Han Solo’s Excuses
How about a bit of romantic angst for our Valentine’s Day Blue Milk Special update? It’s also the debut of Hoth Leia. The strip was inspired by the scene in which Harrison Ford’s Solo and Carrie Fisher’s Leia exchange looks in the Hoth Command Room. The camera cuts back and forth between the two, establishing the awkwardness. They both want to say something, but they can’t. 🙂
Here are the final results of the last poll before I closed it. We left this poll up for an entire month and the response has been amazing. 1175 votes from unique Internet Provider addresses!
For the first week Lando Calrissian was leading, but slowly Yoda caught up and edged ahead. Remarkably, the TK-8008 character (an original creation of Blue Milk Special) climbed to 3rd place and held a comfortable lead over everyone else. His upcoming appearance as a Snow Trooper seems to be anticipated with much enthusiasm.
IG-88 and Lobot also had some support, but Rieekan and Dengar came in last with only 18 and 19 votes each. I was surprised by the enthusiasm toward Captain Needa, who I only added to the poll jokingly. I only have 2 strips planned for the guy! The new poll question asks what was the 1st Star Wars movie you saw in a theater?
Last blog we mentioned that Captain Tarkin will be appearing in the upcoming Clone Wars episode “The Citadel,” which airs at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT Friday, February 18 on Cartoon Network. I mentioned the excellent likeness which they appear to have achieved in the preview image, insanely superior to the horrendous and insulting prosthetics job in Revenge of the Sith.
Posted on the left is Leanne Hannah’s (yes, Leanne of BMS) excellent rendition of a younger Tarkin. Leanne is a big fan of Cushing just like me. Odd that. 🙂 Please check out her website for some other great Cushing sketches in her Pinup Gallery, including Cushing’s Van Helsing and Dr. Syn. I’d love her to illustrate his Frankenstein, but so far no luck.
I’d like readers and Star Wars fans to become more familiar with Peter Cushing’s face and his work. I’m going to post some pictures of a younger Peter Cushing to show you what a younger Tarkin would have looked like. Photos of how the gentleman actually looked pre-Star Wars. It’s not hard to find pictures of Cushing. I’m sure they could have pulled it off in 2005 with something called the Internet. 😉
So, here’s a crash course on Peter Cushing at his most dashing…
Cushing in the B&W classic, The Abominable Snowman.
Cushing in his most famous (pre-Tarkin) role as Baron Frankenstein. He made 5 or 6 Frankenstein films. The best are the earliest ones.
The Horror of Dracula (or simply Dracula) came out in 1958. It made Christopher Lee a star (as Dracula) and Peter Cushing cemented his credentials as a contender for Chuck Norris level bad-assery.
Cushing played Sherlock Holmes on the big screen in 1959, but he also played Holmes in a BBC Television series in 1968. Both are great fun, but the BBC series is closer to the books.
Brides of Dracula was the unofficial sequel to the huge success of 1958’s Dracula. However, Dracula is in the title alone (a marketing ploy) so don’t watch it looking for Christopher Lee. Instead, Cushing (Van Helsing once more) goes up against one of Dracula’s Disciples, Baron Meinster. This is one of the coolest and most entertaining of all of Hammer’s films. Check it out, because its the last time you will see a relatively young Cushing as Van Helsing.
I always loved this freeze frame. It’s hard to convince someone unfamiliar with Cushing outside of Star Wars just how much energy and electricity he could bring to his performances.
Brides of Dracula again.
A lot of people remember the Hammer films of the early 70s best, not because they were good, but just because those were closer to their generation. Ironically, the best are arguably the classics from 1957-1965. The 1970s output from Hammer is the studio at its worst. I know many will disagree, possibly because of their own nostalgia, but I was born after the studio was effectively dead and I am looking at Hammer’s hey day with greater objectivity. For example, if I mention to someone that I like Hammer Horror films, unless they are a fan also, they might react by saying “oh God, those awful films”, in which case I expect they only really know the awful 70s tainted final years of the studio. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee had either moved on, or in Cushing case were no longer considered to have big name appeal to the 70s generation. Forunately, George Lucas was a fan of Cushing (so was Carrie Fisher) and he got one last international box office success (quite a big one, huh?) with Star Wars in 1977.
