The Hound of the Baskervilles

Year:  1959

Director:  Terence Fisher

Screenplay:  Peter Bryan, based on the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Starring:  Peter Cushing, André Morell, Christopher Lee, Marla Landi, David Oxley

Running Time:  87 minutes

Genre:  Mystery, thriller

According to legend, since the 1700s when notorious squire Hugo Baskerville (Oxley) met a gruesome end, the Baskerville family of Dartmoor have been cursed by a ghastly Hell Hound.  When Sir Charles Baskerville dies under mysterious circumstances, his best friend Dr. Richard Mortimer (Francis de Wolff) consults the famous detective Sherlock Holmes (Cushing) and Dr. Watson (Morell).  To make matters more urgent, the last surviving Baskerville, Sir Henry (Lee), intends to return to the ancestral seat of Baskerville Hall on Dartmoor.  Legend or no legend, Holmes is convinced that Sir Henry's life is in serious danger.

First serialised in the Strand magazine from 1901 to 1902, The Hound of the Baskervilles is probably the single best known of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's evergreen Sherlock Holmes stories, and with it's plot revolving around old family curses and iconic imagery of the huge, ghostly Hound on the mist shrouded moors a perfect choice for Britain's Hammer Films, and their signature "Hammer Horror" style.  The film sticks more or less to the plot of the original story, and the narrative moves along at a brisk pace.  Peter Cushing, who was a fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, makes for an energetic Holmes with a nice line in acidic retorts.  André Morell anchors the film with his charismatic, heroic Watson.  Christopher Lee is good as ever as the stern, sceptical Sir Henry Baskerville, except the scenes where he is being threatened never really seem that convincing, one of Lee's glares would be enough to send even the most fearsome Hound of Hell scampering back to it's kennel.  Marla Landi plays the mysterious Spanish born daughter of a local farmer who falls for Sir Henry's grim charms.  The film has plenty of gothic atmosphere, with plenty of mist shrouded ruins and strange lights.  The hound never really looks as fearsome as it should, however.  It's an enjoyable slice of vintage mystery with some impressive performances, and also one of the more faithful Holmes adaptations.

 Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in The Hound of the Baskervilles

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

Year:  1965

Director:  Freddie Francis

Screenplay:  Milton Subotsky

Starring:  Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Max Adrian, Alan Freeman, Ann Bell, Peter Madden, Donald Sutherland, Roy Castle, Michael Gough

Running Time:  98 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Six strangers meet in a train carriage.  One of them, Dr. Schreck (Cushing), whose name, we're told, means "terror" in German, offers to tell the others' fortunes with his tarot deck (which he calls his "house of horrors").  His five companions are each told their grim fates in a series of stories involving werewolves, killer vines, voodoo curses, vengeful disembodied hands and vampires.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Hammer Films held British horror cinema in it's cold, undead grasp.  However one of their main competitors was Amicus Films, which had a similar look to the Hammer Films and often used the same actors (Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were both regulars in Amicus films as well as their better known Hammer films).  However Amicus usually had a contemporary setting, as opposed to Hammer's usual period settings, and they really found their niche with a series of anthology, or "portmanteau", films.  Instead of having a single narrative running throughout the film, these consisted of four or five separate short stories usually connected by a framing story.  Dr. Terror's House of Horrors was the first of these (and was followed by Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973) and From Beyond the Grave (1974)).  These films, by their very nature, were usually something of a mixed bag, but if you weren't enjoying one story, you didn't have to wait too long for something else to come along.  As with all of these films, the title promises far more scares and gore than it delivers, it really is very mild particularly by modern standards.  The special effects are really basic, with the killer plant being someone shaking a vine off-screen, the disembodied hand is a rubber glove fitted with a pump and then there is the rubber bat bobbing along on a wire.  The cast is very eclectic with veterans such as Christopher Lee as an obnoxious art critic, Peter Cushing as the creepy fortune teller and Michael Gough, alongside Roy Castle who would later become beloved to decades of British children as the host of Record Breakers (1972-1994), jazz singer Kenny Lynch, future Hollywood star Donald Sutherland in an early role, and a rare acting role from DJ Alan "Fluff" Freeman ("Not 'arf, pop-pickers!") doing battle with killer weeds.  Everyone plays the material as best they can, providing impressive gravitas.  The stories are enjoyable, with some welcome humour.  The story with the vengeful hand is probably the best of the bunch, the worst being the voodoo story which has not aged well (even though it does feature a weird little in-joke where Roy Castle is terrified by a lurid poster for Dr. Terror's House of Horrors).  It all ends with a surprisingly eerie conclusion.  

