think back on Peter today, he was very much in the Boris Karloff class: very quiet, very conserva- tive, great sense of humor, not pushing himself into the limelight, and quite content to be there and do what he had to do without making a big fuss about it. And, acting-wise, impeccable. What- ever he was asked to do on ISLAND OF TERROR, he either did it or, if he thought it wasn’t reason- able or if he felt that he had a better idea, he dis- cussed it. Of course, he was working with his old friend, Terence Fisher.
The Silicates were made by the special ef- fects department at Pinewood and I was quite satisfied with what I saw when their scenes were shot. They were moved around by wires that were so carefully placed you could not see them on the screen, using the same technique that I had supervised in FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. It was my idea for them to make a slurping sound very much like that of the Fiends in FIEND WITH- OUT A FACE; I thought that sound was effective in FIEND and that it would give the Silicates more menace. The props representing the corpses of their victims were, in my opinion, well done. Although Hammer was pushing the enve- lope all the time with censorship in that era, you must remember that it was a very different time than now and ISLAND OF TERROR was consid- ered quite gruesome in its day. Likewise, there was a topless girl [Norma West] on a morgue table in THE PROJECTED MAN; this was done at Compton’s insistence because it would help sales overseas. Then there was the scene in IS- LAND OF TERROR where Edward Judd has to cut Peter Cushing’s hand off with an axe to save him from a Silicate that has him by the wrist. The first time I saw the insert shot of the hand coming off and the arm spurting blood was when we screened a finished print at Pinewood Studios. Gerry, Fisher and I all agreed that it didn’t work and was badly done. It was an obvious fake; it looked amateurish. Tom Blakeley was the only one who disagreed because he didn’t want to spend the money to re-shoot it. I had to get up and say that I didn’t want that shot in the film, especially when we screened it for the major distributors in America because it would spoil the mood and make it look like a low-budget movie. I felt an audience would start laughing. Meanwhile, THE PROJECTED MAN, based at Merton Park Studios, was under the supervision of John Croydon as I could not go tearing back and forth all the time between Pinewood and Merton Park. Croydon had introduced Gerry and me to a young writer who was new in the business
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and was enjoying considerable success in televi- sion. His name was Ian Curteis and he was obvi- ously going to go places although he had not yet attempted a feature film. Croydon was so confi- dent of his success that he persuaded Gerry and me to sign Curteis to direct THE PROJECTED MAN. It turned out to be an unfortunate choice. To play the title role, I did not want a British actor and, frankly, we didn’t have the money to import a Hollywood star because of our limited budget. It was not a situation like WITCHFINDER GENERAL [1968] which Compton made with American International who furnished the services of Vincent Price and paid his salary and expenses. The logical conclusion for me was to sign Bryant Haliday, whom I had already used in DEVIL DOLL and CURSE OF THE VOODOO and had achieved a certain success in America because DEVIL DOLL did so well there. Bryant, [an American] living in Europe, was a big fan of horror movies. He had two great ambitions which, unfortunately, he was never able to realize: to star in a remake of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, and to play Svengali. He loved doing THE PROJECTED MAN. I thought he was particularly good in it once he became the “monster on the loose” with the heavy burn makeup.
Compton got Mary Peach for the female lead. She was a stage actress who had also been in some successful British films and they regarded her as good value for England and insisted that she must have top billing. Norman Wooland, the villain, was a well-known character actor, and also a Shakespearean actor on the stage. Wooland, Derek Farr, Derrick de Marney—as I mentioned earlier, these were the kind of people that we could get for pictures, and even though their names may not have meant anything in the United States or elsewhere, they gave the pictures a lot of extra weight in the UK. Unfortunately, THE PROJECTED MAN got into trouble early in the filming. Because of his lack of feature film experience, combined with the tight schedule and limited financing, our young direc- tor Ian Curteis wasn’t able to handle it, it all be- came too much for him. The picture started falling behind schedule and going over budget, and I found myself spending most days at Merton Park with John Croydon by my side while ISLAND OF TERROR was running smoothly at Pinewood. There came a moment when Michael Klinger and Tony Tenser, who were looking over our shoulders, threatened to step in to take over the production, as they were not prepared to increase their financ- ing. Croydon and I decided that there was really
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