The following photos show an older Van Helsing (in this case Peter Cushing is playing one of Van Helsing’s descendants in 1972) preparing to kick Dracula’s ass, the film is absolutely APPALLING. Not even Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing can save it. I advise putting this one at the bottom of your list.
Cushing remains perhaps the greatest of all cinematic Gentleman Bad-asses.
There are many more excellent Cushing films, but I’m running out of space. One of my all time favorites is Cash on Demand AND Captain Clegg (“Night Creatures” in the USA). Find them. Watch them. If you want to investigate Peter Cushing’s era of international B-horror stardom then watch any of the following: Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, Hound of the Baskervilles, The Mummy (1959), Brides of Dracula. If you like those and want more, then check out She, The Skull, Doctor Who and the Daleks, Revenge of Frankenstein, Evil of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and Twins of Evil (this one is form the 70s, but it’s fun).
I don’t know how to better convince our readers that they need to delve into some of Peter Cushing’s classic Hammer Horror films from the late 1950s and early 1960s than to simply show them this…
Warning this does spoil the ending of Brides of Dracula, one of the most ingenious and swashbuckling ways to take down a vampire ever devised.
And finally, in the 1980s a British band wrote the following humorous song about Peter Cushing, who by that time was ill and retired, living in the seaside town of Whitstable. The song honors him as the Vampire slaying bad ass that he is. 🙂
Download the newer rock remix. 🙂
Ok, I want to answer the new poll, but my first Star Wars movie was in a drive-in, not a theatre. Does that still count?
Drive In theaters definitely count. 🙂
My first Star Wars film in the cinema was Return of the Jedi. My Dad took me to see Empire Strikes Back at the cinema as a boy, but by the time we got to the front of the queue, there was only one seat left, and they wouldn’t let us pay for 2 tickets and me to sit on my Dad’s lap. Damned Health and Safety!
Peter Cushing looks a bit like Bradley Cooper in your Brides of Dracula picture.
My first Star Wars film was Return of the Jedi, on my living room TV, on a grainy VHS tape that my father recorded off TNT, I think. I was 7.
Also, thank you for posting all those lovely pics of Peter Cushing, thereby ensuring that I will get precisely *no work* done today. 🙂
Wow, I’m just now realizing that the first Star Wars movie that I saw in theater was Attack Of The Clones, I feel so, young xD
But I’ve still memorized the older movies and the newer ones!
You feel so young? Enjoy it! 🙂
I saw Star Wars when I was 10 years old. My sister Jan took my brother and I (he was 8) to the drive in AND she smuggled popcorn in the trunk of her car, thereby achieving Lifetime Cool Sister Status.
(I was 10 – I didn’t know that smuggling in snacks to the drive in or theater is an ages old tradition.)
Okay – the brother was not 8) he was eight… auto emoticons are a pain.
Mmmm. I loved Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes. Thank you for doing up a post on him.
I might even make a series of blogs about his greatest films. 🙂
I saw Star Wars when it came out at the age of 10 – and I ashamed to say I missed the first 10 mins because I had to run a stall at the school fair. I was pissed. It took a couple of days to see the full film – the rest, as they say, is history. Great age to be impressioned upon!
As for Cushing, yes, he’s one of my beloved idols, but I have a softer spot for ‘AD 1972’, probably due to the inclusion of Caroline Munro 🙂 What about Hammer House of Horror? Some ropey, ‘tits out’ stories, but Cushing’s turn in the tiger pit was exceptional.
