Tag Archives: Peter Cushing

Mania is the venerable Burke and Hare story, previously cinematized by producer Val Lewton as The Body Snatcher. Peter Cushing plays a respectable 19th-century Edinburgh doctor who needs fresh cadavers in order to continue his crucial research. Since the exhuming of bodies for medical purposes is illegal, Lee must rely upon grave-robbers George Rose and Donald Pleasance for his corpse supply. What Lee doesn’t know is that Rose and Pleasance frequently cut out the middleman by “creating” their own corpses. The good doctor catches on when the latest cadaver turns out to be his own fiancee. Its excessively violent climax has prevented Mania from being shown completely intact on commercial television. Read More »

Returning to his family’s manor house on the lonely moors after his father dies under mysterious circumstances, Sir Henry Baskerville is confronted with the mystery of the supernatural hound that supposedly takes revenge upon the Baskerville family. The famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson are brought in to investigate. Read More »

Baron Frankenstein has the body of a young woman and all it lacks is the spark of life. He captures the soul of a recently executed young man and installs it in the young maiden, Christina. With the memories from the young man still intact, she starts to kill the people whose false accusations led to the young man’s execution. Read More »

Quote:
Penniless, Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), accompanied by his eager assistant Hans (Sandor Elès), arrives at his family castle near the town of Karlstaad, vowing to continue his experiments in the creation of life. Fortuitously finding the creature he was previously working on, he brings it back to a semblance of life but requires the services of a mesmerist, Zoltan (Peter Woodthorpe), to successfully animate it. The greedy and vengeful Zoltan secretly sends the monster into town to steal gold and ‘punish’ the burgomaster and the chief of police, which acts lead to a violent confrontation between the baron and the townspeople. Read More »

Synopsis:
Dr Simon Helder, sentenced to an insane asylum for crimes against humanity, recognises its director as the brilliant Baron Frankenstein, the man whose work he had been trying to emulate before his imprisonment. Frankenstein utilises Helder’s medical knowledge for a project he has been working on for some time. He is assembling a man from vital organs extracted from various inmates in the asylum. And the Baron will resort to murder to acquire the perfect specimens for his most ambitious project ever. Read More »

Plot: Baron Frankenstein escapes from the guillotine and goes to Germany. There, he names himself Dr. Stein and plans to restart his experiments by using parts of dead bodies. Read More »

Synopsis:
At a cancer research lab off the coast of Ireland, a group of scientists dies under mysterious circumstances. Before anyone notices their demise, the human and bovine inhabitants of the island’s lone, tiny village begin to turn up dead — with their bodies the consistency of tapioca pudding. Renowned bone doctors Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing) and David West (Edward Judd) are dispatched from the mainland to solve this medical mystery. West’s rich-girl paramour, Toni Merrill (Carole Gray), bribes her way into the expedition by providing air transport. When daddy needs his plane back, the group becomes trapped on the isolated island just as the true extent of the science-run-amok menace becomes apparent. One of three films Hammer horror vet Terence Fisher lensed for small British outfit Planet Studios, Island of Terror was followed by Island of the Burning Doomed (aka Night of the Big Heat). Read More »