#and obviously Peter Cushing for Regis

[afroplatypus]

I’m always eager to find irl people to use as references for Regis and Dettlaff (since shots of them from different angles are often scarce), and to me this guy is like a direct mashup of both of them. His name is Antonio Gades, and he was a Spanish dancer.

[rallamajoop]

Dracula, The Witcher, and the Peter Cushing connection

So, no, I haven't had much new Witcher stuff posted in a while. Still got fics in the works there (the next bit of the Discworld crossover is coming along quite well), but I've been a mite distracted.

That little Dracula kick I was on a few months back evolved into an extended mission to watch all the Dracula adaptations – well, at least most of the major film versions (Nosferatu, the 1932 with Bela Lugosi, the 1958 with Christopher Lee, the 1979 with the hair, the insane 1992 Coppola one, the 2002 Guy Maddin silent-film ballet version with the hot Chinese Dracula...) And though I can't usually watch adaptations of anything I loved without compulsively nitpicking, I've been kind of loving all of them – but that's a subject for another post.

Hammer’s 1958 Dracula, starring Christopher Lee, isn’t necessarily the most iconic version, or even really my personal favourite – but it is where I got a little stuck. It’s the version that costars Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, being the same Cushing you may have seen cited as the visual inspiration for Blood and Wine's take on Regis – y’know, that Witcher-vampire I have been ever-so-slightly obsessed with for the past year or so. Up to this point, I knew Cushing mostly as that guy who played Grand Moff Tarkin in the first Star Wars film – but once it���s been pointed out to you, it’s pretty hard to miss.

We may as well note the irony of CDPR having modeled their vampire after an iconic vampire hunter. Actually, those sideburns aren't even Van Helsing's – these hail from Cushing's time starring as Victor Frankenstein in Hammer's other big-name high-gothic film franchise, which involves no vampires whatsoever.* Still, I suppose Baron-Dr-Cushinstein does spend a lot of time covered in blood and/or hanging around alchemical paraphernalia, which doesn't hurt for relevant visuals where Regis is concerned.

Whichever performance they may be referencing, CDPR’s design for Regis is a charming nod to classic horror cinema, and Cushing's skinny, mild-mannered, pleasantly-authoritative Van Helsing makes a more fitting choice for Regis than any of Hammer's actual vampires. You’d be hard-pressed to find any much better fantasy fancast for Regis than Cushing in his prime.

Now, primed as I obviously was to fall headfirst into what amounts to original-alternate-Regis fandom, the truth is I came out of Hammer's first Dracula film going, "well, that was pretty good – maybe I'll get around to the sequels at some point." But the series’ next entry didn’t do a lot for me (Brides of Dracula, which I am disappointed to say contains neither a) Dracula, nor b) any actual brides thereof), and Van Helsing isn’t even in the next four.

Not until Dracula A.D. 1972 does the series reunite both the original stars, Peter Cushing's Van Helsing (now playing his own grandson) and Christopher Lee's Dracula, and most critics seem to feel the series was long past its prime by this stage. But putting all expectations aside, in watching it, I discovered several things:

Van Helsing II having to calmly, authoritatively explain to a skeptical 70's cop that they’ve got a vampire problem on their hands and somehow pulling it off is EVERYTHING I never knew how much I wanted from this series.

If this film is garbage, it is emphatically MY KIND of garbage. I loved that Van Helsing vs. Dracula is now some kind of epic, generation-spanning rivalry; that Van Helsing II gets some real stakes via his (surprisingly likeable) granddaughter; I loved Johnny Alucard the beta-villain chewing all the scenery, why do people not like this movie?

Despite having aged about 14 years in real time (and perhaps several more internally**), Peter Cushing only gets better with age

I have officially fallen head over heels for this man's face ridiculous cheek bones everything

People, I do not do the whole celebrity-crush thing. Let alone over long-deceased actors from my grandparents' generation. But it quickly became Very Important that I watch pretty much everything Peter Cushing had ever been in. And Cushing (as I may have mentioned in a footnote around here somewhere) is an actor who kept busy.

If I had to summarise what made the Hammer Horror formula work, I think I’d have to go with “enjoyably trashy, but with a touch of class,” – and delving into through Cushing’s back-catalog is like making a laundry list of exactly that class of low-mid-budget 60′s-70′s British horror. Actors like Cushing and Lee lent a similar quality to those films that that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen brought to the X-Men franchise: a bit of gravitas and a lot of style. Whether playing the hero or the villain, Cushing’s old-fashioned air of authority could carry off an awful lot.

In addition to Van Helsing, Dr. Frankenstein and Moff Tarkin, he also played Sherlock Holmes, an actual vampire, (sort of) Dr. Who, and even Mr Darcy (in a 1950′s TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that, to my great disappointment has long since been lost). Unavoidably, there are some films not even he and Lee combined could hope to save, but Cushing single-handedly makes a lot of otherwise-middling films worth watching. It’s a crying shame some of this stuff isn’t better known and remembered today. It’s as hard not to wonder that an actor of this calibre didn’t get to do more higher-brow work, but then again, to quote the man himself, Who wants to see me as Hamlet? Very few. But millions want to see me as Frankenstein so that's the one I do.

My Internet history tells me I first watched Dracula A.D. 1972 way back in May. Honestly, I was kind of expecting to be over it by now, and yet here I am.

Anyway, if you do share my taste in Witcher-vampires, may I also highly recommend Hammer’s Frankenstein series, their Carmilla adaptation, The Vampire Lovers, and 1959′s The Flesh and the Fiends (which is not a Hammer production, but still very much in that vein). Dark Corners’ youtube episodes on the Hammer Dracula and Frankenstein series are great introduction to both (even if I do feel they’re awfully unfair to what is now my favourite Dracula film).

Or if you’re reading this as a Peter Cushing fan, well, I can’t honestly pretend the main Witcher video game series will necessarily interest you – but there is this one relatively-standalone expansion pack called Blood and Wine that just might be worth your time...

* (back) Though to see Cushing at peak sideburns (pictured in the first comparison above), you’ll want 1959's The Flesh and the Fiends (which isn't technically a Hammer production at all, even though Cushing is basically still playing Frankenstein by way of Doctor Knox).

** (back) The story goes that Cushing spent the 70′s doing film after film because he’d recently lost his wife, and was desperately trying to bury his grief in work. Which only makes the number of grieving fathers and/or widowers he plays in his later years that much more ouch to see in effect.