Saturday 22 April 2017

#HAMMERFILMSATURDAY: THE FAIREST BRIDE OF THEM ALL : HAMMER DOCUMENTARY

#HAMMERFILMSSATURDAY: FOLOWING the news of the sad passing of Yvonne Monlaur yesterday, I thought it would be a good time to revisit this very good documentary about the making of one of her best, The Brides of Dracula. There are interviews, including Yvonne, lots of stories, behind the scenes, the works. She really was a fine talent and a beautiful woman, with such a gentle attitude. Bless you, Yvonne....


WE WILL BE posting a in-depth feature on Yvonne Monlaur, her life and career, with rare stills gallery this week.


IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!

YVONNE MONLAUR 1939 -2017


Sad News to report Yvonne Monlaur has passed away....

She starred in the 1958 Italian film Three Strangers in Rome which was amongst Claudia Cardinale's earliest films and in 1960 in the horror film Circus of Horrors alongside prominent actors in British film such as Anton Diffring and Donald Pleasence. In 1960, she also starred in the Hammer horror film The Brides of Dracula alongside other noted British actors of the day Peter Cushing and Freda Jackson and in The Terror of the Tongs (1961) with Christopher Lee.


Monlaur screen tested for the role of Domino Derval in the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball. The role eventually went to another French actress, Claudine Auger. After a string of German and Italian films, Monlaur left films to return to Paris. She continued to live there. Of late she has attended a few film conventions, which have included salutes to Hammer films. News of her passing was press released on April 21st 2017. She died on April 18, 2017, aged 77.


Yvonne Monlaur being helped with her costume, a suit of armor, on the set of the film 'To Live and Die a Fascist', Rome, Italy, November 12th 1961. 

 


Italian actor and comedian Nino Taranto, French actress Yvonne Monlaur and Italian actor Maurizio Arena (Maurizio Di Lorenzo) gathered at the Piazzetta of Capri in a scene from the film Avventura a Capri. Capri, 1958



Thursday 20 April 2017

IT'S NOT JUST THE EYES THAT FOLLOW YOU AROUND THE ROOM!


WITH THE EXCEPTION of dear old Arthur Grimsdyke in 'Tales from the Crypt' Peter Cushing never did get to play a physical grotesque. Amazing when you consider that wonderful facial bone structure. A make up artist's dream! If ever you find yourself at The Prater in Vienna, and your heart can take it, you must go and seek out this animated digital 'painting' of Peter Cushing's likeness for yourself! Spooky? What do you think?


IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!

#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: IN THE STUDIO AT THE BBC WITH THE MASTERS OF MENACE!


#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: A wonderful publicity photograph of both Peter Cushing and Vincent Price while recording the BBC radio serial 'ALIENS OF THE MIND' in 1977. Do you REMEMBER this radio series being broadcast? 


ABOVE some Radio Times Listings from our archive of the broadcasts
 back in 1977 . ..


ALIENS OF THE MIND was a serial in six parts with Vincent Price as Curtis Lark and Peter Cushing as John Cornelius. On the Isle of Lewigh, Lark and Cornelius are certain that the death of Dr Hugh Dexter was no accident. From his research notes, they diagnose the ' island sickness ' as the early symptoms of a strange genetic mutation undergone by many of the inhabitants, turning them into zombies blindly obeying some unknown force. The key to the mystery seems to be an apparently simple-minded 18-year-old - Flora Keiry - who saves Lark and Cornelius from being burnt to death! The series titles were, ‘ISLAND GENESIS’, ‘HURRIED EXODUS’, ‘UNEXPECTED VISITATIONS’, ‘OFFICIAL INTERCESSIONS’, ‘GENETIC REVELATIONS’ AND ‘FINAL TRIBULATIONS’. 


IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!

Wednesday 19 April 2017

THE LATE CHRISTOPHER LEE HAS THE LAST LAUGH ....LITERALLY!


