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© Hammer Film Productions / Warner-Pathé Distributors

During the previous incarnation of this blog, before it had to be rebooted due to hacking issues, I published a series of posts under the title Cinematicheroes. This was about actors whom I admired, ranging from craggy action men like Rutger Hauer and James Cosmo to beloved old-school character actors like Terry-Thomas and James Robertson-Justice. Aware of a gender imbalance, I’d also intended to launch a parallel series of posts called Cinematicheroines, dedicated to my favourite actresses. But I never got around to it.

Anyhow, a week ago saw the death of the actress Barbara Shelley following a Covid-19 diagnosis. When I was a lad of 11 of 12 and a nascent film buff, Shelley was perhaps the first actress I developed a crush on. Thus, sadly and belatedly, here’s Cinematic heroines 1: Barbara Shelley.

As well as being my first movie crush, Shelly starred in the first horror movie I saw that properly horrified me, 1966’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness. Before I watched it,

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The sexy Barbara Shelley was born Barbara Kowin on February 13, 1932 in London, England. With her beautiful looks and stature, she worked as a model during her salad days. Her film career began in Italy in the mid-1950s in such tempting fare as Luna nova (1955) and Nero's Mistress (1956), but when this seemed like she was going to remain in the minor ranks, she returned to England to attempt to better her career. After appearing in the minor sex farce The Little Hut (1957) with Stewart Granger, David Niven and Ava Gardner, Barbara caught notoriety in the title role of Cat Girl (1957), a low budget production in which she played a woman possessed by a family curse who develops psychic links with a leopard.

This paid off and she quickly evolved into a popular Gothic glamour woman at Hammer Studios. Starting things off with The Camp on Blood Island (1958) and Blood of the Vampire (1958), the lovely actress proceeded to stake out her own lucrative territory in the horror genres. Through the 1960s, she co-starred in the classic Village of the Damned (1960), along with The Shadow

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Barbara Shelley: Requiem for a Catholic Film Star

Barbara Shelley, who died Jan. 4, 2021, at 88 years of age, was one of Hammer Film’s celebrated “Scream Queens.”During the 1960s, along with a number of actresses, she became part of the Hammer’s acting repertoire, adding glamour to the grisly proceedings. Never a household name, Shelley was, nevertheless, a recognizable face on screen.

When asked, Shelley would say that her favourite on-screen moment came as the expiring vampire staked in the 1966 film, Dracula: Prince of Darkness. She felt she captured there the yearning sadness of the “Undead.” That said, there was nothing sad about the actress in real life. To the end, she was a wealth of stories about her time at Hammer, in Hollywood and elsewhere, tales often laced with a pomposity-puncturing wit.

Her film career had commenced long before Hammer, though. Her start in cinema had come by chance. Having left her native London to work as a fashion model in Rome, she was spotted by a film producer. Soon after, she was cast in non-speaking parts in various product