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Since Bela Lugosi was the very first book published by Midnight Marquee Press, Inc. in 1995, and had been sold out for several years, we felt it was time to revise our best-selling title. We decided to inaugurate the Midnight Marquee Actors Series with horror film icon Bela Lugosi. The first reason was the fact that Lugosi is one of our favorite legends of the Golden Age of Horror Films. And the second reason is that the 1990s appeared to be the decade of his rebirth and rediscovery. With the release of pristine copies of Universal horror classics in attractively packaged, low-priced DVDs, the continued interest in cult writer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr. and the artistic triumph of Tim Burton s Ed Wood, which features Bela Lugosi (distorted history noted), a new generation of film fan was being introduced to the legendary bogeyman. As our writers attest, Lugosi was a very gifted actor, who appeared in only a handful of well-produced, quality vehicles, but whose reputation has mushroomed far beyond the movies in which he sometimes had to appear. But even the worst Lugosi film is better than most of the dreck passing for horror films today. What better star with which to start our Midnight Marquee Actors Series? And what better star to deserve a new revised and updated edition?

Midnight Marquee Press, Inc. is pleased to introduce this volume that begins the "second phase" of Midnight Marquee Press’ acclaimed Actors Series. Having shone the spotlight on those titans of Golden and Silver Age horror (all American by birth or naturalization)—Lugosi, Karloff, Chaney, Jr., Price, and Lorre—Midnight Marquee now ventures into the Iron Age of Hammer (and British horror) with a collection examining the work of Peter Cushing. Cushing has been the subject of other books (and his own autobiographies, reprinted in one volume by Midnight Marquee Press, 1999), so one might question the need for yet another work. The answer, I think, lies in the essays that make up this volume, which put the emphasis squarely on the performer himself (as befits an Actors Series). Not only do Midnight Marquee’s stable of reliables and newcomers analyze 56 of Cushing’s performances in depth, but the annotated filmography offers capsule comments about most of his other roles. Anyone interested in the enormous contributions to horror film and film in general by the "Gentle Man of Horror"—arguably the most accomplished actor ever to become a horror star—will find a great deal of insight and intelligence within these pages.