#MOMENTSOFTERRORMONDAY! SHOCK WAVES : FRIGHTENED CHASED AND A SCAR!!

#MOMENTSOFTERRORMONDAY! OUR usual MONDAY POST, but this week chosen one of the more unusual films that PETER CUSHING starred in during his long career, SHOCK WAVES. Everything about this low budget film is divided within the FAN community. It's a film that people either LOVE passionately, or simply HATE. In someways, you can understand why. It's still a mystery why CUSHING committed to a film, that on a brief paper synopsis, SHOULD have gained the same reaction he and his agent gave to John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN a few years later. BUT for no more really than his travel fair, bed and breakfast, CUSHING gained very little, at the time. 

ABOVE : PETER CUSHING reflected in the MAKE UP mirror, having his facial scar

applied to his look of SCAR in 'SHOCK WAVES' (1975)

LATER AFTER HE RETIRED, CUSHING explained he committed to the film, as he wanted to help, what appeared to be a team of dedicated amateur film makers. Considering CUSHING was a man who had always pushed AGAINST any proposed film work, that took him OUT of the country...MIAMI was a long way to go, when he was no longer a young man, and his health wasn't the best. BUT HE did it. And for those who LOVE this film, that is not their gain, but in later years, just like other characters like Tarkin, Dr Who and Sherlock Holmes...it helped bring him ANOTHER following. 

SHOCK WAVES was shot on 16mm, but later given the full treatment by BLUE UNDERGROUND who remastered the master print, cleared the sound, and presented the quite amazing BLU RAY of the film, to a HUGE SUCCESS. BLUE UNDERGROUND did even more with another, of the radar PETER CUSHING film called CORRUPTION. Remastered, and presented with a HUGE extra features support, BOTH films, are some of the best jobs ever made on a lesser known PETER CUSHING film . .

#PETERCUSHING MOMENT OF TERROR MONDAY! LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF : HUNT IN THE SEWERS OF PARIS!

#MOMENTOFTERRORMONDAY! Carrying on....from the werewolf themed  films featured in yesterday's Weekend Double Feature here at the website, I've pulled the final moments from 'Legend of the Werewolf' (1975) for this weeks, #CUSHINGMOMENTOFTERROR MONDAY!. As most of us here know, it's one half of a pair of films, that #PeterCushing made with Tyburn films in the mid 1970's... a nice little thriller / horror film made in the style of films that were made twenty years or so, BEFORE this one. At the time this film was made, the film industry in the UK was in pieces, despite CEO Kevin Francis making a few features with his company Tyburn, plans to produce other movies, were shelved and the two Tyburn terrors, both starring #PeterCushing, still awaiting a legit dvd or blu ray release, becoming maybe two of the 'most wanted' on most PC's fans film wish list.

 CATCH UP WITH THIS REVIEW AND GALLERY FROM 

THE PCAS ARCHIVES : HERE!

REMEMBER! IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us . . Keep The Memory Alive!. The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website, facebook fan page and youtube channel are managed, edited and written by Marcus Brooks, PCAS coordinator since 1979. PCAS is based in the UK and USA

NEW THEMED DAY: HORRIBLE DEATH WEDNESDAY : GIFS DYING TO SHARE!

#HORRIBLEDEATHWEDNESDAY! All change.... Wednesday's have now switched from requested GIFS to a series of GIFS and POSTS of creatures, monsters, villains, and victims from the work of Peter Cushing. Here is a taster gallery for oday... So, expect the most 'Popular Poppin' Their Clogs' here now, every Wednesday 🙂 What is YOUR favorite Horrible Exit of Monster or Character from a Cushing films??? Come JOIN US at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE and tell us!

#HORRBLEDEATHWEDNESDAYS! How could forget this very Dorian Gray-ques finish to #HAMMERFILMS 'THE VAMPIRE LOVERS' (1970)? Following Peter Cushing's chopping of Camilla Karnstein's head (Ingrid Pitt), the oil portrait, aging from the beautiful vixen, to just bones! Very effective...and considerably cheaper than staging a while aging corpse from flesh and blood to ashes! 

#HORRIBLEDEATHWEDNESDAYS!: RICHARD JOHNSON as vampire,with Donald Pleasence and Anthony Valentine as Vampire Hunters, trying to 'put him to rest'! Britt Ekland, as the wife of Johnson looks on in despair. Vampire Lore, played for laughs!  It was producer / writer Milton Subotsky's ambition to one day make a horror film, for the 'kids'. He almost did it. 'THE MONSTER CLUB' sadly, falls a little between stools. An Amicus film, in everything but name, it has some nice touches but sometimes looks very dated and lame today. UNLESS you are a lover of that very sleezey patch between the end of the 70's and the beginning of the 80's.... punk was out, and novelty was in, thus effecting popular music. The 'Monster Club' of the title, looks the worst. Filling a film set with extras wearing rubber masks, even for the cheapest of Amicus films in the 60's is a long fall. The saving grace, is Vincent Price, Donald Pleasance, John Carradine, and a good cast, with two good stories. 'Young people', teens are a fickle lot, what seemed like a good idea as it was put on paper, was pass'e even before the ink was dry! 

