Peter Cushing

After the success of Horror of Dracula (1958), it only made sense to make a sequel. The Brides of Dracula tells the story of a young Marianne who happens to stay the night at a baroness’ castle only to discover her host’s dashing son is locked up in an adjacent wing. Feeling sorry for the Baron Meinster, she releases him from his bonds with no clue that she just unleashed a vampire to wreak havoc on all the ladies of Transylvania. It’s a psycho-sexual scenario peppered with mommy issues that Hitchcock would certainly appreciate – his film Psycho was released the same year as Brides.

In the 1950’s, at the birth of the atom age, the content of horror films shifted from the supernatural horrors like Dracula and the Wolf Man, to science-based atrocities. Frankenstein’s monster, which was a patchwork of body parts given life by the mysterious power of lightning, became the Colossus of New York, a giant robot with the brain of a brilliant scientist who goes mad. The gypsy curse that turned Lon Chaney Jr.’s Larry Talbot into a Wolf Man becomes a medical experiment that transforms Michael Landon’s Tony Rivers into a Teenaged Werewolf. The monsters were no longer mythological creatures but scientifically created horrors to reflect the place science had taken in our lives.

In the world of horror cinema, the best way to fight a monster-be it a supernatural, human or natural one-is with a character that possesses special knowledge and skills. These experts-recruited into battle by other characters or colliding with the conflict intentionally-are the Savants of the horror world. Examples of Savant characters include David Warner’s …

Cinema is a kind of uber-art form that’s made up of a multitude of other forms of art including writing, directing, acting, drawing, design, photography and fashion.  As such, film is, as all cinema aficionados know, a highly collaborative venture. One of the most consistently fascinating collaborations in cinema is that of the director and …

The Curse of Frankenstein Written by Jimmy Sangster Directed by Terence Fisher UK, 1957 Having enjoyed success with the sci-fi horror film The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), the Hammer studio was keen to further exploit the apparent appeal of darker content – Quatermass had notably been one of the early recipients of the ‘X’ certificate – …