WHILST CONDUCTING the digital remastering process on his collected musical works, Mel Croucher unearthed a never-heard-before gem: An ‘evil laugh’ competition between Christopher Lee and fellow actor Joaquim de Almeida.


IN THE DAYS  when computer games came on cassette, Automata were well known for including music tracks on the reverse side as a ‘bonus’ for the players. The Games Collector, a UK-based company is now selling those music tracks as a collection on crowdfunding site Indiegogo. When it came to re-mastering the audio for Deus Ex Machina 2, the sequel to Automata’s most famous game, an outtake was found in the archives in which Christopher Lee - at that point in his nineties and recording one of his final voice acting roles – competed with Joaquim de Almeida to see who could laugh in the most evil way possible, with Croucher himself the judge! Who won? Well, that would be telling…!


WITH THE REMASTERING complete, the evil laugh competition is included as a bonus extra on one of the five albums that make up InsÏ€red: The Collective Works of Mel Croucher. Croucher himself is considered the father of the British gaming industry; at a time when most computers were being used to calculate the compound interest on the revenue from a year’s worth of potato sales, he was selling his eclectic range of games for the ZX Spectrum through eye-catching adverts on the back pages of the popular computing magazines of the day.

Interested parties can reserve their collection through the campaigns crowdfunding page at igg.me/at/pimania  A preview of Mel’s music is available on Soundcloud at bit.ly/2oHZlae

The Games Collector Ltd is the result of decades of playing and creating games and the obsessive collecting of memorabilia by its founders. With a product line up featuring exclusive, exquisite and highly desirable collectibles, the company aims to bring fans the items they long for, and maybe even a few they didn’t know they wanted!


IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!

#SILENTBUTDEADLY: GAZOOKS A TRIPLE BILL OF GIFS!


#SILENTBUTDEADLY : HERE IS a great triple post of requested GIFS by you our friends and followers from here and our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE for this week's #SILENTBUTDEADLY! Above Christopher Lee is ready for business, and if you have seen the film 'The House of the Long Shadows' you'll know, all hell breaks loose from this point. 'The House of the Long Shadows' (1983 which marks first time stars Peter, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee appeared in a film sharing scenes together! John Carradine and Shelia Keith also star in...despite what some say... a great little film, that has some classic moments, all four stars get their moment, it's camp, it's black, it's creepy, it has a wonderful ending, and it's worth seeing. This of course, is my personal opinion... what do you think???


IN 2012 We Celebrated  the HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS in style, sharing a BBC interview with you, recorded from the set of the film, during it's production!


#SILENTBUTDEADLY: This aint gonna be pretty! Vincent Price braces himself for the unexpected...or is it?? A great GIF requested by Paul Barton for this week's #SILENTBUTDEADLY GIF Gallery.



DID YOU KNOW ALL FOUR actors, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, John Carradine and Christopher Lee ALL JOINTLY won the BEST ACTOR AWARD in 1983 at the SIGES FILM FESTIVAL? The Sitges Film Festival, is one of the world's foremost international festivals of film...



#SILENTBUTDEADLY: GAZOOKS! He just keeps coming. We KNEW there was something spooky about Peter Cushing's shop keeper in ''FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE' Turns out he is what he seems after all! A great addition to our GIF gallery requested by Phil Cooper UK.






IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!



Tuesday 18 April 2017

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: WHAT THE BEST DRESSED VAMPIRE HUNTERS ARE WEARING!


#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: What at first looks like a pretty cool behind scenes photograph of David Peel, Yvonne Monlaur and Peter Cushing on the set of #hammerfilms 'The Brides of Dracula'...on closer inspection reveals it's a very cool shot of them rehearsing, and Cushing is wearing a comfy personal woolly sweater!! He is wearing his Van Helsing costume, under the sweater!


