Cushing Curiosities

Cushing Curiosities
Blu-ray
Severin Films
1960-71 / 2.35:1, 1.66:1
Starring Peter Cushing, Bernard Lee, Patrick Macnee, Alida Valli
Written by Robert Westerby, Nigel Balchin, Lewis Griefer
Photographed by Arthur Grant, Max Greene, Desmond Dickinson
Directed by Charles Frend, John Boulting, Roy Boulting, Quentin Lawrence

Severin Films’ new Blu ray release is called Cushing Curiosities for a reason. Ranging from a no-nonsense policier to a soft-core vampire farce, the collection spans a fraught period in Peter Cushing’s life, both at home and on the big screen. It was an era that endured a sea change of cinematic styles, from elegant black and white Cinemascope to the degraded color palette of videotape—and for those who know the man only from his years with Hammer, a few of the movies might be revelatory; Cushing’s usual table-hopping theatrics are put in storage and a more reserved and patient actor appears in his place.

Produced the same year as Brides of Dracula, 1960’s Cone of Silence manages to be a fairly tense procedural about, of all things, air safety. Bernard Lee plays Captain Gort, a by-the-book pilot who’s charged with negligence in a runway accident. George Sanders is in his element as the Captain’s supercilious prosecutor and Michael Craig is a test pilot caught in the middle. Every character here performs “by the book” including the film’s nominal villain, Clive Judd, a duplicitous airline captain played by Cushing. These men live by the rules, except when they find the need to bend them—but did Gort bend them or break them? Though most of the suspense plays out on an airliner, director Charles Frend orchestrates a few terrifying moments that suggest an elevator in free fall.

André Morell, Cushing’s favorite sparring partner next to Christopher Lee, plays Gort’s beneficent commander, and his interplay with Cushing feels like a warm up for their sinister tango in 1962’s Cash on Demand—a unique take on A Christmas Carol. Cushing’s two-timing pilot is Scrooge-like in his own way, cold-hearted and unforgiving, a real-world version of his soulless Baron Frankenstein. It’s a subtle, forceful performance that he would match in another edgy drama released later that same year.

Suspect, with a lean running time of 81 minutes and an even thinner budget, resembles a crackling good television drama—it was made because Roy and John Boulting had seventeen days to kill and a script in their pocket. The hurry-up nature of the production gives a sense of urgency to this well-paced cat and mouse thriller about Professor Sewell, a prickly scientist whose work on germ warfare attracts the attention of both the government and a black marketeer with ideas of his own. Cushing is fine as the conflicted medico but it’s Ian Bannen who gives the film an unexpected hotfoot; he plays a bitter veteran who sacrificed more than his limbs during the war, and rarely has such ferocious self-loathing been portrayed so vividly on film.

The supporting cast includes Donald Pleasance, Thorley Walters, and Spike Milligan as an unfortunate bit of comic relief—his clownish character is the one stumbling block in an otherwise sage production. It’s a quickie to be sure but better conceived and with more integrity than most bigger budgeted productions.

Not as streamlined as Cone of Silence or Suspect but still worthy of attention was 1962’s The Man who Finally Died, directed by Quentin Lawrence and written by Lewis Griefer. Stanley Baker stars as Joe Newman, né Joachim Deutsch, a man whose father, an escaped refugee, may or may not be dead. A labyrinthine plot mixes up the Third Reich and insurance fraud with Cushing as a former Nazi bedevilled by his own conscience. British films of this era were playgrounds for great actors—The Man Who Finally Died is uplifted by an extraordinary supporting cast including Mai Zetterling, Eric Portman, Nigel Green, and Niall MacGinnis.

All three of these films are graced with beautiful black and white photography but things take a turn for the worse in televisionland. In 1968 Cushing signed on as Baker Street’s favorite son in the popular BBC series, Sherlock Holmes. The show premiered in 1965 with Douglas Wilmer as Holmes, but he left the series because of rushed schedules. Cushing inherited Wilmer’s concerns when he assumed the role and the actor’s gloomy mood taxes the great detective more then any arch-criminal.

Four episodes from Cushing’s tenure are included in the Severin set and they’re dour affairs with The Hound of the Baskervilles, that most venerable of vehicles, presented as a model of what not to do with a classic tale of suspense; with its cramped, brightly lit interiors and dreary exteriors (even though the episode was actually filmed on the moors in Dartmoor), the ghost of Hammer’s Hound can be heard baying its disapproval.

