The star of movies like The Skull (1965) and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), Peter Cushing knew his way around a horror film. But Cushing went above and beyond his duty as an actor, becoming a detective to discover what made a film audience tick.

“Why do people go to see fantasy-horror movies?” Cushing asked during an interview with the Reading Evening Post. “Well, you must know the story of the moviegoer who was asked that question and replied, ‘I like the blood.’ They go for all kinds of reasons. But we don’t pretend to be real, and at the same time, the plots are darn good yarns.”

However, Cushing also understood that brutality was not a necessity in the horror genre. “But I don’t believe in being gruesome for the sake of being gruesome or violent for the sake of being violent. Imagination is the keynote, and you think, virtually every major writer has turned his hand to the tale of horror.”

Cushing, a frequent collaborator on Hammer horror films, ironically had a less-than-stellar opinion of the film. With movies like The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Hammer Productions became known for the outrageous nature of its films.

“I don’t like them very much,” said the actor. “They aren’t very good films. No, let me put it this way: I envy Hammer their bad taste. They have dismembered limbs lying all over the place. Totally unnecessary. I don’t show things like that in MY films. And the plots. They think of a title and work from there. I like ONE of their films, Kiss of the Vampire. It had a very good story, but I don’t think it made any money.”