TRIVIA: The Hammer films, BRAY STUDIOS lot was a notoriously cold unheated place to work. The manor house of Down Place, where most of the interiors for #THECURSEOFFRANKENSTEIN and #DRACULA #HORROROFDRACULA were shot, were very cold in the winter months, the outer lot buildings were unheated too. When Christopher Lee as Dracula stands talking to Harker in the guest room, his breath can be clearly seen! When Lee played the Creature in 'Curse of Frankenstein' his bandages, post the huge water tank, were soaked with warm water, which cooled to freezing water within minutes, and gulps of brandy were consumed to stop him catching hypothermia!
 
 

IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!
 

#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: LIKE FOR LIKE?


#TOOCOOLTUESDAY: Ok we have debated this inside out, upside down... but when you look at the #TARKIN / Cushing CGI from #ROGUEONE it is what it is. If this was a piece of art work, a sketch and photoshop result, it's not bad, the problem is when you animate it....For all the effort that the effects ROGUE team undertook, they should be awarded for that, don't you think? CGI ON THE LEFT!



IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!

Monday 17 April 2017

#MONSTERMONDAY: THE EVIL PROFESSOR AND THE LIVING FOSSIL


#MONSTERMONDAY Dr James Hildern from The Creeping Flesh starring Peter Cushing. And out and out baddie...you think?


#MONSTERMONDAY: An atmospheric shot from The Creeping Flesh (1973) where Professor Emmanuel Hildern (Peter Cushing) realizes the fossil is now ALIVE! #thecreepingflesh #petercushing #christopherlee #freddiefrancis


#MONSTERMONDAY: Sir Christopher Lee as the despicable asylum owner Dr James Hildern in The Creeping Flesh (1973) making an interesting discovery... #petercushing #christopherlee #thecreepingflesh


FIND A WHOLE GALLERY OF SMASHING STILLS AND IMAGES AT OUR FEATURE POST: HERE! 


WE  ARE PROUD TO SHARE OUR WHOLE EXCLUSIVE ARCHIVE OF CANDID RARE CLIPS AND  FOOTAGE FROM THE ABOVE LAST MEETING BETWEEN PETER CUSHING AND CHRISTOPHER LEE AT OUR PCAS YOUTUBE CHANNEL : CLICK HERE!

Sunday 16 April 2017

#HAMMERFILMSATURDAY AND LAUREL AND HARDY!



ON COMPLETING his first Hollywood film with 'The Man In The Iron Mask' shot in 1939 with 'Frankenstein' director, James Whale, he learned that Hal Roach Studios required English actors for his latest Laurel and Hardy picture, A Chump At Oxford'. Cushing auditioned and was accepted to play the role of Oxford student Jones.


CUSHING worked with the legendary comedy duo for one week. Cushing was very lucky to appear in one of the duos funniest comedies. The film contains some priceless comedy moments. 'A Chump At Oxford' print was later extended for European release by adding a chaotic dinner-party scene during the opening of the film. This was in fact, a remaking of an early Laurel and Hardy silent short form 1928 called ' From Soup to Nuts!'. Sadly Cushing was not included in this addition footage. 

ARRIVING at the collage, they arrive by cab wearing ETON collars, much to the amusement of Cushing and the fellow students, 'But, you are wearing ETON collars' says one of them. 'Well, that's swell..' says Stan, '..We haven't EATEN since breakfast!'. It's noticeable that Cushing gets more lines than the fellow students, possibly because he was the only genuine English sounding actor there! He looks every inch a star, with his pencil mustache, waved hair and his rakish mortar board hat. CATCH A CHUMP AT OXFORD in co,our just uploaded to our PCAS YOUTUBE Channel!


#HAMMERFILMSATURDAY: TWO great peeps behind the scenes on Hammer films, 'Dracula Has Risen From The Grave' (68) Veronica Carlson up in the roof top set and Les Bowies, 'Dracula's Remains!'


IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us reach our 30K following total for Peter Cushing BIRTHDAY on MAY 26th 2017 AND Help Keep The Memory Alive!
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