The unknown wit who branded Hammer horror films as “horror films made by accountants” undoubtedly was thinking about Peter Cushing, the most visible and ubiquitous representative of the Hammer creative team during its formative years; but the comment is not simply an insult. Because accountants, contrary to popular stereotypes, are not boring people; rather, they are people who happen to be fascinated by phenomena that most people find boring, namely, the endless minutiae of process. To accountants, it doesn’t really matter whether a company is managing the careers of glamorous stars or manufacturing bedpans, whether it is making tons of money or falling hopelessly into debt; in all cases, they find it equally engrossing to meticulously observe and record exactly where every dollar is coming from, and exactly where every dollar is going, immersing themselves in rapt, microscopic examination of all aspects of the business’ daily routine.

So it was that Cushing, a marvelous embodiment of this philosophy, developed and imposed upon a series of films a unique and unsettling interpretation of the character of Dr. Frankenstein, whom he portrayed more often than any other actor. Although scripts fleetingly obliged Cushing to mouth lines to the contrary, his Frankenstein has absolutely no interest in playing God, advancing scientific progress, or improving the human condition; instead, he keeps making monsters primarily because he enjoys the process of making monsters. Totally indifferent to the results of his work, he naturally keeps making idiotic mistakes, and he naturally never learns from his mistakes—it doesn’t really matter to him. After the damage has been done, he methodically extracts himself from the mess he has made, travels to a distant town, and, under another assumed name, once again throws himself into the pleasurable regimen of pouring chemicals into test tubes, turning the dials of electronic gadgets, slicing up dead bodies, and stuffing new organs into them. Truly, if Hannah Arendt had not coined the phrase “the banality of evil” after watching the testimony of Nazi war criminals, she might have done so after watching the Frankenstein films of Peter Cushing.

This dedication to craftsmanship did not serve Cushing well in another role he essayed more than once, Dracula’s nemesis Professor Van Helsing, since he could not convincingly spearhead a moral crusade to rid the world of an intriguing phenomenon like predatory vampires. However, he was unusually well suited to portray Sherlock Holmes, a figure noted less for his passionate desire to track down criminals than for his delight in playing “the game” of catching them; in addition, despite complaints from some quarters, he was also reasonably good as Doctor Who, another man who always seems interested in what he is doing but does not always pay attention to the consequences of his actions. And Cushing was perfectly cast in Star Wars as a general of the evil Empire who is capable of supervising the day-to-day business of constructing a Death Star while utterly lacking in Darth Vader’s ability to see the big picture.

Since Cushing was content to putter his way through life and through films, focused on the details of the moment instead of the big picture, and since he lacked the relentless drive to keep busy at all costs displayed by his frequent co-star, the enigmatically empty Christopher LEE, Cushing worked less frequently than Lee, but usually with more satisfying results. If not asked to display too much emotion, and instead assigned only to pay attention to the plot and keep it in motion, he could provide efficient, effective, even mesmerizing support, as shown by fondly remembered horror and science fiction films like She, Tales from the Crypt, Horror Express, At the Earth’s Core, and Biggles: Adventures in Time, where his roles precisely matched his talents. His range was demonstrated at an early stage by his striking performance as Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where he was frighteningly persuasive as a minor bureaucrat in the Ministry of Truth, calming sitting in his cubicle and rewriting history, but theatrical and histrionic when called upon to make fervent speeches expressing his cravings for liberty and justice. Overall, one would have to say, his good performances far outnumbered his bad ones, and he made his films better far more often than he made them worse; thus, by a strict accounting, one must conclude that his career was a success.