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Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars and filmmakers and not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones they made in between.

Today we celebrate Halloween by discussing the B-Sides of Peter Cushing, one-third of The Unholy Trinity (including Christopher Lee and Vincent Price), star of many Hammer Films and Grand Moff Tarkin from Star Wars. To tackle a master such as Cushing, we bring in the inestimable Gavin Mevius, talented editor and co-host of the incredible The Mixed Reviews Podcast. We mention their Vincent Price episode from Halloween last year and their more recent episode of Jamie Lee Curtis. Give them a listen!

For this episode, we discuss Violent Playground, Sword of Sherwood Forest, Cash on Demand, and The Masks of Death. Of course, the Universal Monsters movies come up, as do the Hammer Films that Cushing and Lee made legend.

1976 saw the publication of John Brosnan’s excellent book The Horror People. Written during the summer of 1975, it makes interesting reading 40 years down the line. Those who feature prominently in the book – Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, Jack Arnold, Michael Carreras, Sam Arkoff, Roy Ward Baker, Freddie Francis, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson and Milton Subotsky – were still alive, as were Ralph Bates, Mario Bava, Jimmy Carreras, John Carradine, Dan Curtis, John Gilling, Robert Fuest, Michael Gough, Val Guest, Ray Milland, Robert Quarry and Michael Ripper, all of whom were given a mention. Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Junior, Michael Reeves and James H Nicholson were not long dead. Hammer, Amicus and American International Pictures were still in existence. George A Romero had yet to achieve his prominence and Stephen King wasn’t even heard of!

Brosnan devoted a chapter to a new British company called Tyburn Films. Founded by the charismatic and ambitious Kevin Francis,...

Benedict Cumberbatch: In the BBC series "Sherlock," which comes to U.S. viewers via "Masterpiece Mystery!" on PBS, Cumberbatch plays a thoroughly modern incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, who makes liberal use of texting, the Internet and Gps devices to solve crimes. It certainly doesn't hurt that the actor is exceedingly easy on the eyes.

Robert Downey Jr.: Although they're set in the Victorian England of the original stories, Downey's two (so far) feature-film turns as Holmes bring a certain 21st-century sensibility to the tales, making them accessible to an audience raised on big-screen blockbusters.

Jeremy Brett: Many consider Brett's portrayal of Holmes in four seasons of a British series -- also seen here on PBS - the definitive screen Sherlock of its time, if not all time. He played the role in a total of 41 episodes from 1984 to 1994 and might have continued had he not died at...

If there is one famous literary character that has made such an impact on film and television, it has to be Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s immortal detective. Holmes has generated such a fascination for filmmakers; he is probably more popular, and certainly more prolific, than Dracula and James Bond put together. The number of Holmes films produced since the pioneering days of the silent era is so extensive it’s unlikely the Great Detective will ever be absent from our screens for very long.

Within the last couple of years, Holmes has become fashionable again thanks to Robert Downey Jr’s cinematic reinvention of the role in two successful Guy Ritchie movies and the excellent TV series Sherlock, which effectively transports Holmes (brilliantly played by Benedict Cumberbatch) to modern day London. Oddly enough the concept is not a new one considering Holmes, like Dracula, is a man of his time...