I’m not sure if you can be a true fan of horror (especially British horror) without loving Peter Cushing.
The actor played many roles over the course of his long career. In fact, the first film in which he and Christopher Lee both appeared was not a horror film but instead Laurence Olivier’s 1948 production of Hamlet. (They both also appeared in 1952’s Moulin Rouge.) However, Cushing will probably always be best known for his Hammer roles and, of course, his villainous performance in Star Wars. Peter Cushing was not only the virtuous Prof. Van Helsing but also the far less virtuous Baron Frankenstein.
According to almost every interview that I’ve read, Peter Cushing was a genuinely nice and professional person, one who didn’t personally care for horror films but who never took it personally when he was recognized for appearing in them. Though they regularly played rivals on screen, he was close friends with Christopher Lee. I once read an interview with Lee where he said that, decades later, he still hadn’t recovered from Cushing’s death in 1994.
Below, you’ll find a documentary from 1989. It was called Peter Cushing — A One-Way Ticket To Hollywood. It’s basically just Peter Cushing talking about his life and career for 49 minutes but it’s a charming little documentary. Peter Cushing comes across as being very nice and very British. He discusses not only his horror films but also his work in Star Wars and his performance as Winston Smith in a 1954 production of 1984.
It’s a nice documentary and I offer it up on Halloween as a tribute to one of horror’s gentlemen.
I’ve covered every Universal Horror Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi made together on this blog but one… it’s a Universal Picture, but not a horror! Instead, the Demonic Duo make cameo appearences in 1934’s GIFT OF GAB, an “all-star comedy with music” featuring the likes of Edmond Lowe, Gloria Stuart , singers Ruth Etting and Ethel Waters, Victor Moore, and others. In this scene, Paul Lukas , Binnie Barnes, Chester Morris, Roger Pryor, and June Knight perform a murder mystery sketch in which the Twin Titans of Terror make all-too-brief cameos:
The Terror Twins worked together one other time, in a 1938 guest shot on Ozzie Nelson’s radio program, “singing” (if you could call it that!!) a little ditty called “We’re Horrible, Horrible Men”:
Thankfully, Boris and Bela stuck to acting… though I have to admit, their singing’s pretty scary, too!!
“If you want to taste the night, come downstairs.”
— The Professor (Pier Ugo Gragnani) in The Vampire and The Ballerina (1960)
A young woman relaxes with her friends at a waterfall. She sees a funeral procession passing by and cheerfully announces, “A funeral! It brings good luck!”
One person who would disagree with that would be the girl in the coffin. She’s just the latest villager to have been found passed out in a field in the middle of the night, lacking blood. The locals say that there’s a vampire on the loose. The local doctor insists that the girl is just anemic and will recover in ten days. Instead, the girl ends up in a coffin, only opening her eyes while being carried to her grave. From her point of view, we watch as clumps of dirt are tossed onto the coffin, one after another until finally all is dark.
At night, she leaves her grave and runs into the horribly disfigured vampire who previously bit her. He greets her and tells her to lie down in his coffin. As soon as she does, he drives a take through her heart and says that he must remain “the master of my world.”
It’s a strange world. In the village, a dance troupe is, for some reason, staying at a villa belonging to an older man (Pier Ugo Gragnani) who is called both “grandpa” and “The Professor.” (Despite the film’s title and some of the dialogue, they are clearly a modern dance troupe.) The professor tells the dancers a story about vampires. Everyone’s amused. Interestingly, most of the dancers seem to believe that there is a vampire on the loose but none of them seem particularly concerned about it. From my own experience, this is probably the most realistic part of the film. When you’re a dancer, that’s pretty much all you worry about.
Later, two of the dancers, Luisa (Helene Remy) and Francesca (Tina Gloriani), are walking around the woods with Francesca’s fiancée, Luca (Iscaro Ravaiolli) when it starts to rain. They take refuge in a nearby castle, one which they believe to be deserted. It turns out that it’s not. Countess Alda (Maria Luisa Rolando) lives there with her manservant, Herman (Walter Brandi). Alda explains that she allows the villagers to believe the castle is deserted and haunted because she doesn’t want to be bothered by them. Luca is immediately enchanted with Alda while Francesca wonders why Alda looks exactly like the woman in a 400 year-old painting that is hanging in the dining room. Luisa wanders off and gets bitten by the same disfigured vampire who has been preying on the villagers.
That night, Luisa waits in bed until the vampire comes to her. Meanwhile Luca sneaks back to the castle to see Alda. Alda claims that Herman is holding her prisoner but, when Herman suddenly shows up, Alda orders Luca away and proceeds to drink Herman’s blood and he goes from being a handsome servant to being the disfigured vampire that we saw earlier in the film. It turns out that Alda and Herman’s blood-soaked relationship is all about trying to stay young. When Herman ages, he drinks the villager’s blood to become young again. Then Alda drinks his blood to retain her youth, which means that the now aged Herman again has to go out and drink more villager blood….
Meanwhile, the dance troupe’s choreographer has a brilliant idea! Why don’t they do a number about vampires!?
