By Tristan Bishop
If you missed it, click here to read Part 1 of Tristan’s history of Cushing’s horror career outside Hammer, as part of our Cushing Centenary tribute.
1971 was not a good year for Cushing. The death of his wife Helen Beck, after 28 years of marriage, affected him greatly. He had to drop out of Hammer’s Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb after her passing, but later that year threw himself into his work as a distraction. Cushing had never been a slouch, averaging 3 or 4 films a year, but in 1972 he made 8 feature films. Her death also took its toll on Cushing’s appearance; although he was written in the script for Hammer’s Dracula AD 1972 as Stephanie Beacham’s father, the studio decided that, given his appearance, the role should be changed to that of her grandfather.
The first film for Amicus that Cushing made after Helen’s death was I, Monster (1971), a retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde with Christopher Lee as the ill-fated doctor and Cushing as his lawyer who discovers the truth. First time director Steven Weeks (who later made the interesting Ghost Story) was only 23 at the time of filming, and perhaps it is his lack of experience which makes this one a bit of a slog. The film is only 80 minutes long but drags frequently, despite the star power and a decent enough script. Apparently it was originally to be filmed in 3D, but this was abandoned during filming.
In 1972 he returned to Amicus for yet another Robert Bloch compendium film, Asylum, this time directed by Roy Ward Baker, another veteran Hammer director of such films as Quatermass & The Pit and The Vampire Lovers. Another solid cast, featuring Robert Powell, Patrick Magee, Charlotte Rampling, Britt Ekland and Hebert Lom, combined to make another quality production, this time featuring a creepy and effective wraparound sequence, which, like The House That Dripped Blood, feeds back well into the stories. The stories themselves are of the usual varying quality, but mostly work well, and, in ‘Frozen Fear’ reach what may well be the ghoulish pinnacle of Amicus’ entire output (I remember me and a friend being properly freaked out by this sequence back when we were too young to be watching such things). Cushing’s segment here is ‘The Weird Tailor’, in which he enlists a tailor to make a suit from a mysterious material which, it transpires, can animate objects and even reanimate the dead. Incidentally the story (which, like all the stories in Asylum, originally appeared in print in Weird Tales magazine) was actually filmed back in 1961 for the TV series Thriller. It is of course tempting to read something of Cushing’s grief for his late wife into his performance here, which makes the segment all the more effective.
It appears Cushing was not the only one in overdrive in 1972, as Amicus wasted no time in getting a second anthology film released that year: Tales From The Crypt, based on stories originally published in EC Comics such as the titular publication. Bloch was not on script duties this time; instead Subotsky himself scripted from the original stories, but Freddie Francis was back at the helm this time, and the number of stories was back at 5, rather than 4, as had been the case since Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors. The cast was also slightly less star-studded, although Joan Collins appears in one segment (as the prey of a killer Santa Claus!), and Ralph Richardson and Patrick Magee also feature. This tinkering with the formula produced what was Amicus’ biggest success with a portmanteau film, and it was showered with critical praise on release. The wraparound segment this time, however, feels rather close to that of Torture Garden, lacking the clever tie-in to the individual stories that the previous couple of instalments had, and three of the stories are so over-familiar (perhaps due to the age of the source material) that they lack much power. The jewel in the crown here, however, is Cushing’s segment, Poetic Justice, wherein Cushing plays one of his most affecting roles as Arthur Grimsdyke, a kindly old man and friend to children and animals, who is hounded by his nasty neighbours who object to his animals. They orchestrate a hate campaign against him, accusing him of being a child-molester, but when their actions have the effect of forcing Grimsdyke into suicide, he later returns to take his revenge. Cushing here tugs at the heartstrings in a role which moves from loveable old man to vengeful zombie. The make-up used on Cushing in the later stages of the tale is remarkable – those famous razor-blade cheekbones topped off by huge hollow eye sockets – and is a standout addition to the canon of sympathetic movie monsters, however brief the appearance.
Five years after the execrable Blood Beast Terror, Cushing made a return journey to Tigon in 1973, with another period horror film which could easily be mistaken for a Hammer production – thankfully this time in terms of quality too. The Creeping Flesh puts Cushing and Lee back together with direction from (him again!) Freddie Francis. Cushing and Lee play brothers in this one, and the story is told in flashback, with Cushing residing in an asylum run by Lee, recounting the story of how he ended up there. It transpires he discovered a giant skeleton whilst on an expedition to New Guinea, which he believes may predate man and unlock the secret to curing evil. It’s an odd tale, for sure, but one that seems to be inspired by the great Nigel Kneale (specifically his masterpiece Quatermass and The Pit), and works quite well on a metaphorical level – with Cushing not only obsessing over the discovered skeleton, but also dealing with a couple of figurative skeletons in the family closet, as he keeps his daughter (a very impressive turn by Lorna Helbron) from the truth about her mother. Lee isn’t given much to do here, so Cushing effortlessly steals the show, trading on his Frankenstein roles as man driven by his work to the point of madness. Francis also pulls this one out of the bag with some striking visuals and atmosphere you could cut with an axe.
