Peter Cushing liked to read - as can be seen from this rather strange sequence from The Skull (1965).
 

 
When the Gentleman of Horror wasn’t reading, Peter liked to play with his toy soldiers at his home in Kensington, London, as this British Pathe News reel footage from 1956 shows. This was Mr Cushing before his career defining performances as Baron Victor in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and as Coctor Van Helsing in Dracula (1958).
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
Playing almost like a particularly claustrophobic Argento film produced by Roger Corman, but starring Hammer’s two most notable leading men, the gory low-budget—but totally wonderful—Horror Express is one of those films that we of a certain age saw repeatedly on “Chiller Theater” type TV shows in the mid to late 70s. When I was a ten-year-old kid, this film absolutely scared the shit out of me.

In Horror Express, which is almost a horror comedy, a supposed “missing link” is discovered in Siberia, but the frozen creature is merely the vessel for an extraterrestrial spirit of “pure evil” that can hop from victim to victim turning them into zombies that bleed from their eyes. It stars Christoper Lee and Peter Cushing as two competitive archaeologists. Telly Savalas has a great supporting role as a brutal Cossack officer who’s a nasty piece of work and there is even a weird Rasputin character, too.  It was written by Arnaud d’Usseau and Julian Zimet, the same (one-time blacklisted) screenwriters who penned the “undead biker” classic Psychomania. It was directed by Eugenio Martín. Like many European films of the time, this Spanish production was shot without sound and the actors dubbed their voices in later so it’s got that loopy sort of feel.

The film has been in the public domain for years and crappy quasi-bootleg copies have been making the rounds for a while (I have one that has the film reels out of order). At long last, Horror Express fans are getting treated to a new deluxe 2-disc dual DVD/Blu-ray release from cult meisters extraordinare, Severin Films. The new high-definition master has been created using the original camera negative and DVD extras include a recording of an extensive 1973 interview with Peter Cushing. (Cushing’s wife died before filming on Horror Express commenced. He almost backed out of the film entirely).

Pre-oder a copy of Horror Express on Amazon.
 

 
I wrote a version of this for Planet Paul, but as it’s getting near time for Halloween I thought I’d share. I love horror movies, and when I was younger I was a member of the Peter Cushing Fan Club. No seriously, it was cool. For your dollar a year you received a monthly newsletter, lots of free pix, and many other oddments. One such was a news clipping about the great actor and his longing for death, after his wife, Violet Helen Beck died. Helen gave Cushing purpose and meaning and although he was born in 1913, the world famous actor preferred to see the year of his actual birth as 1942 – the year he met Helen.

It was a love-at-first-sight thing, and the couple married in 1943, and thereafter, Helen, a former actress became the centre of Cushing’s life, encouraging him, and supporting him throughout the early, lean years of his career. As Cushing later said, “I owe it all to Helen.  She was an actress and gave up her career for me.  She made me what I am. She gave me a confidence, I could never have found on my own.”

If you look closely, you’ll see, in many of Cushing’s movies, a small silver framed portrait of Helen, placed as a prop on the desk of Baron Victor Frankenstein or in the study of Professor Van Helsing.

Cushing’s life with Helen was lived more on a mental plane than a physical one, as he told New Reveille in 1974, “We didn’t consider the physical aspect of marriage very important,” he explained. Yet, their love was so great that Cushing claimed his life ended the day Helen died in 1971.

That night, Cushing repeatedly ran up and down stairs in an attempt to induce a heart attack.  He failed and later claimed his actions had been caused by the trauma of his Helen’s death - “I had always hoped that we would depart this life together, but it was not to be.” 

From then on, Cushing had a death wish, and stated death was the only happy ending to his love affair with Helen.

“I am not a religious man, but I try to live by Christian ethics.  Helen has passed on but she is with me still.  She is all around. What I am doing is merely existing – longing for the day when I shall die and join her for ever.  We will be together again but time does not heal.”

Before she died, Helen wrote Peter a poem telling him “not to be hasty to leave” until he had lived the life he had been given.

“I could not take away my life, because that would be letting Helen down.  But I would be so happy if I could die tomorrow.”

But death did not come quickly for the great, good Gentleman of Horror, Cushing lived for a further 23 years, during which time he made some of his most memorable and successful films.
 

 
Bonus clips of Peter Cushing after the jump…
 

With all the hubbub about sexy vampires these days, courtesy of Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, it’s time to take a short stroll down memory lane to the “golden age” of vampire lesbian cinema with Hammer’s so-called “Karnstein Trilogy.”

The first of the series, The Vampire Lovers, starred beautiful Polish actress Ingrid Pitt, who had previously played Elizabeth Bathory in Countess Dracula for Hammer. Pitt played Carmilla Karnstein, the literary prototype for all vampire lesbians, a character created by author J. Sheridan Le Fanu in 1872. I saw the film on a late night “chiller theater” TV slot in the mid-Seventies and while its actually a pretty decent, serviceable period piece horror film, uh, whatever… let’s get real here, the real attraction were the bare breasts of Ms. Pitt and crew! Without them no one would remember this film at all.

Ask anyone who grew up in the Seventies —well ask any guy-- and they will know all about this film and its two sequels, which were often aired—astonishingly—with the nude scenes intact. Back in the Seventies, this was a cause for celebration for teenage boys. I used to scour the TV Guide searching for weird things to watch and whenever there was a screening of one of these films, I can assure you that I didn’t have anything better to do that night!

The second film in the Karnstein Trilogy was 1971’s Lust for a Vampire starring blond Danish hottie Yutte Stensgaard. Again, ask any middle-aged guy in America or England who watched horror films as a kid and… they will know the name Yutte Stensgaard, who is seen bare-breasted and smeared with blood in the film. A still from this scene made frequent appearances in monster movie books and magazines, providing masturbatory fodder for an entire generation of horror film geeks (here Stensgaard is seen signing it at a fan convention). Few woman reading this will have ever heard of Yutte Stensgaard, but trust me, many —most—of the guys out there have. I love the tagline in the trailer: “Welcome to the finishing school where they really DO finish you…”

Twins of Evil  was the final entrant in the series. Twins of Evil starred identical twin Playboy Playmates Mary and Madeline Collinson. It was a sort of pre-quel to the first film and also starred Peter Cushing. Aside from just Sapphic vampires, Twins of Evil had themes of witchcraft and devil worship, so it was an extra campy Hammer entry. The Collinson twins were such bad actresses that their voices were overdubbed in post production.

Trailer for one of the campier Hammer films of the seventies (and that is saying a lot), Dracula A.D. 1972. Starring Christopher Lee as Dracula, Peter Cushing as a Van Helsing descendant and pre-Dynasty Stephanie Beacham (she played Sable) and scream queen supreme Caroline Munro as the requisite Carnaby Street dolly birds.

“He’ll freak you out! Right out of this world!”