CHRISTOPHER LEE: FRANKENSTEIN 'IT WAS AS SIMPLE AS THAT..'

FRANKENSTEIN'S ALL IN A ROW.

The latest banner at the UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page. The Peter Cushing Frankenstein Line Up: From The Curse of Frankenstein right up to the final 'Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell'

THE HONOR BLACKMAN GALLERY: CATHERINE GALE AND CO

MARTINE BESWICK GALLERY: STARTS TODAY : MORE TO COME OVER NEXT SEVEN DAYS

Beswick was born on 26 September 1941 in Port Antonio, Jamaica to English parents. Beswick is best known for her two appearances in the James Bond film series. Although she auditioned for the first Bond film Dr. No, she was cast in the second film From Russia with Love as the fiery gypsy girl, Zara. She engaged in the famous "catfight" scene with her rival Vida (played by former Miss Israel Aliza Gur). She was incorrectly billed as "Martin Beswick" in the title sequence.^[1] Beswick then appeared as the ill-fated Paula Caplan in Thunderball. She had been away from the Caribbean so long that she was required to sunbathe constantly for two weeks before filming, in order to look like a local.

Martine went on to appear in One Million Years B.C. opposite Raquel Welch, with whom she also engaged in a catfight. She then appeared in various Hammer Studio low-budget films, most notably Prehistoric Women and the gender-bending Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. She played Adelita in the well-regarded Spaghetti Western A Bullet for the General in 1967 opposite Klaus Kinski and Gian Maria Volonté. She starred as the Queen of Evil in Oliver Stone's 1974 directorial debut Seizure, aka "Queen of Evil". In the 1970s, Beswick moved to Hollywood and regularly appeared on both the big screen and small screen. She made numerous guest appearances in television series including Sledge Hammer!, Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, Mannix, The Six Million Dollar Man and Falcon Crest. In 1980, she played the lead role in the comedy film The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood.

Beswick's career was active well into the 1990s. In recent years, she has mainly participated in film documentaries, providing commentary and relating her experiences on the many films she has appeared in. She owned a removals business in London, but is now semi-retired except for her guest appearances at international Bond conventions.

In April 2013 she was one of 12 Bond Girl celebrity guests in an episode of the BBC's Masterchef.

Beginning with Melvin and Howard in 1980, she changed the spelling of her last name to "Beswicke," but reverted to her original name in the mid-'90s; her last credit with the longer spelling is Wide Sargasso Sea in 1993.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martine_Beswick

LINDA HAYDEN: BLOOD ON SATAN' S CLAW / THE DEVILS SKIN TIGON FILMS: KEY BOOK GALLERY

LINDA HAYDEN: BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW AKA SATAN'S SKIN : REVIEW AND GALLERY

CAST:

Patrick Wymark (Judge), Linda Hayden (Angel Blake), Barry Andrews (Ralph Gower), Wendy Padbury (Cathy Vespers), Michele Dotrice (Margaret), Anthony Ainley (Reverend Fallowfield), Simon Williams (Peter Edmonton), Howard Goorney (Doctor)

PRODUCTION:

Director/Additional Writing – Piers Haggard, Screenplay – Robert Wynne-Simmons, Producers – Peter L. Andrews & Malcolm B. Hayworth, Photography – Dick Bush, Music – Marc Wilkinson, Makeup – Eddie Knight, Art Direction – Arnold Chapkis. Production Company – Tigon/Chilton Films.

SYNOPSIS:

In 17th Century England, children playing in the fields find a strange claw. Using the claw, the wanton Angel Blake leads the children in Satanic rituals that leave each of them possessed by strange patches of hair, the ‘Mark of Satan’.

