Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Peter Cushing- Action hero



This came about from an earlier tumblr post that was itself inspired by watching Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell.  Cushing has a scene where the monster is rampaging, he whips his jacket off, wraps a bottle of ether in it, smashes the jacket against the stone wall, bounds to the top of a table and leaps onto David Prowse's back, smothering him with the jacket.
I checked his age at the time. 61.
The Tumblr post answer is, no, Cushing didn't run down the length of the table and rip the cutains off. It was his double.
But the point was the energy amperage that Cushing threw into stuff like leaping across tables, turning over in chairs (Dr Syn)
Diving and skewering Mummies with wall displayed spears.
You always believed he could do everything you saw. Very heroic.
I did a couple of thumbnails of Cushing spearing the Mummy and then looked up reference. You can see how much energy I wanted to put into the scene vs how much exists in the stills. That's the effect of Cushing throwing himself into the scenes.

7 comments:

MrGoodson2 said...

I'm 61. I'm an action hero in my mind.

Rickart said...

I just watched that movie! Oh man, it's so great to see Peter Cushing in just about anything. The movie was made 2 years before Star Wars. He's something of a genius when it comes to cold-blooded killers... he commits atrocities and then has a nice cup of tea. Very British.

Rickart said...

Oh, and I want to see that Mummy movie now!

MrGoodson2 said...

It's probably the ultimate Mummy movie. Christopher Lee.

Knocking the stuffing out of him ( looks like stuffing) with a double barreled shotgun.

Probably the best of all the ancient precursor stories.

Plus Hammer Glamour. All the great looking women in those Hammer films.

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell was really well done. Saw that it was the last Directing job for Freddie Francis. He did all the best Hammer films.

Rickart said...

Oh, but the monster from that movie was awful... really bad make-up and suit.

MrGoodson2 said...

A bit rubbery. But state of the art for that period. Probably the same people that did the Oliver Reed werewolf. Looked a bit like him. Torn shirt , hairy.
And it was Terence Fisher, not Freddie Francis. Now I have to look up Freddie Francis

MrGoodson2 said...

No one wonder I have them confused. They are right there in that era doing very similar films. But Francis if the great cinematographer