House of the Long Shadows/Fun Facts

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< House of the Long Shadows

Houselongshadff.jpg

  • John Carradine fell asleep filming a major dinner scene and was in the land of nod for much of the scene.
  • George M. Cohan's play "Seven Keys to Baldpate", on which the screenplay was based, opened on Broadway at the Astor Theater on September 22, 1913, and ran for three hundred twenty performances until June 1914.
  • Vincent Price was born on May 27, 1911, making him exactly eleven years older than Sir Christopher Lee, who was born on the same date in 1922. Peter Cushing missed by only one day of making it a triple, as he was born on May 26, 1913.
  • Elsa Lanchester was going to play Victoria Quimby/Grisbane, but was too ill to make the trip to London.
  • Vincent Price was offered this movie and accepted before the script was written.
  • Though set in the Welsh countryside, this movie was shot entirely in Hampshire, England.
  • John Carradine (Lord Elijah Grisbane) was only five years older than Vincent Price, playing his son Lionel, and seven years older than Peter Cushing, playing his son Sebastian. He was fourteen years older than Sheila Keith, playing his daughter Victoria. The three actors and one actress playing the Grisbanes, Carradine, Price, Cushing, and Keith, died at the ages of 82, 82, 81, and 84, respectively.
  • This movie ran out of money three weeks into shooting.
  • The picture was filmed "in the Hammer tradition" according to English newspaper "The Guardian".
  • Final theatrical movie directed by Pete Walker
  • Vincent Price turns up forty minutes in
  • Sir Christopher Lee turns up forty-nine minutes in.
  • This movie took five weeks to shoot and cost just under one million pounds sterling.
  • Producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan never read the script.
  • Louise English was cast by Benny Hill.
  • Many of the cast and crew loved working with Peter Cushing.
  • This movie was released seventy years after its source play, "Seven Keys to Baldpate" by George M. Cohan, had been first performed, and its source novel, "Seven Keys to Baldpate" by Earl Derr Biggers, was published.
  • Louise English kept her script of this movie.
  • The movie's closing credits declare that this movie was "produced entirely on location".
  • The name of the remote Gothic mansion was "Baldpate Manor".
  • The name "Baldpate" is said to be a corruption of a Welsh name, which none of the English or American characters can pronounce properly. In fact, the supposedly Welsh word does not exist in the Welsh language, and means nothing.
  • Final significant role in a major theatrical movie for Richard Todd (Sam Allyson).
  • The name of the novel that Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz, Jr.) had written was "The Lie". The title of the manuscript for a novel that he typed while staying in the old dark house was "Midnight Manor"
  • Richard Hunter was told by Director Pete Walker to think his character was like Brad from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).
  • The acronym "O.P.I.T." stood for "Organisation for the Promotion of International Terrorism".
  • Another actress was offered the role of Mary Norton but was not free.
  • Stanley Myers was asked to write the score.
  • Peter Sinclair was offered the movie.
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