COMMENTARY:

Matthew Hopkins – Witchfinder General/The Conqueror Worm (1968) opened up the 17th Century witch-persecutions as a new horror milieu. The continental horror market had been exploiting it for years but suddenly everyone jumped in with items like Mark of the Devil (1970) and Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), while Spain’s Jess Franco virtually made the period his home turf for several years. Many of the films, like Blood on Satan's Claw here, threw the witch persecutions in with occult elements from the post-Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) cycle. The point that most missed, and as the Witchfinder General showed, was that the witches were not legitimate practitioners of magic but persecuted victims – it is akin to saying that the Nazis had a point with the concentration camps because there really was an international Jewish conspiracy. Most films never even concerned themselves with that and only became unpleasant catalogues of acts of sadism and torture. 

Blood on Satan's Claw is a mostly muddled variation. The plot is hapharzedly assembled – its principal protagonist (Patrick Wymark’s Judge) drops out part way through and the ending is a anti-climax. The film is raised somewhat by a superb score and in being directed with some effect by Piers Haggard. Haggard creates some nice scenes with claws creeping up through floorboards and Linda Hayden trying to tempt the local vicar. With something like a script to hold it together, Blood on Satan's Claw could have been impressive.

Former Doctor Who (1963-89) member Wendy Padbury is particularly noteworthy as a naive flower-child and Michele Dotrice, daughter of Roy, is standout with her haunting grasp of regional accent as the frightened Margaret. Linda Hayden, a minor Anglo-horror queen, holds the show as the seductive Angel. 

Director Piers Haggard is the great-grandson of the adventure writer H. Rider Haggard, author of books like King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and She (1887). Blood on Satan's Claw was Piers Haggard’s debut as a director. Haggard has since floated around the genre in film and tv with efforts such as the Dennis Potter mini-series Pennies from Heaven (1978), Quatermass/The Quatermass Conclusion (1979), The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu (1980), Venom (1982) and The Breakthrough/The Lifeforce Experiment (1994).

KEY BOOK STILLS GALLERY TO FOLLOW NEXT!

HELP US CELEBRATE PETER CUSHING'S BIRTHDAY AND CENTENARY!

Help us CELEBRATE Peter Cushing's Birthday 

and Centenary at our facebook Fan Page

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PETER CUSHING BIRTHDAY CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS AT PCASUK START TOMORROW

Rare photographs, memorabilia and all things Peter Cushing are being shared and posted at

https://www.facebook.com/petercushingblog and http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/ tomorrow which marks what would have been Cushing's 100th birthday!

GUSTAV WEIL / PETER CUSHING COUNTS DOWN THE DAYS TO PETER CUSHING CENTENARY BIRTHDAY.

Just 3 Days To Go...
We're celebrating ALL day Sunday 26th. 24 hours of posts, rare photographs, features and competitions....right here at petercushing.org.uk and

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PETER CUSHING FB FAN PAGE HITS 11,000 AS CENTENARY APPROACHES

With Peter Cushing's Centenary Birthday Just Around The Corner And Numbers Climbing At Our Peter Cushing (PCASUK) Facebook Fan Page, It looks Like This Weekend Could Be Fun!

PETER CUSHING BIRTHDAY CENTENARY COUNTDOWN AT PCASUK

ONE STOP FACEBOOK FAN PAGE FOR ALL THINGS PETER CUSHING AND PETERCUSHING.ORG.UK

Features, Interviews, rare photographs and Transparencies, Posters and Friendly chat at the UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page. PCASUK established in 1956 and open to everyone worldwide. Celebrating the Peter Cushing Centenary on MAY 26th the anniversary of Peter Cushing's birth.

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EXCLUSIVE MEDIA TO ROCK INTERNATIONA SALES FOR 3D CONCERT SUSPENSE FILM: METALLICA THROUGH THE NEVER

Exclusive Media will present award-winning writer/director Nimród Antal’s (PREDATORS, KONTROLL) captivating 3D concert/suspense film METALLICA THROUGH THE NEVER featuring one of music’s most enduring and iconic bands to international buyers at this year’s upcoming Cannes Film Market, it was announced today by Exclusive Media’s President of International Sales and Distribution, Alex Walton.