In 1973 Amicus released two of their final compendium horrors – Cushing did not appear in The Vault Of Horror, but he was back for the last instalment, From Beyond The Grave. Unlike the rest of the series, the stories here were not Robert Bloch, nor were they adapted from classic comics; instead the stories are based on the short stories of the once-popular but now mostly forgotten writer R Chetwynd-Hayes (also responsible for the work The Monster Club, later filmed as what can only be described as a crude full-stop in the annals of classic British horror). From Beyond The Grave reverts back to the middle films in the series in giving us 4 stories rather than 5. However the film mostly works quite well, and this film marks the directorial debut of Kevin Connor, who went on to make the ace Motel Hell, a bunch of fantasy films and more TV movies than one person could easily watch in a lifetime. The best of the segments is An Act Of Kindness, with turns by the great Donald Pleasance and his daughter Angela, but the real treat here is the wraparound, with Cushing at his charming-but-sinister best as the proprietor of a curiosity shop called Temptations Ltd – here the wraparound actually plays into every segment, with Cushing dispensing items which have supernatural powers and afford a grisly fate to those who attempt to cheat him. The ending even links back to earlier segments, making the film perhaps the most satisfying of the Amicus anthologies as a whole. The cast is, again, a treat for 70’s horror buffs, as Diana Dors, Ian Ogilvy and David Warner all pop up.
Although not known for their period horror, Amicus chanced their arm with And Now The Screaming Starts, also in 1973, with Roy Ward Baker back at the helm and another great cast – Lom, Magee, Ogilvy and Beacham all appear here. Sadly in this case the undisputed talent fail to make anything of a film which starts as a classic Gothic story and ends up as something rather unpleasant. This is not the fault of the actors, who do a good job (especially Ogilvy, and, naturally, Cushing, who sadly only appears an hour into the film and is then not given a great deal to do), but rather a convoluted, drawn-out story, some god-awful effects work, and a queasy ghostly-rape plotline. Also, although Beacham looks fetching and gives it her all, she is called on to holler at the top of her lungs so often that the film might be better titled ‘The Screaming Never Bloody Stops’.
Thankfully things had improved somewhat by the following year, and Amicus’ The Beast Must Die (1974) is an extremely original, if not always 100% successful, take on the werewolf film. Famous for the gimmicky ‘werewolf break’ near the end of the film (whereby the audience are given 30 seconds to guess the identity of the lycanthrope), the film brings in new blood in the shape of actors Charles Gray, Michael Gambon and black American actor Calvin Lockhart (star of such irresistible blaxploitation hits as Cotton Comes To Harlem, Melinda, and a turn as the original Biggie Smalls in Let’s Do It Again), as well as director Paul Annett, who later worked exclusively in television. These changes lead to something which feels totally unlike any other British horror film. It was critically savaged for many years but recently has emerged as something of a cult favourite. Certainly the story, with a big game hunter (Lockhart) inviting guests to his huge mansion and then informing they are on lockdown until one of them is revealed as a werewolf, is an unusual one, and, combined with the fun cast and some awesome funk on the soundtrack, makes it an intriguing prospect for those looking for something a little different. Cushing plays an expert on werewolf lore in this one, and the film was re-released under the amazing title Black Werewolf (!)
Madhouse (1974) is an Amicus/AIP production, starring AIP’s big star Vincent Price, with Cushing very much in a supporting role. Prior to prepping for this article, Madhouse was one of the handful of these films I had never seen; I have always been aware of it being considered a bit of a mess, a poor cousin to Price’s Theatre Of Blood and Dr Phibes films. Whilst it has neither the delightful camp of the former nor the jaw-dropping art direction of the latter, it surprised me by being a post-modern horror film made a full twenty years before Wes Craven clocked on to the idea with New Nightmare and Scream. Price plays Paul Toombes, a veteran horror actor who starred as ‘Dr Death’ in a series of films, whose career was halted when his fiancée was murdered shortly after their engagement was announced, and ended up in an asylum. However, Toombes is now planning a comeback… but then the murders start again! Is Price genuinely unhinged or is someone setting him up?
