#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 . .

#CALLUMMCKELVIE SUNDAY! THERES NO DRACULA BUT BRIDES STILL HAS A LOT OF BITE!

COUNTINUING MY TRIPS down memory lane, I’m going back a little earlier than my l piece as week on HORROR EXPRESS (1973). As I said previously.  When I came across Horror Express, I was already well acquainted with the work of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and the gothic horror movement of the late 50’s- 1970’s. The subject of today’s piece, The Brides of Dracula, was one of the first films I encountered on my journey into this world and the first that really made me take notice of Cushing as an actor. 

MY INTEREST IN THE GENRE went something like this; finding Quatermass and the Pit (1967) through references in Dr Who magazines and then researching its background. From there I saw Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964), chosen due to my interest in Egyptology (and the fact that it was the easiest Hammer-Mummy film to get on region 2 at the time) and the other Quatermass films. Then, I started to dip my toes into Hammers other franchises, Amicus films and the work of contemporaries like Roger Corman. I would do this by heading along to the UK HMV store and picking a random title or two, fortunately for me Halloween usually involved a sale on the horror section and two for £10. 
 

I BELIEVE IT WAS HALLOWEEN 2008 when, in the very early days of my hammer collecting, I grabbed both The Devil Rides Out (1968) and Brides of Dracula. I’d been after Devil for some time, but Brides I knew very little about and indeed only chose it to see an example of Hammer’s Dracula series. Rushing home with my two purchases, I had a habit at this age of turning any film I really wanted to see into something of an ‘event’, buying snacks and leaving it until late evening. The film I gave that honour too was The Devil Rides Out, but deciding I wanted to watch something however, I popped the disc of Brides into the player.

I THINK, IN MANY WAYS Brides of Dracula, is the perfect film in which to fall in love with both Hammer and Cushing. Whilst the script, can at times be a little messy, it is the atmosphere and performances that set this film apart. Visually the film is somewhat different to 1958’s Dracula, the slightly rougher aspects of that film are completely gone, primarily anything shot on location.

IN DRACULA , this was beneficial atmospherically as for the most part that film functions as a thriller in the guise of a horror movie. Think about it, a man hunts down an evil villain and dies in the process, a relative and the man’s accomplice in his mysterious work then embark on a cat and mouse chase with the villain. Of course I am being a little ignorant in this description of the gothic atmosphere and various staking’s etc., etc.

HOWEVER PURELY in terms of its various script beats, Dracula follows a classical thriller mould. Brides on the other hand is a fairy-tale, a dark fable of a girl who enters a strange country and rescues a prince (well Baron) only for him to turn out to be cursed. It is up to a brave hero (Van Helsing) to save the day. Perhaps reacting to this, Terrance Fisher opts to shoot Brides as mostly stage bound with very little obvious location footage. The set design is far more extravagant and what results is an utterly beautiful self-contained gothic world. The blacks and browns used in a lot of the sets in Dracula, are replaced with vibrant purples and reds. As a young horror fan, I fell in love with this gothic fairy-tale landscape.

A HUGE COMPONENT of this is David Peels performance as Baron Meintser, a character who somewhat divides the fans. Honestly, whilst I adore Christopher Lee as Dracula, I think it’s very unfair to compare that performance to this one. What is being exercised in the two movies are two very different portrayals of the ‘Dracula’ type character. 

WHILST CHRISTOPHER LEE gets his brief ‘refined gentleman’ moment in the opening scene of the earlier film, his Dracula is an animalistic, vicious character. The sexuality comes from that, with Lee's Dracula presented as a highly sexualised creature, not in a romantic way but a lustful and primal one. Peel on the other hand, feels as if the Hammer team were going for an entirely different approach, presenting him as a suave and debonair figure. For the most part he spends his time talking and being legitimately charming, as opposed to Lees snarling and hissing. This works within the films ‘fairy-tale mould’, after all the wonderful opening sequence in which the character of Marianne ‘frees’ him, wouldn’t work as well unless the character was a romantic one.

IN MANY WAYS, Peel's performance pre-empts the take that Frank Langella would have on the character many years later. And then of course there’s Cushing himself, giving what is perhaps his best performance as Van Helsing. I remember being utterly captivated by the determination in his performance, most notably the celebrated scene where he is forced to use a branding Iron on his neck to save himself from the curse of Vampirism.

THE SHEER FEAR mixed with determination presented here gives Van Helsing a warmer presence than he had in the earlier film (Teddy-bear coat scenes aside) and his bond with Marianne does hint at a romance between the two. It’s the performance that made me fall in love with the man and I quickly hunted down several of the Frankenstein entries to see more.