Starring Metallica members Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo, a cast of thousands of their fans and breakout star Dane DeHaan (CHRONICLE, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2), METALLICA THROUGH THE NEVER is produced by former IMAX film producer Charlotte Huggins (JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND). The film marries groundbreaking footage and editing techniques with a compelling narrative, in which a crewmember (played by DeHaan) is sent out on a mission during Metallica's roaring live set in front of a sold-out arena. While on this mission, he unexpectedly has his life turned completely upside down.

Picturehouse will distribute the film in North America exclusively in IMAX® theatres on Sept. 27, 2013 and will expand on Oct. 4, 2013.

Alex Walton negotiated the rights deal for the film on behalf of Exclusive Mediawith Picturehouse’s Bob Berney and QPrime's Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch.

“This feature film is a wild and a refreshingly unique cinematic experience – a Metallica extravaganza that will electrify fans and movie-goers around the world,” said Alex Walton.

"After wading through multiple international distribution options for our film, we are excited to be partnering up with the folks at Exclusive Media, who we feel understand Metallica and understand our film better than anyone else," said Metallica's Lars Ulrich. "Throw in the cherry-on-top, launching our international sales with a couple of screenings at the film market during alittle up-and-coming film festival in Cannes, and it feels like we're off to a pretty rockin' start."

Since they formed in 1981, Metallica have gone from anunderground heavy metal band to one of the most influential and commercially successful rock bands in history, with an intensely loyal fan base. Over the course of three decades, Metallica has conquered the world, selling over 100 million albums, 5 million videos and DVDs, playing for millions in concerts all over the world, won multiple awards including nine Grammys and have become the most played artist on rock radio. They created a mass audience for the metal genre and made it possible for many other aggressive-sounding bands to get signed and heard. In 2012 the band earned $86.1 million with 30 shows during their worldwide tour, making them the 8th highest grossing heavy metal/hard rock concert tour of the year.The band crossed over into the film world with the documentary, METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER, directed by acclaimed filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Premiering at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, the film was nominated for several critics’ choice awards and appeared on many “Top 10 Films of the Year” lists and won “Best Documentary” at the 2005 Independent Spirit Awards. Their latest album, Death Magnetic, was certified platinum just six weeks after it debuted atop the Billboard Top 200 Album chart in October.

Dane DeHaan is a rising star after headlining 20th Century Fox's box office hit CHRONICLE, The Weinstein Company's LAWLESS directed by John Hillcoat and starring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce and most recently starring opposite Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper in Derek Cianfrance’s critically acclaimed THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES. DeHaan recently completed production on DEVIL’S KNOT opposite Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth and John Krokidas’ KILL YOUR DARLINGS, based on the life of poet Allen Ginsberg starring Daniel Radcliffe. DeHaan is currently filming Columbia Pictures’ THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 opposite Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, set for release in 2014.

Nimród Antal is best known for writing and directing the acclaimed film KONTROLL, which won numerous awards, including the Award of the Youth at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Hugo (main prize) at the Chicago International Film Festival, as well as a European Film Award nomination for Best Director. Antal's box office hits include VACANCY, starring Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson, released by Sony, ARMORED, starring Matt Dillon, released by Screen Gems and Robert Rodriguez’s PREDATORS starring Oscar®-winning actor Adrien Brody released by 20th Century Fox.

 

Charlotte Huggins is one of the most prolific producers of 3D films in the world. Huggins’ credits include worldwide box office hits JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND starring Josh Hutcherson, Dwayne Johnson and Michael Caine and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. Huggins’ also produced FLY ME TO THE MOON, a 3D digitally animated film featuring the voice talents of Tim Curry, Nicollette Sheridan, Kelly Ripa, Christopher Lloyd, and a cameo fromformer astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

Michelle McCue

A DATE FOR YOUR DIARY: COME CELEBRATE PETER CUSHING CENTENARY BIRTHDAY MAY 25TH 2013

The UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society are marking Peter Cushing's Centenary on the 25th May 2013. Join us at BOTH the website http://petercushingblog.blogspot.co.uk/ and our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/petercushingblog for a full 24 hours of competitions, prizes, rare pics and features.

