Rating: ★★★

Peter Cushing probably needs no introduction to any regular readers here. Peter Cushing (1913-94) was one of the most key mainstays of the Anglo-Horror Cycle – he was Baron Frankenstein in Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Van Helsing in their Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958) and various sequels to either. He played numerous other roles for Hammer and other companies. His most famous role today is probably as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977).

Peter Cushing: In His Own Words is a Documentary made by Richard Edwards who conducted a radio interview with Cushing in his home Whitstable, Kent in May 1986 during promotion for Biggles (1986), which would end up being Cushing’s last film. The audio interview was apparently lost but appears to have been found again. Edwards uses the audio footage as the basis of a documentary that looks at Cushing’s life, along with interviews from people who knew Cushing. Edwards has also used the audio material for a further documentary Peter Cushing: Behind the Camera (2022).

On the down side, the film has a limited number of interviewees – one actor (Derek Fowlds) who had a minor part in Frankenstein Created Woman (1967); three actresses who appeared in small parts in films with Cushing – Madeline Smith from The Vampire Lovers (1970); Judy Matheson who was in Twins of Evil (1972); and Valerie Leon who starred in Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971), which Cushing left after one day’s shooting; Morris Bright, the executive director of Elstree Studios where a number of Hammer films were shot; and Phil Campbell and Brian Reynolds, a couple of Hammer production runners. The audio interview material with Cushing is fairly limited and most of the show taken up by the other interviewees. Compare this to the recent documentary Hammer Horror: The Warner Bros Years (2018), which covered a far smaller sample of Anglo-Horror films but had a far wider number of interviewees present.

Everyone interviewed speaks of what a perfect gentleman that Cushing was and how he was always kind-hearted, personable and pleasant to everybody. It is commented that he never had an unkind word to say to anybody. His great friendship with Christopher Lee through the years is spoken about. In archival footage, Lee appropriates the term from the church service to call Cushing “dearly beloved.” It is spoken of how dedicated to the role that Cushing was – he was a chain smoker and in between scenes would smoke using gloves on the grounds that his characters should not be seen to have nicotine-stained fingers.

The film expands out beyond Cushing’s horror films. It discusses his appearances as Sherlock Holmes, including Hammer’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), the tv series Sherlock Holmes (1968) and the tv movie The Masks of Death (1984). Several of the interviewees call him the best Sherlock Holmes ever, which I would have to disagree with – the best ever was Jeremy Brett in Granada’s The Adventures -, The Return – and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1984-7) tv series, followed by Basil Rathbone in the Universal films. In contrast to these others, Cushing’s Holmes is just too mellow and middle-of-the-road.

There is also surprising time spent on Cushing’s two films based on tv’s Doctor Who (1963-89, 2005- ) – Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966) – although we find that Cushing was not a fan of the tv series (while the films are poorly regarded among Doctor Who fans). There is also reasonable time spent on his role in Star Wars, which comes with the revelation that Cushing didn’t understand the script or the dialogue he was saying.

There is also some discussion of the death of Cushing’s wife Helen in 1971, which left Cushing devastated. Interviewees opine that Cushing was left so bereft that he was simply wishing to die and join her. The documentary contrasts photos of him from The Vampire Lovers made just before her death with how gaunt and emaciated he looked by the time of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) a few years later. Madeline Smith comments how she saw that Cushing was not eating, just drinking black coffee, and that he seemed to be making a conscious effort to join his wife in death.

Peter Cushing: In His Own Words does end up being a hagiographic work. It does seem caught up in admiration and near saintliness of its subject that it never says anything critical or unkind about him. The nearest it comes is when Morris Bright touches on the issue of Cushing’s affairs where Bright’s response is rather amusingly that he never listens to rumours and that one can hardly blame someone for doing so because it gets lonely on location.

Trailer here