       

Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alan Freeman, Neil McCallum and Roy Castle in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

Dracula

Year of Release:  1958

Director:  Terence Fisher

Screenplay:  Jimmy Sangster, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

Starring:  Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Christopher Lee

Running Time:  82 minutes

Genre:  Horror

In 1885, Doctor Van Helsing (Cushing) investigates the disappearance of his friend Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen), vampire hunter, at the Castle Dracula.   Van Helsing soon realises that Harker has fallen victim to the evil vampire Dracula (Lee) who has now set his sights on Harker's friends and family.  

Produced by the now legendary Hammer Films, this is probably the highpoint of what is known as "Hammer Horror".  It features the Hammer hallmarks of lavish production values (despite a low budget), classically trained actors, stories based on legendary horror tales, and most importantly all the blood and heaving bosoms that the 1950s censors would allow, photographed in vivid colour.  Christopher Lee turned in a star making performance as Dracula.  Lee made Dracula sexy and physical, moving from suave sophistication to demoniac monster.  Peter Cushing complements him as the rational but compassionate Van Helsing.  The film suffers from a low budget and some obvious day-for-night shooting, as well as an indeterminate sense of place where, despite being set in Eastern Europe, everyone seems to be English, but the qualities far outweigh the negatives.  Lee and Cushing became horror icons with this film.  Right from the opening images of Dracula's tomb spattered with blood this is empty of any inessentials.  This is a full blooded horror, which brought blood, fangs and sex to the vampire film.   

Christopher Lee is Dracula

Dr. Who and the Daleks

 Year of Release:  1965

Director:  Gordon Flemyng

Screenplay:  Milton Subotsky, based on the Doctor Who serial "The Daleks" by Terry Nation

Starring:  Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jennie Linden, Roberta Tovey

Running Time:  82 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

In London, eccentric inventor Dr. Who (Cushing) shows his granddaughters Barbara (Linden) and Susan (Tovey), and Barbara's clumsy boyfriend Ian (Castle), his latest invention the Tardis, a machine disguised as a police telephone box which can travel anywhere in time and space.  When Ian accidentally activates it, they are catapulted to a mysterious, desolate planet, where they encounter deadly cyborgs called Daleks, who plan to destroy the planet's other inhabitants, the peace-loving Thals.

This is based on the second serial from the BBC television series Doctor Who (1963-1989, 1996, 2005- ) which introduced the series' most popular antagonist, the Daleks.  This is an adaptation of the seven part serial "The Daleks", not really the Doctor Who series itself, while it more or less follows the plot of the serial, it changes a lot about the characters and backstory.  Peter Cushing's Doctor Who (who is definitively named as such in the film, but is always just The Doctor on TV) is a doddery, eccentric, grandfatherly old gentleman, rather than William Hartnell's portrayal of The Doctor on TV as an abrasive, crotchety alien antihero.  On TV, Barbara and Ian (as played by Jacqueline Hill and William Russell) were staid, responsible schoolteachers, whereas here their occupations are never given and Ian in particular is more of a klutzy comic relief character.  Susan (played by Carole Anne Ford on TV) was a sixteen year old high school student, but in this film she appears to be about twelve years old.  The film is a colourful affair, although it's low budget is painfully obvious in several places.  The blonde, blue-eyes Thals are supposedly starving, but their supply of mascara, lip gloss and hair care products seem to be plentiful, because they all seem to style themselves after David Bowie.  The Daleks themselves seem to have a fondness for lava lamps and salmon-pink plastic sheeting.  Originally the guns were supposed to shoot fire, but this was vetoed on the grounds of health and safety, and also that it would be too frightening for the kiddies, so instead they shoot jets of CO2 gas.  The Daleks were hugely popular in the 1960s, appearing in comics, games, toys, books and even a terrible novelty song by The Go-Gos called "I Wanna Spend my Christmas with a Dalek" (which contains the lyrics "I wanna spend my Christmas with a Dalek / and hang him underneath the mistletoe /and if he's very nice / I'll feed him sugar spice / and hang a Christmas stocking from his big left toe").  

