You know what’s better than a flick featuring good ol’ Peter Cushing? A flick featuring Peter Cushing you haven’t seen 3,457 times! To that end Severin’s new boxset, Cushing Curiosities; a 6 disc collection of Cushing-starring rarities will fit that bill nicely indeed!
The whole shebang kicks off with 1960’s Cone of Silence…
Cushing stars as pilot Clive Judd; a douche-par-excellence that has nothing better to do than fuck with an investigation into a fatal airline disaster. Why would he do that you may ask? Well, he kinda-sorta had everything to do with it and he’s sweating that shit in a major way.
Defending the pilot of the doomed craft, Captain George Gort (Bernard Lee) by name, is Captain Hugh Dallas (Michael Craig)… but how pure are his motives what with his being in a romance with Gort’s daughter, Charlotte (Elizabeth Seal)?
Directed by Charles Frend (Scott of the Antarctic,The Cruel Sea), Cone of Silence is a solid courtroom-centric thriller that moves at a good clip, presents an engaging case, and while this isn’t really my cinematic bag, it certainly didn’t bore.
Being a drama, the cast does all of the heavy lifting and features familiar Hammer Films players Cushing, Lee (Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell), Seal (Vampire Circus) and André Morell (The Plague of the Zombies), along with Psychomania’s George Sanders.
Another plus is the model-work used to convey a lot of the plane action present… and even though real shots of airfields and aircraft (basically one plane) are used, the lion’s share is represented by miniature artistry.
As for special features to accompany the feature we get: a newsreel featuring Cushing and his model soldier collection, an appearance by Cushing on the Funster radio program, an audio interview with Cushing from The Guardian (that plays over the feature), another audio interview (this time moderated by author Tony Dalton), and, get this… another archival, audio only, Cushing interview! Additionally an interview with actor Michael Craig is featured on this disc as well.
Disc Two brings us a double feature which kicks off with 1960’s Suspect…
Cushing is back baby… and admittedly he’s a bit of an ancillary character this go-around as his Professor Sewell is the head of a team of biologists who’s breakthrough in disease prevention is being kept hush-hush thanks to governmental order.
One of those biologists, Bob Marriott (Tony Britton), gets mixed up with a real piece of work named Brown (Halloween’s Dr. Loomis himself, Donald Pleasence) who can totally get his research into the hands of the scientific exchange program he represents rather than the man.
Again, I thought I’d give zero shits about this flick… and again I was wrong as all hell.
As before we are presented with a tight lil’ thriller that is absolutely carried by the quality of it’s cast with the main focus being placed on whatever-the-fuck kind of triangle exists between Britton’s Marriott, his gal pal Lucy (Virginia Maskell), and her moody-ass amputee ex-fiance Alan Andrews (Ian Bannen). Add in quality performances from Cushing and Pleasance (add ultra-sweaty to his description if you will) and you have interesting turns from all involved.
The other half of the bill belongs to 1962’s The Man Who Finally Died…
Jazz-man Joe Newman (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’s Stanely Baker), a German ex-pat living in foggy ol’ London-town is called home by his estranged father… a man he believes died decades ago. Well, he didn’t die then, but apparently more recently… like a few days before he called his son!
Joe’s investigation goes over like a fart in a submarine with the local yokels, especially his pater’s doc, Peter von Brecht (Cushing) which spells “massive cover-up” to our hero. What is the truth and could his father possibly still be alive?
This flick is a highlight of the set and features a fantastic slow-burn mystery with a hefty dollop of Noir ambience tossed on and I ate that sinister shit up with a spoon my cats n’ creeps!
As for extras on Disc Two we get a duo of audio commentaries for each film featuring author Jonathan Rigby and horror film historian Kevin Lyons tackling Suspect and authors Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw taking us through the production and legacy of The Man Who Finally Died.
Moving on to Discs Three and Four (contained in one case) we get six surviving episodes (each running close to an hour in length) of the 1968 BBC series adaptation of Sherlock Holmes…
The episodes contained are:
A Study in Scarlet
The Hound of the Baskervilles Pt. 1
The Hound of the Baskervilles Pt. 2
The Sign of Four
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
The Blue Carbuncle
No doubt the adaptation of arguably the best known Holmes yarn, The Hound of the Baskervilles (a return to both the character and story for Cushing after starring in Hammer’s 1959 adaptation) is the crown jewel here, but the series is pretty damn fun overall with impressive costumes, terrific performances, and that over-all British TV comfort food vibe that I’m sure many of you dig as much as yours cruelly.
It should be noted that while overall the picture in this set is superior, these episodes naturally feature the roughest looking visuals in the collection as they were made for the tighter-budgeted world of TV and were recorded on tape rather than film.
More up to snuff are the bonus features present here which include: audio commentaries for each and every episode provided by authors Newman, Forshaw, and Holmes’ cinema scholar David Stuart Davies (trading in and out), yet another audio-only Cushing interview, and a selection of “lost” segments from the show featuring optional commentary from Rigby and Lyons.
Continuing to Disc Five we get 1971’s Bloodsuckers…
Professor Richard Fountain (Patrick Mower, The Devil Rides Out), pulls a “Ninja Vanish” while researching a mysterious tome in Greece.
Enter: Dr. Walter Goodrich (Cushing), Fountain’s mentor who before long sends a group of Fountain’s associates off to the land of Moussaka and olives.
Once there they learn their friend has fallen in with a bloodsucking cult, and removing him from their clutches will likely be a dark journey indeed…
As long as you don’t expect an abundance of Cushing you are in for one hell of a horny, psychotronic trip chock full of ritualistic sacrifices, orgies, hot takes on higher education, and more… all seemingly tossed together with wild abandon with an extended cameo from The Howling’s Patrick Macnee for good measure!
Adding to the madness are a host of special features which kick of with another informative and highly listenable audio commentary courtesy of Rigby and Lyons, followed by a short film from Bloodsucker’s director Robert Hartford-Davis, followed by an interview with the director’s daughter Jean Hartford-Davis.
Also included are a retrospective on Hartford-Davis from author John Hamilton, interviews with uncredited actress Françoise Pascal and sound recordist Tony Dawe, an alternate title sequence, and the film’s trailer.
Last up in the collection comes 1974’s Tender Dracula…
Horror host McGregor (Cushing) has played a vampire on TV for ages and he’s getting rather sick of the gig, having an itch to pursue romantic roles instead.
McGregor’s producer is having none of that ol’ bullshit, and sends the show’s screenwriters (and their girlfriends) to the man’s Gothic domicile to convince him that his future aspirations are quite crap indeed.
This naturally leads to orgies (here we go again), S&M sequences, and a vibe that could best be described as Psychadelic Gothic, and it’s a damn entertaining, surreal viewing experience highlighted by Cushing’s Lugosi inspired McGregor who may actually be the creature he pretends to be on TV… or he’s insane… one or the other…
As for bonus content we get yet another audio commentary featuring Rigby and Lyons, interviews with director Pierre Grunstein and actor Bernard Menez, and the film’s trailer.
Along with all of the above, this release from Severin features a 200 page book with new writing from Rigby that takes us through the life and career of Cushing with copious images and notes.
Sure to delight any fiendish fanatic of the man’s work, Cushing Curiosities presents a deep dive into the actor’s lesser-seen material and is worth your hard earned dough for the included book alone!
