Rest In Final Peace
A sad day — Michael Gough has gone to his reward. Which, if I had anything to do with it, would be a rich reward indeed.
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March 17, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Loved him in Hammer’s “Phantom of the Opera”. And he shared billing in the terrible film “Uncovered” with Jimbo Villiers.
March 17, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Yes indeed, a sad day. So many memorable perfomances. He was a wonderful Mr Ramsay to Rosemary Harris’s Mrs Ramsay in ‘To The Lighthouse’
March 17, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Apart from the horror roles which are obviously dear to my heart, he got to work with Russell, Jarman, Scorsese, Burton, Huston, Duvivier (his movie debut was Anna Karenina in ’48), Allegret, Dearden, Powell, Mackendrick, Pollack, Losey…
March 17, 2011 at 11:17 pm
Always loved him in “The Horse’s Mouth”, he was a perfect complement to Guinness…not drawing attention away from The Star, but not giving anything up when the focus was on him, either. And like Guinness he’ll be remembered for one of his least accomplished roles. Funny world we live in, isn’t it?
March 17, 2011 at 11:58 pm
Gough’s pretty entertaining in the first Batman. By the time we get to Joel Schumacher, there was no longer the slightest idea of how to use his talents.
March 18, 2011 at 2:23 am
Call me crass, but for some reason I’ll always remember him in KONGA. Not a distinctive role, not an inspired movie, but when you’re a kid all that goes to the wayside.
March 18, 2011 at 8:28 am
Sad news. I was shown a hand drawn christmas card by him to Phyllida Crowden – Graham’s widow. Inside: ‘I LIKED Graham. How dare he go before me’.
March 18, 2011 at 10:03 am
Aw. Well, MG set a hard standard by living as long as he did. Wish they’d both lasted even longer though.
Konga’s actually one of his most hideously bonkers perfs, so it does deserve a little place in the history books. In an interview over at The Astounding B Monster, writer-producer Herman Cohen said they got really good at superimpositions and trick shots so they could put Gough in the gorilla’s hand. “You didn’t have a giant hand?” asks the interviewer. “We didn’t have the money for a giant SCHMUCK!” cackles Cohen.
March 18, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Who but Michael Gough could have made junk like CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR and SATAN’S SLAVE not only bearable but enjoyable? He truly was the Grand Old Man of Horror Cinema…and had a distinguished career in other areas too.
March 18, 2011 at 2:41 pm
Only Sir Christopher Lee now goes on. Tirelessly.
March 18, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Junk though it may be, Curse of the Crimson Altar has quite a cast.
March 18, 2011 at 8:38 pm
It sure does. There’s a cut in the opening satanic sacrifice scene, timed with a dramatic stab of music, to a doughy, depressed-looking dominatrix in pasties that’s one of the funniest things in all horror cinema.
March 20, 2011 at 2:41 am
Curse of the Crimson Altar has an interesting cast but Gough also appeared in Freddie Francis’s film The Skull along with both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing! Plus Patrick Magee and Patrick Wymark, the latter of whom had played the sleazy razor-slashed landlord in Repulsion the same year (Wymark would go on to play Cromwell in Witchfinder General and also have a significant role in the other 17th century set British horror, Blood On Satan’s Claw)
Gough had also been in Francis’s Amicus seminal anthology film, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, the year before.
In an interesting illustration of the incestuous nature of the industry, Gough appeared in Horrors of the Black Museum directed by Arthur Crabtree, who the previous year had directed the excellent brain-sucking monster film Fiend Without A Face for the producer Richard Gordon. Black Museum however was produced by Herman Cohen (who also produced the infamously goofy Konga!)
Yet strangely Gough did end up working on a Richard Gordon produced film with the 1972 Horror Hospital. That film is incredibly camp (it came out years before Rocky Horror Picture Show but just imagine that tone of film yet played with a straight face without any musical interludes) and features Robin Asquith, famous for his roles in the Confessions of… sex comedies, as the pathetic hero (Asquith would also turn up in the Gordon produced Tower of Evil) – but Gough, as he did in Konga, steals the show with a marvellous villain role!
Oh, and also we should remember that Gough appeared in both of the horror films that Joan Crawford made in Britain in the late 60s – Beserk (a Circus of Fear rip-off) and Trog!
March 20, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Elsewhere on this site, you’ll find pieces on Trog, Horror Hospital, The Skull, plus Fiend without a Face. Plus an apprecition of his physical acting in Dracula. Gough has been a perennial inspiration!