RETURNING TO MY little story of how I discovered Brides, whilst I did enjoy The Devil Rides Out, the film that really stole my heart that Halloween was Brides of Dracula. For me, it’s the only film to watch that time of year and I’m always ready to immerse myself in its rich gothic atmosphere again and again. Whilst I of course adore Dracula, in many ways Brides is a superior film and for me is Fishers masterpiece. If you ever want to indoctrinate anyone in the ways of Hammer, this is the one to go for- after all it worked for me!

AND WHAT ABOUT YOURSELVES dear readers? What were the films that really made you fall in love with Cushing? If you have any comments, suggestions or feedback about this or ANY of my features here at PCAS you can contact me HERE at spookycallum58@gmail.com

PART ONE OF OUR Femme Fatale Feature on YVONNE MONLAUR 

star of BRIDES OF DRACULA can be found HERE!

 

THE DEEP END OF HORROR: CALLUM MCKELVIE REVIEWS SHOCK WAVES

Throughout his film career, Cushing played Nazis a surprising number of times. From Rudolph Hess in a 1953 episode of You Are There, to Heinrich Haussner in Son Of Hitler (1977) and Martin Blueck in the Hammer House Of Horror series, missing several in between and after. Of course tht's not even including close cousins such as Major Heinrich Benedek in Scream And Scream Again or Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977). And can anyone forget that striking poster for the unmade The Savage Jackboot, featuring an image of Peter  dressed as an SS officer and brandishing a whip? 

Perhaps the most obvious Cushing Nazi role is that of the unnamed 'SS Commander' in Shock Waves...... despite him having very little screen time. Shock Waves has certainly build something of a reputation for itself, in spite of being incredibly low budget and essentially utilizing a tired slasher format. Of course what Shock Waves is most remembered for re-introducing the concept of Nazi Zombie popular in the 1940's and doing successfully. It doesn't really need to stated, that excluding some excellent offerings post 2000 (Dead Snow I'm looking at you) the Nazi Zombie film sub-gene is primarily made up of some pretty awful films, euro-horrors Zombie Lake and Oasis Of The Zombies (both 1981) spring to mind. Shock Waves is often thought of as the best of these, avoiding a straight up Romero rip-off in that it's Zombies are calculated, trained killers that never stop rather than flesh eating monsters.

The film tells the story of a The film tells the story of a group of tourists cruising on a small boat skippered by genre favourite John Carradine. After encountering a strange orange haze and a possible Ghost boat, the ship begins to take on water and the group find themselves evacuating to a nearby island. The island is deserted aside from an aged SS Commander (Cushing), who lives in self-exile in a deserted hotel. Cushing tells the group the story of the Death Corps, a group of undead super soldiers developed towards the end of the war, who unable to die have lain in the hold of the sinking ship, until the tourists crashing into it released them. One by one the group are laid to siege by the unstoppable killers.

It’s an incredibly simple film and as I stated before works using the format of a slasher film above anything else. Characters are introduced. Threat is introduced. Characters are picked off by threat one by one until only one/two survive. That’s it. However that’s not to say Shock Waves is bad. Far from it. Where it succeeds is atmosphere and heaps of it. The island setting is incredibly evocative and the hotel where director Ken Wierderhorn filmed is particularly creepy (apparently he payed $250 to rent the entire building, it’s now a luxury hotel which charges significantly more than that per room per night). 

The Nazi zombies themselves look INCREDIBLE, the simple design giving them a sleek appearance that makes their stalking scenes particularly effective. The shots of them underwater are one of the highlights of the film and are genuinely chilling.

And what of Cushing? Well as ever he attempts to imbue his character with some pathos but there really is far too little of him on-screen to even really comment on his performance. His monologue is one of the most chilling sequences in the film and easily the highlight and he does manage to at least deliver a menacing presence for the 5+ minutes we actually see him. 

It’s also interesting to see him acting in what is clearly a film that fits more comfortably into the ‘Horror New Wave’ style of the 1970’s than it does into any of the more classically based horror that he usually appears in. It’s a pity he had no scenes with Carradine however, though just as with every other horror star from the 50’s/60’s/70s you can always catch them together in 1983’s House of the Long Shadows. 

However if your intending to watch Shock Waves for Cushing alone, maybe give it a miss.   I recommend Shock Waves. It’s no genre classic and certainly slogs considerably once the nature of the Zombies is revealed and it turns into standard slasher fare. That said however, its ninety minutes of genuinely well-shot atmosphere. If you enjoy that indie 70’s grunge horror, then give it a watch. For genuinely excellent Nazi Zombie horror- watch Dead Snow .

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