Disaster films were all the rage in the early seventies and Cushing found himself starring in an inadvertent example of the genre; 1971’s Bloodsuckers or, for the classier grindhouses, Incense for the Damned, is a laughable shipwreck of a movie beautifully photographed by Desmond Dickinson but sunk by a rebellious director named Robert Hartford-Davis and his even more capricious producers. The movie is based on a 1960 novel, Doctors Wear Scarlet and the audience is given the opportunity to bolt during the credits; the director isn’t listed—Hartford-Davis chose to remain anonymous (a wise move, the posters make it look like an Andy Milligan film).

Cushing stars as a starchy Oxford dean and Patricia Mower is a star pupil under the spell of a Greek blood cult. An unfazed Patrick MacNee—the man defined “cool”—plays a military attaché named Derek Longbow—at one point he’s made to hang from a cliff like a British Beetle Bailey before performing a death fall worthy of Super Dave Osborne. The film resembles a series of botched rehearsals, missing scenes, and unexplained plot points—in other words, the movie is a fucking mess—literally: In an effort to attract the raincoat crowd, the producers filmed a ten minute orgy scene and dropped it into the middle of the film. The dimly lit gymnastics are reminiscent of 70’s porn loops and the jumbled goulash of body parts would give even Larry Flynt pause. 1974’s Tender Dracula is pretty jumbled too, but not in the traditional sense.

Directed by Pierre Grunstein and written by Justin Lenoir, Tender Dracula will inspire nostalgia for the time when art school students grabbed a camera and hit the road to make a movie. Tender Dracula looks to have been made in the same improvisational style—unclassifiable and incomprehensible, it stars Cushing as MacGregor, a horror film star looking for a new lease on life. Alida Valli, still in command of the frightening beauty she used to overpower her co-stars in The Third Man and Eyes Without a Face, plays Cushing’s (perhaps) centuries old paramour.

Co-starring Bernard Ménez as a screenwriter enlisted to woo MacGregor back to the grind, it’s hard to top Ménez’s description of the movie as “a UFO.” Miou-Miou, fresh off Going Places, lives up to her rep as the new art house sex-kitten but Cushing himself is more understated than usual, reserved and melancholy, it’s a meditative performance hinting that the role of MacGregor may be more of a self portrait than we thought.

Cushing’s final years were defined and dominated by the death of his wife Helen, and when the actor takes Valli in his arms for a slow waltz though the castle, it’s easy to assume that he’s holding the memory of his wife even closer. Cushing, somewhat surprisingly, was very fond of Grunstein’s effort and wrote, “Tender Dracula contains so many different elements: humour, romance, a few subtle ‘shocks’, but most of all it shows how love in its truest sense is undying and eternal… it has such a haunting theme.”

That letter can be found in Jonathan Rigby’s succinct book on Cushing and his films, a highlight of the extras to be found in Severin’s box set. Great care has been taken in the production of this release, and the gorgeous transfers act as veritable shrines to the photographers responsible; Arthur Grant (Dracula) for Cone of Silence, the amazing Max Greene (Night and the City, I’m Alright Jack) for Suspect, Stephen Dade for The Man Who Finally Died, and Desmond Dickinson (The Importance of Being Earnest, Horrors of the Black Museum),

The extras continue the smorgasbord approach to Cushing’s career including a newsreel of the actor at home with his miniature soldiers and audio commentaries for most the films including Jonathan Rigby on Suspect, Kim Newman on The Man Who Finally Died and Baker Street expert David Stuart Davies on the Holmes BBC series.

There’s also an attempt to make sense of the nonsensical in an interview with Robert Hartford-Davis’ daughter, Jean Hartford, a documentary on Tigon Productions, and an interview with writer John Hamilton who discusses the peculiar career of Hartford-Davis. Actress Françoise Pascal, one of the orgy participants in Bloodsuckers, is interviewed about the scandalous goings-on behind the studio’s back. Interviews with Pierre Grunstein and Bernard Menez shine a light on the making of Tender Dracula and Cushing’s involvement, and there are several “illustrated” audio interviews with Cushing himself.

Here’s the complete rundown on Severin’s site.