#HORRIBLEDEATHWEDNESDAYS!: MICHAEL RIPPER, was often on the receiving end of bad luck in many of his films for Hammer films. But here, as Mipps in Hammer's 'Captain Clegg' (US Night Creatures) of once, he gets to off a baddie! The mute victim of Peter Cushing's pirate in disguise, Milton Reid, takes the bullet and dies...conveniently in the basement workshop of the local undertakers!  

#HORRIBLEDEATHWEDNESDAY! IT MUST have been a daunting task, facing the prospect of playing a lead male vampire in a Hammer film. Who could fill Christopher Lee's shoes? For sure, back in the day, when any Hammer film announced the release of a vampire film, that featured a COUNT, I am sure prospective botties on seats, thought of ONE COUNT, who sadly wasn't turning up for this gig!  It happened with David Peel a decade earlier in 'THE BRIDES OF DRACULA', and maybe with Damien Thomas as Count Karnstein, in Hammer's 'TWINS OF EVIL' (1971) Having said that, this was Thomas's first feature film, and he did quite a good job. Hammer's money men, thought him worthy of a proper 'Dracula-like' special effect aging death! An expensive process, back in the day...and here with only ONE cut away shot! No even Christopher Lee's death in 'HORROR OF DRACULA' (1958) had such confidence!

#HORRIBLEDEATHSWEDNESDAY!: AFTER 'THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES', was released in 1971, it started a trend for horror films, with imaginative death scenes! Vincent Price's 'THEATRE OF BLOOD' in 1973, the sequel to the first Phibes film, 'DR PHIBES RISES AGAIN' and Amicus films, 'MADHOUSE' in 1974, all benefited from scriptwriters burning the night oil, desperately trying to think of fiendish and amusing ways of killing off co stars. This Shish kebab shot, is a clever one! Killing two unfortunates, at the same time. Doctor Death strikes again!

'LA GRANDE BRETECHE' : ORSON WELLES GREAT MYSTERIES WITH PETER CUSHING SUSANNAH YORK : COMING SOON! 

 

IF YOU LIKE what you see here at our website, you'll  love our daily themed posts at our PCAS FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.  Just click that blue LINK and click LIKE when you get there, and help us . . Keep The Memory Alive!. The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society website, facebook fan page and youtube channel are managed, edited and written by Marcus Brooks, PCAS coordinator since 1979. PCAS is based in the UK and USA  . 

GIFS FROM FEAR IN THE NIGHT : GEESON AND CUSHING

#toocooltuesday Hammer films, Fear in the Night is probably the best of the bunch in which Peter Cushing'as role in screen-time is really little more than a guest spot with Cushing working a mere four day's filming for a £1,000 in 1971.

Cushing is worth every penny, Judy Geeson is great, Ralph Bates is terrifying...and Joan Collins does what she does best...you can fill in the gap here! It's a tight little thriller that has all of it's tiny budget of £114,000 up on the screen...

FULL REVIEW AND GREAT PHOTO GALLERY HERE

#ONSETSATURDAY : THE BEAST MUST DIE : ANTON DIFFRING IN THE MAKE UP CHAIR!

#ONSETSATURDAY This week we visit that Amicus favourite, THE BEAST MUST DIE, with a rare shot of ANTON DIFFRING in the make up chair of Paul Rabiger. An interesting film in the Cushing portfolio, is a horror film, a thriller, a who done it??? The answer is probably, it's all three! With it's excellent 'WEREWOLF BREAK' a quite eclectic cast, headed by Peter Cushing, Charles Gray and werewolf hunter, Calvin Lockhart, who sounds like he's just popped over during a tea break from the Royal Shakespeare company's production of 'As You Like it'. It's not one of my favourites, and the music score I find so bad, I have been known to watch the entire film with the volume down. Amicus films, didn't have those memorable scores, like many of the Hammer films, and went down the route of employing Douglas Gamley (1924–1998) to score this one, and many of the portmanteau films. Just my opinion, but I am not a fan. 

Mind you, he's not quite as bad as Elisabeth Lutyens ...who scored Dr Terrors House of Horrors. Her avant-garde blackboard scrapings, set me on edge. Maybe, that was what they were meant to do??? What is YOUR favourite AMICUS film score??

MORE  on THE BEAST MUST DIE at our 

FEATURE and PHOTO GALLERY : HERE