Peter Cushing Opens Another Coffin #2

Peter Cushing Opens Another Coffin #1

An exhaustive and completely pointless catalogue of all the horror film coffins opened by the incomparable Peter Cushing. Just because.

Brief excerpt from Dracula Overture by James Bernard. No attempt has been made to infringe copyright.

#1 The Curse of Frankenstein (Hammer Films, 1957)

Dr Who in an Exciting Adventure with Vince

 A list of the most thrilling moments in Dr Who, and what they mean to me.

The Art of Bedwetting: The Tom Baker Titles (1975-1980)

Like most kids growing up in the UK in the 70s, I watched Dr Who every Saturday tea-time with my family.  And like most kids I was utterly terrified of the Dr Who titles and theme tune, which seemed to be purposely designed to make kids wet their beds, possibly to keep us warm through the freezing winter nights, for there was no central heating in those days.  Every Saturday at 5:30pm, the living room would welcome in a swirling, sickly blue-green vortex of weird horrors and a screaming, unearthly howl – and that was just the contents of my pants.  The BBC1 Saturday early evening schedule –  Basil Brush (a sarcastic fox), Dr Who (a time-travelling box), The Generation Game (a load of old toss) – was just about the most perfect after-tea viewing a kid could want, though it did fuel recurring nightmares about conveyor belts displaying dead foxes and cuddly toy Daleks exterminating fondue sets.

Gripping: The Hand of Fear Part 1 (2^nd October, 1976)

My first clear memory of Dr Who: lovely Sarah Jane Smith in that charming Andy Pandy get-up, opening a metal box: inside is a fossilised severed hand.  Then, horribly, inexorably, the hand moves... and the theme tune screams in. I was six.  I am now 47.  I still wake up screaming.  Though that’s probably because I’m 47.   Or because my sleeping wife has “accidentally” punched me in the face again.

Going Underground: Destiny of the Daleks Episode 1 (1^st September, 1979)

Dr Who and Romana (who is essentially another Dr Who, only with even more hair) find themselves on the Dalek home planet Skaro, where the Daleks are searching for something underground.  The episode ends with the Daleks smashing through some flimsy metal walls, rounding on Romana and screaming, “Do not move! Do not move! Do not move! Do not move! Do not move!” eight hundred billion times at the terrified (and unmoving) Time Lord  I was 9; this was tremendously thrilling stuff.  I spent the week running and bounding into rooms screaming “Do not move! Do not move! Do not move! Do not move! Do not move!” eight hundred billion times at Patch the family dog, until it snapped and bit me on the big toe and had to be put down.

Life Left in the Old Boy: Destiny of the Daleks Episode 2 (8^th September, 1979)

A week later, deep beneath the surface of Skaro, Dr Who and some funky disco robots find Davros in a dusty corner. Quelle domage, Davros - that’s who the Daleks were looking for.  Davros is not in the best shape. Davros is dead.  He’s covered in cobwebs.  He probably hasn’t had a wee for hundreds of years, and there’s a moth on his nose.  But then… the withered hand twitches… the cycloptic eye illuminates the gloom… Davros lives!  The moth flies off as the theme tune screams in.  Magic.

The Inevitable Vertical of Midnight: Logopolis Part 4 (21^st March, 1981)

Dr Who’s own ghost haunts him as he hangs around on the side of dreary motorways or on distant planets populated exclusively by beardy maths teachers.  And then he falls from a massive radio telescope that’s got a cardboard cut out of the Master in it and he crumples to the ground in a burgundy heap and he smiles and he dies and he is reborn as his ghost merges into him and he sits up and smiles as Peter Davison.  Yeah, I cried.  I didn’t understand a single bit of it, and I hate maths, but I cried anyway. I was that kinda kid.

