Roy Ashton
Born April 16th, 1909 – Died Jan. 10th, 1995
You cannot be even the slightest fan of Hammer Films and not have seen the work of Roy Ashton. He started as an assistant makeup artist back in the ’30s, before starting to work with Hammer Studios, where he created some of their most memorable monsters. But Ashton wasn’t just a makeup man, he almost had a career as a musician and opera singer. But the hours of devotion needed to learn the makeup craft pulled him away from his true love of music. He was the assistant makeup man to Phil Leaky for Hammer, who was the man behind the Quatermass films and Curse of Frankenstein. After Leaky and Hammer had a falling out, Ashton became their head makeup man. He created the look for their films like Curse of the Werewolf, The Reptile, Plague of the Zombies, as well as doing Peter Cushing’s zombie makeup for Amicus’ Tales from the Crypt.
It is a real shame that his name is not as common as Rick Baker or Tom Savini, since his work is still watched and enjoyed today by countless horror fans. But hopefully we can do our little part and hopefully change that. For more information on Ashton, there is an excellent book on him called Greasepaint and Gore, which is filled with great stories and plenty of artwork and photos of his work.
At the end of next month, Severin Films will be unleashing one of the worst of the worst, the 1973 film Blackenstein, directed by William A. Levey, and written and produced by Frank R. Saletri, who was later murdered in a gangland style crime, which has never been solved. Even though I’m a huge fan of the blaxploitation films in the horror genre, like Blacula, this one is a real tough title to get through. But this release hopes to change all of that, at least by giving us the film in two different versions, as well as a bunch of extras to maybe help explain a little how this film came to be.
exas filmmaker Larry Buchanan has always had a special place in my film fan’s heart. Making titles with very little money, he still managed to create something that I’ve always found entertainment in, even if for the wrong reasons. He gave us titles like The Eye Creatures, In the Year 2889, Zontar: The Thing from Venus, The Naked Witch, The Loch Ness Horror, and of course, Mars Needs Women, along with so many others. His budgets tended to be so low, a mere fraction of what Roger Corman was getting to make his low budget features. But Buchanan still go them made, and usually turned a pretty decent profit. Granted, most of them won’t be remembered for being anything but a turkey, but hey…at least they are being remembered, right?