Banner above: Some of Peter Cushing's iconic roles, Van Helsing from Hammer Films 'Brides of Dracula', Baron Frankenstein from 'The Curse of Frankenstein' Arthur Grimsdyke from Amicus films 'Tales From The Crypt', DR Who from 'Dr Who and the Daleks' and 'Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD' and Sherlock Holmes from Hammer Films 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'.

CRONENBERG GOLDBLUM AND GEENA CREATE A BUZZ: THE FLY REVIEW AND GALLERY

CAST:
Jeff Goldblum (Seth Brundle), Geena Davis (Veronica Quaife), John Getz (Stathis Borans) 

PRODUCTION:

Director – David Cronenberg, Screenplay – David Cronenberg & Charles Edward Pogue, Based on the 1958 Film & the Short Story by George Langelaan, Producer – Stuart Cornfeld, Photography – Mark Irwin, Music – Howard Shore, Mechanical Effects – Jon Berg, Makeup Effects – Chris Walas, Production Design – Carol Spier. Production Company – Brooksfilm/20th Century Fox. USA. 1986.

SYNOPSIS:

Scientist Seth Brundle meets journalist Veronica Quaife at a scientific conference and tempts her into coming back to his lab to see his revolutionary design for a teleportation device. He persuades her to move in and watch as he irons out the final bugs and write an article about it. The two become lovers. Determined to prove the device works, Brundle climbs into the telepod and transmits himself. The teleportation is successful. Afterwards, Brundle demonstrates amazing physical stamina, but in the following weeks he begins to develop a bad case of eczema and then body parts start dropping off. He then discovers that during the teleportation both he and a housefly that was trapped in the telepod were reintegrated at a basic molecular level and that he is now transforming into a human/fly hybrid.

COMMENTARY:

In pre-release interviews for The Fly, writer/director David Cronenberg recounted a witty story about how as a child he entered a promotional competition when the original The Fly (1958) came out, which challenged people to prove that the film’s premise was not scientifically possible. He succeeded – not a particularly hard task (see discussion of the problems inherent in the original at the above link), but was failed by the theatre management. 28 years later with this remake, Cronenberg was allowed the best possible comeuppance in a way that the theatre management of the time would never have believed possible.
  

The Fly 1986 came out amid a host of mid 1980s remakes of classic 1950s science-fiction films. In its own way, the original The Fly was a classic monster movie, but its science amok polemics and pitiful “help me, help me”’s were not enough to stand up in the 1980s; David Cronenberg realizes this but he is not interested in making any 1950s type of film. Rather than parodying, quoting or deconstructing the original, Cronenberg takes the basic idea and reworks it in much more fascinating directions. He has thrown out the substantial illogicities and implausibilities that came in the original’s script – that of a fly and a man ending up with either’s body parts jumbled up – and instead makes a much more credible story about the fusion between the two into a hybrid entity. His is a darker, inner vision of the story where the original idea has been colluded with Cronenberg’s frequent bodily horror obsessions. It is more like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915) but with more slime.

David Cronenberg’s films are unique mad scientist films. In the 1930s and 40s, mad scientist films were filled with the shock of science going amok and of unleashed monsters wreaking devastating influences on society. In Cronenberg’s films, monstrosity and transformation always has an ambiguity. Cronenberg’s scientists and victims seem to throw themselves at the process of transformation and mutation with fascinated curiosity, ecstatically welcoming their fusion into Other – the sexual ecstasies found in the mutilation of human flesh by auto accident in Crash (1996), or of being taken over by fetish-creating parasites in Shivers (1975). Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle here looks on with a wryly amused air of scientific curiosity, keeping his fallen-off body parts in the bathroom and making sardonic comments about turning his medicine cabinet into “the Brundle Museum of Natural History.” Some people have read The Fly 1986 as a metaphor for AIDS, which a plausible case can be made for, although AIDS was only just emerging into the public spotlight when the film was made. Rather, the film seems to echo and mirror Cronenberg’s peculiar Manichean fascinations with the body as a battleground where the will can operate in one direction but the body can frequently rebel or be taken over by other forces – like the images of people being turned into human VCR’s in Videodrome (1983) or psychological repressions forcing themselves into expression in human flesh in The Brood (1979). For the title creature, Chris Walas created a triumphant mass of rubber latex – which runs all the way from a few unsightly hairs to full mechanical creatures. (Chris Walas won that year’s Academy Award for his work). Unlike its sequel The Fly II (1989), which was in fact directed by Walas, the film finds a character inside all the latex. Here Jeff Goldblum gives a joyous, live-wire performance, which adds a perverse streak of humour to the transformation. Goldblum has rarely been better in a part. 