Grumpy Old Men: The Five Faces of Doctor Who (November-December 1981)

Officially the single most exciting thing ever ever ever ever ever: a repeat season on BBC2, featuring all the Dr Whos!  This was amazing – the BBC had never repeated old Dr Whos before, so here was a generation’s first look at really ancient, black and white Doctor Who.  There was a grumpy old Dr Who, and another grumpy old Dr Who, and another grumpy old Dr Who – I liked him the best because he said things like, “Steady on, Brigadier, old chap; we might get better results if the sexy girl could make us a cup of tea and then we could reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, hai!” and then he’d karate chop a mutant blob of energy until it exploded to death.  The season of repeats began around Bonfire Night and there was one story a week up to my birthday in early December.  The nights outside were cold and dark and misty, and it was thrilling to run home from school, scoff down beans on toast and watch grumpy old Dr Whos battle Krotons and cavemen and sea monsters and maths teachers (again: in order to make the Five Faces thing work they had to repeat Logopolis because there were no Peter Davison stories ready to show).  Best of all, they showed The Three Doctors, where all three old and grumpy Dr Whos got together to tell the sexy girl to make them a cup of tea.  Then at Christmas they showed K-9 and Company, a special story featuring K-9 and Sarah Jane Smith fighting lesbian devil worshipers in Shepton Mallet, and I got a Palitoy talking K-9 and a new clean pair of pants as presents.  Best Year Ever.

I Know That Object: Earthshock Part 1 (8^th March, 1982)

My dad looked up from The Daily Mirror as the shock reveal at the end of Part One played out.  “F- me, it’s them Cyber-bastards,” he said.  Nobody could have put it more perfectly.

The Whole of the Moon: The Five Doctors (25^th November, 1983)

All five Dr Whos together (almost) in a special 90 minute movie thing featuring Daleks and Cybermen and the Master and the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 and Dr Who’s old yellow car and the Time Lords and… I think I may have passed out from excitement.  I’d already dressed up as Dr Who and gone to the Longleat Dr Who convention (in April) where I’d seen Jon Pertwee and Peter Davison and loads of other guys (it was all a blur) and I’d bought The Dr Who Technical Manual and I threw up near Anthony Ainley because the celery on my lapel was making me sick.  It was all too much.  But I was 13, and there’s no such thing as too much when you’re 13.  That’s why 13 year-olds don’t get to vote in General Elections.

Out with a Bang: The Caves of Androzani Part 4 (16^th March, 1984)

Properly edge-of-your seat thrilling stuff as the dashing and heroic Davison Dr Who, carrying his comatose young friend Peri, runs to the TARDIS as mud volcanoes explode around him.  He collapses into the TARDIS, saves Peri, and then dies.  I’d loved Peter Davison’s Dr Who, had had brilliant times with him, and I was genuinely sad to see him go.  He bows out in spectacular fashion though – I’d argue that this brilliant story might be one of the highlights of all Dr Who – and the Day in the Life regeneration sequence has yet to be bettered.  But then we got Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy and I lost all interest.  Ah well.  I suppose it was time for me to grow up… though I don’t think I ever really did.

Was that it?  The Paul McGann TV Movie Thing (with the Pertwee Logo) That Was Filmed in Canada (27^th May, 1996)

“It’s back and it’s about time!” The tagline is the best thing about this failed pilot for a proposed US TV series, though McGann – to date, the only Dr Who who has bought me a pint – is very good. The build up to this was super fast and exciting, but then it was all over and all that was left was an empty feeling of disappointment, like an impotent one-night stand with a sultry human cannon ball.  The TV Movie thing was announced in January, done in May, forgotten about by June. It’s the Andrea Leadsom of Dr Who.   Sadly, this was the last Dr Who story I watched with my parents (well, they were in the house, even if they weren’t watching).  My mum died that same year, and my dad died the year before Dr Who came back again.

Trip of a Lifetime: Series 1: Rose – The Parting of the Ways (spring 2005)

"Hello, I'm the Doctor... now run for your life!"