1960’s The Vampire and the Ballerina is a personal favorite of mine. That really shouldn’t surprise anyone, of course. I love vampires. I love to dance. Of course, I’m going to love a film that brings those two things together! But beyond that, The Vampire and The Ballerina is just such a strange little film. From the off-center performances to Angelo Baistrocchi[‘s haunting cinematography, The Vampire and the Ballerina plays out like a filmed fever dream. The fact that the plot often doesn’t make sense only adds to the film’s surreal atmosphere.
Continuing what Hammer started with the Horror of Dracula, The Vampire and the Ballerina takes the sexuality that has always been the subtext of most vampire films and instead puts it front and center. The formerly repressed Luisia writhes in bed as she waits for the vampire to come to her. Luca stares at Alda with an obsessive intensity before forcefully kissing her hand. Alda and Herman torment each other, even though one could not exist without the other, a relationship that is more sado-masochistic than supernatural.
The Vampire and the Ballerina is an Italian horror film that deserves to be better known than it is. I mean, seriously, how can anyone resist a movie that has this many vampires and this much dancing?
I love horror movies but, unfortunately, many of them tend to get a bit less scary upon repeat viewings. Once you already know where the vampire is going to be hiding or who the werewolf is going to attack next, it becomes a bit more difficult to fall under in the film’s chilling spell.
To be honest, all of the Body Snatcher films scare me, even the really bad ones. Invasion of the Body Snatchers deals not only with the horror of conformity but also the horror of knowing what’s going on but being helpless to stop it.
The Exorcist (1973)
Maybe it’s because of my Catholic background but, despite the fact that it’s been endlessly imitated, this film scares me every time that I see it. I think a lot of it has to do with the documentary approach that William Friedkin takes to the material.
Shock (1977)
Mario Bava’s final film gets me every time. Even though I now know how many of the big scares were actually pulled off, this movie still makes me jump. In this film, Daria Nicolodi gives the best performance of her legendary career.
The Shining (1980)
Agck! Those little girls! That elevator full of blood! The way Wendy kept interrupting Jack while he was trying to write!
Sinister (2012)
Sinister gave me nightmares the first time that I saw it and it still does. That ending. AGCK!
The Conjuring (2013)
This is definitely one of the best haunted house films to come out over the past ten years. This film is scary because you actually care about the family in the house. They’re not just disposable victims. Also holding up well is The Conjuring 2.
Well, as another horrorthon draws to a close, it’s time for another Shattered Lens tradition! Every Halloween, we share one of the greatest and most iconic horror films ever made. For your Halloween enjoyment, here is George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead!
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
She’s recovering her latest nervous breakdown and her husband, Martin (Pierre Lenoir) is having an affair with one of his students. Martin and Alice have just moved into a new house that was never actually completed and the construction crew that they’ve hired is made up of lazy nogoodniks who all have mullets. Alice’s only relief is the carpenter (Wings Hauser) who materializes in the house every midnight and who, unlike the construction crew, carefully and lovingly works on the house while talking about the value of doing a good day’s work.
Even though she comes to believe that the carpenter might be the ghost of a murderer, Alice still falls in love with him and he seems to fall for her too. Want to get on the carpenter’s bad side? Just try to hurt Alice or the house. When a member of the construction crew attempts to rape Alice, the carpenter chops off the rapist’s arm with a radial saw. When two other construction workers break into the house, the carpenter kills them too. In fact, the carpenter kills a lot of people and what gives this movie a new wrinkle is that Alice seems to be okay with a lot of those murders. Is the carpenter real, dead, or a product of Alice’s fragile mental state? No one knows but the carpenter himself.
The Carpenter is all about Wings Hauser, who was practically the patron saint of straight-to-video exploitation films in the late 80s and early 90s. The movies tries to keep us guessing as to whether the carpenter is a real person or a ghost but all that matters is that he’s Wings Hauser, giving one of his most crazed performances. Wings Hauser could make any otherwise bad movie watchable and that’s the case with The Carpenter.
The Gill-Man made his second appearance in REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, a good-not-great sequel that finds The Creature out of his element and in the modern (well, 1955) world. In fact, The Creature is the most sympathetic character in the film, as he’s hunted, ripped from his home, chained up, tortured, and treated like a freak-show attraction. The humans, with the exception of heroine Lori Nelson, are your basic 50’s sci-fi hammerheads who fear what they don’t understand and try to force The Gill-Man to their will.
Old friend Captain Lucas is once again heading down the Amazon to the Black Lagoon, in his new boat The Rita II. Joe Hayes and George Johnson of Florida’s Ocean Harbor Oceanarium are out to capture The Creature and use him as a theme park attraction. Underwater dynamite charges stun The Gill-Man into a coma, and he’s trussed up and transported stateside. Professor…
For our next horror scene that I love, we have one of the greatest horror endings of all time.
As Lucio Fulci’s 1979 masterpiece, Zombi 2, comes to a close, Ian McCulloch and Tisa Farrow are on a boat. They’ve managed to escape from an island that been overrun by zombies. However, as they listen to a New York radio station, they discover that the zombie outbreak is not over. In fact, it’s just begun!
And then you get the final scene, in which hundreds of zombies are seen stumbling into New York!
I’m not sure if you can be a true fan of horror (especially British horror) without loving Peter Cushing.
Happy Halloween from Bela and Boris! 