Dracula AD 1972 has Stephanie Beacham and Caroline Munro both showing some agreeable cleavage. It also has Christopher Lee as Dracula once again, and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing for the first time in over 10 years. But it is also set in contemporary 1970s, filled with groovy funky music and a bunch of annoying 70s teens who are experimenting with everything from drugs to Satanism. I don’t like to be negative. I mean, I’m so glad I went to see Tron: Legacy and LOVED it, because I don’t want people to get the impression that I just unconditionally hate anything new. But Dracula AD 1972 was so camp. It probably doesn’t sound THAT bad to anyone who hasn’t seen it, but the whole 70s FUNK thing makes me want to kill something. What I felt Hammer did well was Gothic period pieces. Those are timeless. 70s FUNK is just cheesy. I don’t know if there’s anyway you can tell a serious tale with that sort of a backdrop.
My concern would be I tell people how great Cushing and Lee were as Van Helsing and Dracula respectively, and they run out and grab one of the later titles and then simply don’t understand. The class and the charm of the earlier films is really something special and for the uninitiated, something surprisingly good.
Hi Rod, I still have a couple of House of Hammer magazines. One has quite a nicely illustrated adaptation of Lee and Cushing’s first ‘Dracula’. Bought them on holidays way back in the early ’80s. It was amazing the sorts of comics and things you’d find in tiny shops in remote Irish country villages.
OMG – I took the HoH magazine featuring this cover: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_L5fa2CwoCuY/THmrH-bTywI/AAAAAAAAB-Q/EtWYAfEOiUM/s1600/HoH23.jpg to school and got it confiscated – LOL
On the up-side Neil – you could make a pretty convincing case to your mum and dad to go see it again 🙂
I used to eat up as much old horror as I could get my hands on as a teen. I probably saw some of these movies and didn’t notice that GMT (Cushing) was in them. I’ll have to revisit the 50s/60s horror scene now and see Cushing and Lee at their finest.
Re: Hammer, and ‘House of Hammer’ magazine Rod: http://dezskinn.com/warner-williams-2/
You might enjoy it!
Are you a fan of ‘Captain Cronos’ then?
It’s always been my dream to resurrect Hammer properly – all red, red blood and heaving bosoms intact.
BTW – this is a comic strip site, I think ‘A birthmark’s not an easy thing to live with.” is my new favourite phrase – LOL.
I’m loving the new sets and costumes (for lack of better terms). They look great and feel very authentic to the film.
Stop encouraging me to add loads of things to my movie watching queue, it’s already overwhelming.
I was fairly young when I saw the original trilogy for the first time, so I missed all the sexual tension, I also missed a lot of things, like how lame the Ewoks were, or how many plot holes there actually were.
It’s funny how seeing a movie as an adult changes so much, but a good story will always remain a good story no matter what age it’s seen at.
Amen.
Yep – you hit the nail on the head Tom. I’m surprised by the plot holes too. I’m also surprised (said it many times before) how they really don’t matter. The original film just flows naturally, perfectly. I never stop to wonder how any of it makes sense or could possibly be plausible.
Absolutely agreed. My older brothers were watching Star Wars before I was born- it’s the background for the majority of my baby movies. I can’t remember when I first found out about Vader & Luke, but I still get surprised in ESB… I guess it’s just that amazing 🙂 Bravo Rod & Leanne!
Confiscated – WTF? Why? Perhaps it was the Dario Argento stuff in it (fecking sick)
Hmm, I remember in the socialist block Star Wars and such movies hardly came through. The first time I saw the trilogy it was a terribly blurry pirate copy with ALL the characters dubbed by the same and only, bored male voice 😀 Man still I was thrilled by the films.
Sounds like Han could use some Sexual Healing….. And i’m going back to my hole.
LOL
Star Wars came out in 1977, not ’78. How was I the only one who noticed that?
Oops. I spent too long working on the Splinter of the Mind’s Eye parody (1978) I typoed! :-/
That’s forgivable then. 🙂
“So anyway, I have a deathmark on my ass. And it’s in permanent marker.”
I hear the only way to get rid of that is with a full-body carbonite freeze, but that’s a really stupid thing to risk just to have a pristine butt.
Does anyone else keep reading Hoth Leia as Hot Leia?
I always thought it was cool when I saw him in that Biggles movie when I was a kid. Haven’t seen that in at least 20 years or more, probably really dated, but I’d like to check it out again