This was the first new Dr Who series I got to see with my own young children (they loved it), which added profoundly to the experience.  Series 1 is for me the best series of a television show ever made, eclipsing even the magnificent The West Wing Season 2. Fittingly, both series conclude with their strongest episodes - as Jed Bartlett rages against God and faces his darkest hour amidst a freak tropical rainstorm, Doctor Who calmly accepts his death on a Dalek invaded space station. Rose is a bright and sunny summer's day of a story - the most welcoming and engaging Dr Who had been since the 70s. It's like someone opening-up all the windows and doors of a beautiful old house and allowing the public to wander round and see how lovely it is. The Parting of the Ways is my favourite piece of fiction in any medium. It's heart-breaking and witty and exciting and full blooded. It's a slaughter of innocents (is there a better Dalek extermination scene than the murder of Lynda with a Y?), but also amazingly courageous and optimistic. Rose Tyler's declaration that Doctor Who had shown her how to make a stand, to strive to be a better person, might be a manifesto for the entirety of Dr Who.

Christopher Eccleston is beyond brilliant. This is Dr Who played real, as a living, breathing person of contradictions and inner torment. He has so many little brilliant bits (basically everything he does in Rose is an utter delight) that his era, despite comprising of only thirteen episodes, feels rich and expansive, and complete. This Doctor has a story of his own played out across the series, from that tear on his cheek as he hides his face from Jabe to his cheery sad fantastic goodbye. Eccleston is my favourite Doctor. And I was a lifelong Tom fan.

And Billie Piper is just sooo good. Rose has a life depicted in such detail and with such care that she feels totally real in every aspect. Aliens of London in particular is like watching a slice of Tyler life (Jackie's pain, Mickey's hurt bewilderment) interrupted by malevolent aliens. It's just such a fresh approach, it feels like new ground for Dr Who, and by God it works.

There are excellent scripts by Gatiss, Shearman, Cornell and Moffat. "Are you my mummy?" "You would make a good Dalek." There is a feast of memorable imagery - the Earth explodes; a Slitheen spaceship crashes into Big Ben; the Dalek exterminates a troop of soldiers; Reapers swooping down over the church; the empty TARDIS; the gasmask zombies; Charles Dickens in the snow; the Jagrefess; billions of Dalek saucers reigning down fire on the Earth...

Above all, Series 1 is an authored work; perhaps more than any other series of Dr Who it is defined by the vision, and voice of one man. It is Russell T Davies's version of Dr Who. Big and colourful and mad, heart-breaking and scary. Death is everywhere, but so is the human spirit.  Fantastic!

You are Not Alone: Utopia (16^th June, 2007)

Professor Yana opens his fob watch, heralding in the most exciting fifteen minutes of all Dr Who as most of Russell’s plot lines (The Time War, Captain Jack, You are Not Alone, the Doctor’s hand, the fob watch that’s really a chameleon arch, allowing Time Lords to disguise themselves, Harold Saxon, the double heart drum beat…) converge into an epic series of jaw-dropping revelations.  This was Dr Who at its Imperial Phase, a huge critical and ratings success that had everybody watching and talking about it and looking forward to the next episode.  Russell had rescued Dr Who and given it back to us, and everybody was so happy and thankful that even the Queen bought a book of his Dr Who scripts (it’s true!) and then gave him an MBE.  My kids were at the perfect ages through the RTD era – the youngest was 13 when Tennant regenerated.  They watched Dr Who over and over again, with me, with their friends, on their own.  They wanted all the toys and posters and cards and since I wanted them too I was happy to get it for them. Those bronze Daleks are awesome. Utopia was the key one, the spine-tingling, OH MY GOD! one, the one where following the plots of Dr Who was a national pastime. We were not alone. We were together.  It was thrilling and daring and wonderful.  It would never be like this again.

She Has a Halo: BBC1 Announcement - Jodie Whittaker is the Thirteenth Doctor (16^th July, 2017)

OH MY GOD!  Thrilling.  Daring.  Wonderful.  I have chills down my spine and a huge grin on my face.  It’s time.  It’s perfect.  It’s the new Dr Who.  I’m like a kid again, being thrilled by the Doctor in the box.  She’s fantastic.  I’ve a suspicion I might possibly maybe have a new favourite Dr Who already and all she’s done is smile.

Television isn't dead.

I have been watching random episodes from various TV shows.  These are my thoughts.

Sky Arts Portrait Painter of the Year pits a dozen talented painters against each other as they paint the same portrait (or three different portraits, as they're grouped into fours), as the accomplished artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg offers his views (there are other judges, but I only really listen to Tai-Shan).  He's brilliant at describing the form and mechanics of creating an image, and how paint is expressionistic.  I feel inspired to pick up the paint brushes!

