This month I decided to watch a film a day starring my three favourite Gemini fellas - Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee. I started things off with the one that features the three of them together.
• House of the Long Shadows ¹²³♥♥♥- My all-time favourtie fun, spooky flick starring all three Gemini gents plus John Carradine and Desi Arnaz, Jr.
• Twice Told Tales ² - Three little vignettes but I really only thought the first one, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, with Vincent Price, was good.
• Asylum ¹* - Peter Cushing's performance in his vignette always brings me to tears.
• Dr. Who and the Daleks ¹ - I'm not much of a Whovian but Cushing did a marvelous job as the Doctor and it's always good to see him as not the bad guy.
• The Great Mouse Detective ²♥ - Such a super cute 80s Disney animated film! I loved the Sherlock Holmes influence and all the characters were just plain adorable.
• Haunted Palace ²♥ - Ooo!! This was a Vincent Price film I'd not seen before and it was really good. Based on a Poe poem and a Lovecraft story, I was thoroughly into it!
• The Tingler ²♥♥ - One of my fave scary flicks. Vincent Price is so reserved and dashing as the scientist researching the tingler!
• And Now The Screaming Starts ¹* - Lame title aside ("starts"??? And Now the Screaming Begins sounds better to my ear.) this was a fairly interesting Peter Cushing film and the extraordinarily lovely Stephanie Beacham sure can deliver a helluva scream.
• The House That Dripped Blood ¹ ³♥ - This is one of my faves from Cushing and Lee. The bonus of Denholm Elliott (Marcus Brody from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Joss Ackland (the baddie in my fave version of Miracle on 34th Street) rounded out the cast and it's definitely worth watching more than once.
• Shock ² - So over the top and a plot that centers entirely around the outdated thought that women are weak and fragile and anything could push them over the edge and into a complete mental collapse. This gal partially witnessed a murder (she only saw the man raise a candlestick to use as the weapon) and went into full-on shock. Totally absurd but Vincent looked wonderful and it gave me a handful of chuckles.
• Return to Witch Mountain ³* - This sequel was really pretty good. I watched it last year and really liked seeing Christopher Lee and Bette Davis as the baddies.
• Peter Cushing: In His Own Words ¹ - A little doc on the great Peter Cushing based on bits of a recorded interview he gave plus some co-stars speaking of what a great man he was. Not much new but I'll watch anything to do with this lovely, lovely man.
• House on Haunted Hill ² - Meh. This film is beautifully shot in black and white and has both Vincent Price and Elisha Cook, Jr. but even still, I never really liked this film. That one girl spends the entire film screaming and running from rooms. I dunno, I guess since I saw it as a grown up, it never became a favourite.
• Star Wars ¹♥- 1977 version, which is the only version to watch, and it is just as fun now as when Dave and I would watch it again and again in the 80s. Aunt Berne would babysit and bring over her VCR to connect to our old TV. We only ever wanted her to bring The Black Stallion and Star Wars. Peter Cushing was brilliantly understated as that evil Grand Moff Tarkin.
• Biggles: Adventures in Time ¹* - What a fun 80s flick! It had a touch of Voyagers! to it, in that the main character travels in time from the 80s back to the somewhat distant past. The score is hilariously of the period, full of synthesizers and groovy beats.
•
Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine ² - Oh this one was pretty awful. Vincent Price's character, the eponymous Dr. Goldfoot, was
so over the top, but I did like the POV shots of
Lombard Street in San Fran.
• The Satanic Rites of Dracula or Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride ¹ ³* - I had started watching The Ghoul but found it to be so dreadful and dull that I couldn't finish it. I had seen this film years ago and it's pretty good. Seeing lovely Joanna Lumley is an added bonus!
• The Monster Club ² - This was another Brit flick with little vignettes. It opens with John Carradine and Vincent Price and they are of course an utter delight. They carry through the film acting as narrators in between each story. The background music by UB40 was fun but all in all, this one was not all that great.
• The Hound of the Baskervilles ¹ ³* - Oh the boys were so young! Both terribly dashing as Holmes and Baskerville. I'd seen this film before and it's very well done and Cushing makes for a superb Sherlock.
• The Hellfire Club ¹ - Kind of low budget and not that great, but Peter Cushing was great as the barrister!
• Horror Expresss ¹ ³* - A fun flick about a prehistoric ape-man that is transported on a train, defrosts, and wreaks havoc on all who come in his path!
• Count Dracula ³ - The standout was Klaus Kinski as Renfield.
• The Beast Must Die ¹* - This was a pretty cool flick about a batch of people at an old house in the country and one of them is a werewolf.
• Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell ¹ - Peter was very good but the monster was pretty silly looking.
• The Curse of Frankenstein ¹ ³* - This was a decent flick with Christopher Lee as the Monster and Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein, who near the end became quite sinister.
• The End of the Affair ¹* - Peter was, as usual, excellent as that broken cuckolded civil servant husband of the delicious Deborah Kerr. Van Johnson's never been my favourite, but this was a nice telling of the Graham Greene story.
• The Oblong Box ² ³ - I picked this film for today because it starred both birthday boys, however, it wasn't the best of the month at all. But Vincent looked terribly dashing in his old timey duds!
¹ - Peter Cushing
² - Vincent Price
³ - Christopher Lee
* - liked
♥ - loved
.JPG)