Most fascinating is the weirdness with which Cronenberg and Jeff Goldbum take the obsession, turning Brundle literally, behaviourally into a twitching hyper-kinetic fly, needing to consume large amounts of sugar and stomach-churningly dealing with the problems of digesting solid foods. (Although, one illogical move has Goldblum scaling the walls and ceiling just like a fly would – flies are only able to do so by surface-tension and in having such a minimal body weight, something a human would be too big for). In the final vision, with the Brundelfly turned into a pitifully crying bio-mechanic fusion melded with the telepods, the film achieves a peculiar kind of poetic revulsion, as though it were taking classical mad scientist, creation and laboratory and dissolving them into one. 

There is a small tendency to go in for unnecessary gore that cheapens the film occasionally, particularly a dream scene where Geena Davis gives birth to giant slug. (One can also note Cronenberg in the dream sequence cameoing as a gynaecologist, a move that foreshadows the culmination of his gynaecological obsessions in his next film Dead Ringers [1988]). The beautiful pale photography of Mark Irwin and the dark, brooding score of Howard Shore is also worthy of note. 

David Cronenberg’s other films are:– Stereo (1969), a little-seen film about psychic powers experiments; Crimes of the Future (1970), a film about a future where people have become sterile; Shivers/They Came from Within/The Parasite Murders (1975) about parasites that turn people into sexual fetishists; Rabid (1977) about a vampiric skin graft; The Brood (1979), a remarkable film about experimental psycho-therapies; Fast Company (1979), a non-genre film about car racing; Scanners (1981), a film about psychic powers; Videodrome (1983) about reality-manipulating tv; The Dead Zone (1983), Cronenberg’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel about precognition; Dead Ringers (1988), Cronenberg’s greatest film, about two disturbed twin gynaecologists; M. Butterfly (1993), a non-genre film about a Chinese spy who posed as a woman to seduce a British diplomat; Crash (1996), Cronenberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel about the eroticism of car crashes; eXistenZ (1999), a disappointing film about Virtual Reality; Spider (2002), a subjective film takes place inside the mind of a mentally ill man; the thriller A History of Violence (2005) about an assassin hiding under a different identity; Eastern Promises (2007) about the Russian Mafia; A Dangerous Method (2011) about the early years of psychotherapy; and Cosmopolis (2012), a surreal vision of near-future economic collapse. Cronenberg has also made acting appearances in other people’s films, including as a serial killer psychologist in Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (1990); a Mafia hitman in To Die For (1995); a Mafia head in Blood & Donuts (1995); a member of a hospital board of governors in the medical thriller Extreme Measures (1996); as a gas company exec in Don McKellar’s excellent end of the world drama Last Night (1998); a priest in the serial killer thriller Resurrection (1999); and as a victim in the Friday the 13th film Jason X (2001). 

Screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue has also delivered a number of genre scripts, including Psycho III (1986), DragonHeart (1996), Kull the Conqueror (1997) and Hercules (tv mini-series, 2005), as well as a host of Sherlock Holmes tv movies.

The routine sequel was The Fly II (1989). The original Fly movies were The Fly (1958), Return of the Fly (1959) and Curse of the Fly (1965