The film plays with Price’s reputation, with one scene showing Toombes and his old friend Herbert Flay (Cushing) watching clips from Price’s old Roger Corman films (‘ahhh, Karloff’), and is a real treat for horror hounds familiar with Price’s career. Cushing’s gentlemanly persona is also played up to here effectively, and fans of Linda Hayden will be more than satisfied with her appearance as a horror star groupie in outfits leaving very little to the imagination. Sadly, as is the curse of any art considered to be ahead of its time, Madhouse was a box office failure, enough to convince Samuel Z Arkoff of AIP that the horror cycle was well and truly over, and, aside from the forehead-slap in cinematic form that was The Monster Club, would be Amicus’ final horror film.
By 1975 the classic British horror film was firmly in decline – Hammer would release their final (until fairly recently at least) horror film, To The Devil A Daughter, to worldwide indifference the next year, but there were still those who believed there was money to be made, and thus Kevin Francis (the son of… yup, you’ve guessed it, the oft-mentioned Freddie Francis) began Tyburn studios in the mid 70’s (their first production being the obscure and slightly batty Persecution, starring Ralph Bates, Lana Turner and some cats). Their second picture, The Ghoul (1975), directed by, what a surprise! – Freddie Francis and also starring John Hurt, occupies an unenviable position as one of the most unloved of all Cushing’s films. Whilst (to my mind at least) it doesn’t quite plumb the depths of The Blood Beast Terror, it still manages to be pretty weak – Cushing here takes centre stage as a former missionary whose son was somehow corrupted (in a plot turn straight out of the 1920s) by a cannibalistic Indian sect and turned into a fat bald man painted blue with a taste for flesh (ah, those Indians, eh?). The film is really only notable for two things: the art direction on Cushing’s beautifully ornate house, and a scene where Cushing cries for his dead wife. The production uses a picture of Cushing’s own late wife Helen Beck, and it is alleged that the tears were real. Whether or not you see this as a sweet tribute or a cynical exploitation of Cushing’s real life heartbreak, it remains an eye-opening scene.
Despite all its faults, The Ghoul did excellent business at the box office, and paved the way for the father-and-son team to make Legend Of The Werewolf the same year. Now nearly impossible to track down in a watchable form (there is a horrible looking transfer of a 35mm print on YouTube), I managed to source a copy of an early eighties VHS print for the purposes of writing this article. Featuring turns from the great Ron Moody, Michael Ripper, Roy Castle and the slightly terrifying Hugh Griffiths, the film manages some good atmosphere, and, to my mind, decent werewolf make-up, but is sadly (like so many tantalisingly unavailable films) quite the let-down. The story is unconvincing, the script is dull, and the setting (supposedly Paris) looks like the back-yard of a factory. Nevertheless Cushing, ever the consummate professional, is obviously having a whale of a time, and gets a fair amount of screen time as a sort of forensic detective, deliciously eating his lunch whilst he prods at cadavers (“oh, now this one is VERY nasty”). Cushing’s performance is really the only reason to bother with this one, if you manage to find it, that is! Legend Of The Werewolf did not perform as well as The Ghoul at the box office (despite being a slightly better film), even though it was double billed with the cracking Hammer production Vampire Circus.
Cushing’s final film for Amicus was not a horror film, but At The Earth’s Core (1976), part of a series of more family-orientated adventure films based on Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, which started with 1975’s The Land That Time Forgot. Cushing starred alongside Doug McClure in his one, with support from the stunning Caroline Munro, and direction from Kevin Connor, who seemed to specialise in fantasy films in the late 70’s. The plot concerns Cushing as (surprise!) a Victorian scientist who drills down into a Welsh mountain with his invention ‘The Iron Mole’ and discovers a land filled with cavemen, prehistoric monsters and psychic flying lizard creatures! Despite, or, more accurately, because of the slightly shoddy effects (it’s almost impossible to imagine that Star Wars was just around the corner), At The Earth’s Core remains a charming waste of time, and Cushing here excels as the doddery Victorian gentleman to McClure’s more obvious all-action hero. It may not be the most fitting film to the end this article, and thus Cushing’s career at the second-tier studios, but it is, at least, not The Ghoul.
(As a post-script to this article I would like to point any interested viewers in the director of my personal favourite Cushing performance – a non-horror Hammer production from 1960 called Cash On Demand, which is a cracking little tale about bank robbery. Well worth tracking down.)