Peter Cushing's
SHOCK WAVES
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My Books and Movies!

E.C. McMullen Jr.
RUMOR

RUMOR: People are dying to know the truth

PERPETUAL
BULLET

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E.C. McMullen Jr.
WILLOW BLUE

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FINAL DESTINATION

IN OTHER BOOKS
E.C. McMullen Jr.'s
short story
CEDO LOOKED LIKE PEOPLE
in the anthology
FEAR THE REAPER

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HORROR 201:
The Silver Scream

Filmmaker's Guidebook
featuring
RAY BRADBURY,
JOHN CARPENTER,
WES CRAVEN,
TOM HOLLAND,
E.C. McMULLEN Jr.,
GEORGE A. ROMERO,
and many more.

And In
CINEMA
E.C. McMullen Jr.
Head Production Designer

MINE GAMES
(Starring:
JOSEPH CROSS,
BRIANA EVIGAN,
ALEX MERAZ,
ETHAN PECK)

Dept. head
Special Effects Make-Up
(SFX MUA)

A SIERRA NEVADA
GUNFIGHT
(MICHAEL MADSEN & JOHN SAVAGE).

Production Designer

UNIVERSAL DEAD
(DOUG JONES,
D.B. SWEENEY,
GARY GRAHAM)

Art Director

THE CRUSADER
(COLIN CUNNINGHAM,
GARY GRAHAM)

Review by
E.C.McMullen Jr.

SHOCK WAVES in the US was
ALMOST HUMAN! in the UK

Hey! You know what SHOCK WAVES and Star Wars have in common? They were both released in 1977!

Cinema history is filled with actors who, believing they were in a cheap or bad movie, would only turn in scene-eating trashy performances. They did this believing they were showing their fellow actors, fans, and future employers that they were only slumming for a check, this movie should not represent them.

Compare that with how many British actors have treated some of the worst they've played in. Actors like Richard Burton, Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom, Judi Dench, Oliver Reed, Michael Caine, and Helen Mirren: No matter how bad or how cheap the movie; regardless how deep they may have been in the depths of their personal demons, they always brought their best.

You know what else SHOCK WAVES and Star Wars have in common? Peter Cushing had prominent roles in both of them!

Seriously?

Way serious!

In 1976 on the set of Star Wars, the original Doctor Who, Peter Cushing (Gran Moff Tarkin), was on the set, looking around at George Lucaseses's Death Star spaceship interior. There was a "control bank" rigged up with Christmas Tree lights and common electrical switches that looked for all the world like Christmas Tree lights and common electrical switches of this "Death Star". He believed it was going to be a bomb.

Peter made a lot of low budget movies in his day and was going to make more. But even he was concerned by a set that looked so... bereft! Most of it was simply large black drapes.

Mentioning it to George Lucas, he basically got the answer,

"Hey! Don't worry aboot it, Buddy! It's all movie magic, fwend! That stuff will be outta focus and the audience won't care anyway, pal!"

Imagine yourself in Peter Cushing's place. You've performed in over 100 feature films in nearly 40 years alone (to say nothing of all of your stage theater work) and this inexperienced snot-nosed whelp presumes to tell YOU how movies are MADE?

So yeah, Peter played it with sinister authoritative coldness because that's how he read his part and no matter how bad the picture may turn out to be, nobody could ever blame him for its failure.

That's why Peter's Gran Moff Tarkin is so powerful that nobody could replace him when it came time to reprise his role for sequels, and why Disney tried to get away with a crappy cgi: Cushing Crushed it!

Cushing had more faith in two other genre movies he made that year, THE UNCANNY (with Samantha Eggar, Donald Pleasance, John Vernon, and Ray Milland) and SHOCK WAVES (with John Carradine and Brooke Adams).

Cushing felt that ALMOST HUMAN (aka SHOCK WAVES in the U.S.A.), and not Star Wars was the movie that was going to kill it at the box office in 1977.

Peter wasn't the only classically trained British actor in the movie.

Actor Alec Guinness (Obi Wan Kenobi) felt the same as Peter, believing his strong movie of 1977 would be the comedy mystery he shot the previous year, MURDER BY DEATH (with Peter Sellers, Peter Falk, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, and Eileen Brennan).

Today the legacy of both of these men begins with Star Wars - considered the best movie of all time.

Imagine cinema's history if Peter and Alec had phoned in their performances or otherwise ham-bone mocked their characters. Imagine how that would have torpedoed any chance Star Wars could have had, because the editors were stuck with Peter and Alec derisively parodying their parts.

If Cushing hadn't brought his chilling villain best to Star Wars, SHOCK WAVES might be the obscure pinnacle an ever dwindling audience remembered him for.