Tai-Shan Schierenberg Self-Portrait

 
Game of Thrones is hilarious - majestic, swooping helicopter shots of astonishingly beautiful landscapes, men getting beheaded or set on fire by giant ice zombies, or beheaded and then set on fire by giant ice zombies, dragons circling the skies above writhing orgies (with real porn stars) as men get beheaded and then set on fire by giant ice zombies who in turn are incinerated by fire-breathing dragons kept by a woman named Dennis. It's a hoot.

Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week sees a platoon of incredibly smug fitness fanatics put through bruising, exhausting physical and psychological torture by elite special forces soldiers from across the globe, but most effectively from Eastern Europe, where they kill you with their thumbs if you don't salute fast enough.  I like scoffing biscuits and cuddling the kitten under a duvet as I lazily watch arogant triAthlon runners from Essex starve through the long, rainy night on greuelling twenty hour runs up hill while Polish nutcases throw rocks at them.

The Bachelor has thirty beautiful but delusional women gravitate around America's least articulate or interesting schmuck in an experiment to see how funny it would be if he genuinely thought they were into him, rather than being on a gobsmackingly tacky and offensive television show for the money and exposure.  It's funnier than Game of Thrones, but less believable.

Hammer Vampire Land

 Some thoughts on the non-Dracula Hammer Vampire films

A Vampire's Castle, yesterday.

Vampire Circus is astonishing - easily Hammer's best film of the 70s. The pre-titles sequence is Hammer to a tee, with a lustful acolyte brazenly and shockingly stealing a child to be drained of blood by her vampire lover - a sequence that recalls Bram Stoker's Lucy Westenra's 'Bloofer Lady'.   The Circus of the Night is a sinister and surreal travelling show, with men who turn into panthers and clowns who rip off their facepaint to reveal a clownface underneath. The acrobats tumbling and jumping into the air and turning into vampire bats is not only witty, it's beautiful. Vampirism is likened to (and linked to) a plague and the village is placed under armed quarantine - but as always the evil cannot be contained until science and superstition merge into a spiritual force.

Kiss of the Vampire is almost as good, though the fanboy in me wishes that Andrew Keir's Father Sandor (from Dracula: Prince of Darkness) occupied the Professor Zimmer role (a gruff, drunk, outcast vampire hunter certainly describes both characters).  Here, vampirism is a decadent cult - something entered into willingly for aesthetic reasons as much as anything else.  Science is no good, but learning about your enemy is the way to fight back, using supernatural rituals against the forces of darkness.  It works on an instinctive level - dark against dark.

The Vampire Lovers, adapting Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla, uses sexual metaphors effectively, as the vampire Carmilla Karnstein seduces a series of young girls.  There's a very European feel to the film - it's a story about strange unworldly people intruding into a fairytale version of adolescence. Lust for a Vampire is the same movie played again as crude sex comedy, and it's badly made too.

Twins of Evil seems to be two films in one - a striking Hammer take on Witchfinder General/The Crucible, with the great Peter Cushing as a zealous puritan "instrument of God"; and a tacky yet entertaining Karnstein vampire film with glamour models who clearly can't act and yet another cruel and sexy aristocrat bastard vampire (after Baron Meinster, Dr Ravna, Count Mitterhaus, etc.) who gets his kicks from rejecting any form of morality or restraint. It's a shame the captivating Ingrid Pitt didn't play Carmilla in all three films, as she's far the best.

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter is a frothy romp, packed with good ideas and nice performances, but it somehow feels like a failed pilot for a TV series.  There's a great sense of the aristocracy being a class above and beyond the Church, of a ruling dynasty of evil that disguises itself effectively behind a cloak (literally) of respectability and piousness.

These films seem to be situated in a Hammer Vampire Land in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Europe. The ruling gentry are all cruel, sexy vampires, and earnest school teachers and drunk physicians have to take the fight to them in crumbling castles and deep forests.


* In Dracula, having been turned into an un-dead vampire by the thirsty Count, Lucy haunts Hampstead Heath and preys on children.