Sideshow Collectible Statues Of Christopher Lee And Peter Cushing Bring Hammer Horror To Your Shelf
Well well well, look at what Sideshow Collectibles just announced. You know Sideshow, it's a company built to drain the bank accounts of geeks all around the world. They make top tier nerd furniture of all shapes and sizes. As I type this I'm flanked on either side by a couple of their statues (Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Mola Ram from Temple of Doom if you're curious. I have impeccable taste, I know).
They've covered all corners of the geek galaxy, from Star Wars to DC to Marvel to all sorts of video games, and now they're wading into the thick gothic fog of Hammer Horror with two absolutely badass looking high end statues immortalizing Christopher Lee's Dracula and his on-screen arch-nemesis Van Helsing as portrayed by the great Peter Cushing.
Cushing and Lee are two towering horror icons and these statues certainly do them justice. Lee's Dracula stands over 22" tall and Cushing measures in at 21.5". It's only fitting that Lee has some height on Cushing.
Both pieces have tailored outfits made from real cloth and come with screen accurate accessories, like Van Helsing's crucifix and Dracula's ring (not to mention going all out on Christopher Lee's iconic blood red eyes, an effect he accomplished himself, by the way... he used to rub his eyes vigorously before each take where he was in blood-hungry mode, so those are real burst blood vessels).
There is no release date on these yet, but you can go to Sideshow's pages for both Dracula and Van Helsing and RSVP to be alerted when the pre-order goes live. There's also no price listed, but be prepared to shell out the big bucks if you need to have either or both of these.
If you've never had the pleasure of seeing one of Sideshow's Premium Format statues in person it's hard to convey just how impressive these things are. 22" doesn't sound big (get your minds out of the gutters, you filthy animals), but these things are room dominators. You put one in any average size room and it'll be the thing that draws your attention.
Lee and Cushing starred together in two dozen feature films, but their most memorable team ups were in the Dracula films (Horror of Dracula, Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula).
If you've seen and loved those, I also highly recommend a couple of lesser-seen films starring the two of them. One is called The Skull, about macabre collectors trying to get their hands on the skull of the Marquis de Sade, and the other is called The Gorgon, which is about a lady with snake hair that turns villagers to stone when she looks at them.
Cushing and Lee's chemistry was one for the ages, whether it was in a Shakespeare adaptation (1948's Hamlet), a Sherlock Holmes tale or any number of cheesy horror flicks they were always fire. And now you can be reminded of those two with these giant statues.
