Peter Cushing
Blu-ray Review: Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
When Mary Shelley published Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus) in 1818, she couldn’t have envisaged just how popular her creation would turn out to be. How it would go on to inspire and terrify, in equal measure, generations to come. The concept of the mad scientist and their re-animated monster remains an enticing prospect. The …
Blu-Ray Review: The Mummy
There was a time, before the internet and globalisation, when Egyptology felt exciting and exotic. Much of this can be attributed to Empire, with Britain and France, in particular, having a keen eye for antiquities. Expeditions to Cairo, and the surrounds, unearthed a number of treasures, but also brought with them a fair smattering of …
Blu-ray Review: Asylum
Psychological horror continues to be the scariest and most compelling sub-genre because human imaginations can conjure up all manner of terrors. People have been labelled ‘insane’ for many reasons over the centuries with often little or nothing to do with their mental health. When there’s no logical explanation for something we naturally look for an …
Blu-Ray Review: The House That Dripped Blood
Whilst today the name Hammer Horror is known all around the world, it was far from being the only British film production company which was making world-class horror during the 1960s and 1970s. Based out of Shepperton Studios, Amicus established a reputation for creating some of the best portmanteau horrors of the era. Similar is …
Blu-Ray Review: Hammer Volume One: Fear Warning
Hammer Volume One: Fear Warning brings together four Hammer horror productions released in the first half of the 1960s. They are four very different tales of fear, curses, madness and the supernatural. In a genre and period when female actors were usually restricted to playing the victim or the damsel in distress, these films afforded …
Blu-Ray Review: Hammer Horror Collection One
For two decades, beginning in the mid-1950s, ‘Hammer Horror’ was the epitome of genre cinema in the UK. With a cast of familiar faces (including Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee) Hammer Film Productions churned out an almost constant stream of terror, blood and monsters. There most popular titles revolved around Dracula, Frankenstein and …
Blu-Ray Review: Torture Garden
Two of the greatest authors of terror, H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, revelled in the medium of short stories. The format lends itself to the horror genre, allowing directors to investigate a full gamut of fear. Anthology films are inherently difficult as, unlike collections of short stories, by their very nature there’s a much …