The film suffers from bad dialogue (particularly the Daleks' long speeches which serve as clunky exposition) and storytelling, the climax is especially ludicrous and seems to largely hinge on the Daleks immediately becoming extremely stupid, and misplaced humour.  Peter Cushing does what he can with what he is given, and Roy Castle (who would later go on to present the long running children's TV series Record Breakers from 1972 to 1993) hams it up although he did have a gift for clowning.  The big problem with the film is that it just hasn't aged well, not that it is really offensive or anything like that, but it looks so cheap and such a product of it's time, that it just appears comical today.  If you are a Doctor Who completist or interested in sixties science-fiction it's worth a look, and to be fair it can serve as a guilty pleasure on a dull afternoon.  It was followed by Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150AD (1966).

Dr. Who (Peter Cushing) and Susan (Roberta Tovey) encounter the mechanical meanies in Dr. Who and the Daleks 

The Brides of Dracula

Year: 1960
Director: Terence Fisher
Screenplay: Peter Bryan, Edward Percy, Jimmy Sangster and Anthony Hinds (uncredited)
Starring: Peter Cushing, Martita Hunt, Yvonne Monlaur and David Peel
Running Time: 85 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural, Hammer Horror

Summary: Transylvania, the late 19th century: Marianne Danielle (Monlaur), a young French schoolteacher, is on her way to take up a job at a girl's school. However, she ends up starnded in a small village. With nowhere else to go she accepts an offer to stay the night at the large castle of the sinister Baroness Meinster (Hunt). During the night Marianne discovers that the Baroness' son (Peel) is chained up in his room, and helps him escape. However, it turns out that the son has a dark secret, as during the following night a young woman in the village is found dead, drained of blood. The locals immediately recognise that a vampire is on the loose and send for the aid of Dr. Van Helsing (Cushing), the only man who was able to defeat the most powerful vampire of all - Count Dracula.

Opinions: This is the first official sequel to Hammer Studios Dracula (1958) which was also directed by Terence Fisher and starred Peter Cushing with a script by Jimmy Sangster. However this lacks one crucial ingredient from the original, and that is Christopher Lee as the Count himself. Dracula does not appear at all in the film, and is only mentioned twice. Lee wouldn't reprise the role of Dracula until Dracula: Prince of Drakness (1966). In this film the role of principal villain is taken by David Peel, who doesn't really make much of an impression. He's kind of bland, and doesn't really have a lot to do until the end. It doesn't help that he looks like a sixties pop star. It's hard to the bloodsucking undead seriously when it looks like he's going to break into "You Were Made for Me" at any moment. However, Peter Cushing was rarely better as Van Helsing than here bringing a strong sense of dignity and gravitas to the part as well as a welcome physicality in the action scenes. Yvonne Monlaur makes for an engaging and attractive lead. As often with the Hammer films the production values are strong, and the film effectively blends action with humour. However some of the techniques haven't aged well, notably the use of "day for night" filming (in which a scene is shot during the day but with a special filter to make it look as if it is taking place at night). Incidentally there is a very brief cameo by Christopher Lee: During the close up of the vampire's eyes towards the end of the film, the eyes are actually Lee's in a clip from Dracula.
This is an enjoyable slice of Hammer Horror and should appeal to fans and newcomers alike.




Filming The Brides of Dracula proved a real pain in the neck for Peter Cushing.