Sadly, another Hammer films alumni is gone. Francis Matthews is not a name particularly well-known to most American audiences, but in his native Britain, his career spanned 60 years and nearly a hundred films and television shows. His resume included horror films, comedy and modern classics. Matthews passed away at the age of 86 from a short illness. He was born September 2nd, 1927 and died on June 14th, 2014.
Genre fans will undoubtedly remember Matthews from his horror films with the legendary British studio, Hammer Films.
According to UK’s The Guardian, He was an eager assistant to Peter Cushing in Hammer’s The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), then played Boris Karloff’s son in Corridors of Blood (1958), with Christopher Lee. Matthews grappled with Lee, on the same sets, in Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1965) and Rasputin the Mad Monk (1966).
Matthews was a man of the north, born in York, to Henry, a shop steward at Rowntree, and Kathleen. Visits to the theatre were a childhood highlight, and after a Jesuit education at St Michael’s college in Leeds, his entreaties for backstage work at that city’s Theatre Royal paid off. He first acted in a Bradford production of The Corn Is Green in 1945, before national service in the Royal Navy intervened. Following a countrywide tour with Dame Flora Robson in 1954 of No Escape, by the Welsh novelist Rhys Davies, Matthews made his West End debut in 1956. His television debut, for the BBC in its single-channel days, was in Prelude to Glory (1954). For Durbridge, he first did My Friend Charles (1956), as a seemingly affable fellow revealed in the last episode to be a drug-dealing villain.
Matthews was ideally suited to play Francis Durbridge’s gentleman sleuth Paul Temple, in the popular television adaptations of the 1960s and 70s. Paul Temple ran for 64 episodes. He also was the voice for Captain Scarlet and reached a new generation of admirers from that show.
His wife died in 2001. He is survived by their three sons, Paul, Damien and Dominic, and five grandchildren.
We here at Horror Society would like to offer our most sincere condolences to Francis Matthews’ friends and family.
Watch Francis Matthews in a clip from Dracula: Prince of Darkness here,
