder," a horror novelist (Denholm Elliot) believes one of his creations, a madman called Dominick (Tom Adams), is alive and well and stalking the house. Nobody else sees Dominick, who constantly lurks from the shadows of the house, and the writer's young wife (Joanna Dunham) is in harm's way as she is nearly strangled to death. But who is Dominick, and is he fact or fiction
In "Waxworks" Peter Cushing plays a lonely retired bachelor who visits a wax museum and discovers a figure of Salome that resembles an old flame. A friend (Joss Ackland) comes to visit and since he shared romantic interest in the same woman, he too is lured to the exhibit. The figure is more than it’s cracked up to be, and so is its the museum's strange owner (Wolfe Morris). In "Sweets To The Sweet," Christopher Lee plays a stem father who fears his own daughter (child actress Chloe Franks in probably her best role), as her late mother had a supernatural background. The child fears fire, and he won't let her play with dolls or interact with other children. An understanding nanny (Nyree Dawn Porter) comes to the aid, but black magic has already entered the picture.
The last segment, "The Cloak," is a comic spoof that intelligently sends up the genre. Veteran actor Paul Henderson (Jon Pertwee, who around the same time was the third TV "Doctor Who") Is tired of playing in horror films below his standard. Fed up with his inadequate wardrobe, he buys a cloak from an oddball shop owner (Geoffrey Bayldon) that transforms him into a real vampire. Ingrid Pitt plays Carla, a vampire film starlet who has a nasty habit of spawning fangs and flapping about the house, and she initiates Henderson into her nocturnal world. This segment also brings everything full circle with the wraparound story, and when it's all over, the curse of “The House” lives on.
THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD could be the best of the Amicus anthologies. Its first-time feature director, Peter Duffell, was a stranger to the genre and has been so ever since, but that hardly shows here. The film can be disturbing (the little girl throwing a wax image of her father onto the fire as he screams in agony), sentimental (the retired man strolling happily through the small English town with strains classical violin music in the background), and intense (the tormented writer being haunted as a result of his own imagination). The last segment (known as “The Cloak”) works great as a spoof. As the stuck-up horror actor, Pertwee prances around the studio insulting the inexperienced director, he criticizes the set for being too unrealistic, and he raves about how horror films aren’t made like they used to be, "Frankenstein, Phantom of the Opera, Dracula - Bela Lugosi of course, not the new fellow" (in reference to Christopher Lee).” Similar in-jokes and references to the genre are abound, and the film is constructed with colorful flair, with atmospheric scares and style rather than gory shock effects, and the music by Michael Dress is hauntingly unique. The cast is superb, handling the fun material so well, and it's great to see Lee and Cushing here as vulnerable everyday types, rather than villains or monsters.
Recently, Lion's Gate has released THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD on DVD in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio with anamorphic enhancement. The film looks far better than the old Prism VHS release. The picture has crisp detail, and the bold colors are well-defined. The only major problem here is some print damage in the form of frequent speckling blemishes, and some minor edge enhancement halos. Needless to say, Amicus fans and those who have seen the film in the past will not be disappointed with the transfer, as it's truly never looked better. The audio is 2.0 stereo, and aside from some background hiss, serves the film satisfactory.
The disc includes an interview with Amicus co-founder Max J. Rosebnberg which also incorporates footage of him at a recent screening in California. The interview is brief but a nice addition, as he recalls (with a sharp sense of humor) Amicus Films, how it got its name, the writing of Robert Bloch, director Peter Duffell, etc. There is also a trailer for the film (which is actually an American TV spot), and trailers for HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, CABIN FEVER and BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR (you can access all of these by selecting the Lions Gate logo on the main menu). As part of an Amicus box set, Anchor Bay in the U.K. is about to release THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD as well. Those with multi-region players who are diehard fans of this title (and of Amicus) will want to look into it. Although it contains an identical transfer, it includes a director's commentary, a featurette interviewing some of the cast members, and other welcomed supplements. All of these are sadly missed on the Lion's Gate release, and it's a damn shame that stateside consumers have to miss out.
George R. Reis
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