DB7

Blood on their hands.

by Sean Macaulay
The time is now frighteningly right for Hammer films to rise from the grave



“WE NEED TO find a language that uses some of the Hammer retro look and feel, something of that Gothic tradition, but it needs to be classier than the old stuff. That’s the hardest thing for us to get right, far more than raising the money.� So speaks Terry Ilott, the head of Hammer Films redux, which was resurrected three years ago by a consortium including Charles Saatchi, and now has plans for remakes, original movies, stage shows and video games.
Hammer Films � the Studio that Dripped Blood and made 250 films between 1935 and 1976 � wound up its film production after its home-grown grand guignol was rendered quaint and shoddy by the likes of The Exorcist and The Omen. The studio made a TV series in the 1980s and tried to develop a Hollywood remake of its 1954 hit, The Quatermass Experiment. But by the 1990s it was effectively moribund, except for the tending of the company’s hefty back catalogue, which includes such perennials as Dracula, Prince of Darkness, The Mummy and The Devil Rides Out.

But until a new Hammer film sees the light of day, the studio’s profile resides with the subculture of fan club reunions and memorabilia conventions that shows no sign of waning. Hammer scream queen Ingrid Pitt, who starred in Countess Dracula, The Vampire Lovers and Twins of Evil, is hosting her seventh annual reunion birthday bash this autumn.

Hammer is not alone in the British film industry in trying to reinvent itself. Ealing Stud-ios, having revived itself as a production site for hire, aims to release more comedies in the hope of introducing the brand name to younger audiences. The Carry On series is daring to try to revive its own magic after a disastrous first attempt in 1992 with Carry on Columbus.

But it is Hammer Films that one can’t help feeling has the most potential to recapture its former glory. The horror genre is back and booming after a mild drought in the 1990s. It has survived parody, cheap imitation and over-saturation in certain sub-genres, especially the teen slasher market, but it has a die-hard core audience across the globe. As Dog Soldiers (werewolves) and 28 Days Later (zombies) proved, modestly priced British horror films can do more than respectable business when made with a little panache.

Finding that panache will be one of Hammer’s biggest challenges. In its later years the studio was synonymous with cheesy, creaking horror clichés � slow-moving monsters looking alarmingly like men in rubber suits, village pubs falling silent with every outsider, rustic innkeepers cautioning: “You don’t want to go up there.� But of late what the Hammer name signifies has changed. It is partly the critical re-evaluation that comes with nostalgia. Even Russ Meyer is now lionised as an independent visionary. It is also thanks to the Hammer films being released on DVDs in deluxe box sets.

People are now watching or rewatching Hammer films and being pleasantly surprised. They are not all camp howlers with cardboard sets and dry ice. Admittedly many of the films were as cheap as the drive-in horror films being cranked out in America at the same time, but the Hammer films often had a seriousness of purpose, a tight-lipped high-mindedness, which American exploitation never achieved.

The evolution of this grand, yet tightly budgeted Hammer style started in the 1950s when Hammer was struggling for product, after two decades churning out all manner of B-movies and adventure films. Hammer raided the Hollywood treasure trove of 1930s horror for inspiration and began reworking such public domain classics as Dracula and The Mummy after their first attempt, The Curse of Frankenstein in 1956, took off around the world.

Hammer did more than rip off the Hollywood classics, though. They made them uniquely British. Forbidden to imitate the Boris Karloff incarnation of Frankenstein, they put the emphasis on Baron Frankenstein (played by Peter Cushing) and made him the real monster. The perverse glow on his face as he listens to the monster mangling his pregnant mistress is, if anything, more unsettling than any number of stitches or bolts through the neck.

Cushing was a vital component of Hammer’s uniquely British approach; its use of well-bred theatrical performers to serve up lurid thrills with all the conviction of a Shakespeare rep company. Such conviction would have produced instant camp if it had not been filtered through the creative and technical ingenuity of Hammer’s backroom staff.

The studio minted a trademark Gothic look � a lush, heavy, set-bound brand of Eastmancolor cinematography � which remains eerily foreboding to this day. It developed a distinctive musical style � the Hammer sound of terror � with an unsettling mix of violins and drums by composer James Bernard that predated Bernard Herrmann’s work on Psycho.

Most indelibly, it made icons out of its stable of elegant leading men, such as Christopher Lee, by having them play such richly haunted monsters. They restored emotional complexity to the genre.

Lee’s Dracula surpasses Bela Lugosi’s, with his icy sexuality and hauteur gilded with ominous civility. “I’m glad that you have arrived safely,� he declares suavely, descending his huge staircase into a massive close-up. “I am Dracula, and I welcome you to my house.� Most crucially, Lee made his Dracula soulful, revealing the monster’s majestic loneliness.

It is axiomatic of classic horror that the monster becomes humanised while the pursuers turn into a baying mob � King Kong, Frankenstein, The Mummy, are all torn down by a pack of human wolves after revealing poignant emotions. Hammer at its best understood this: the function of great monsters is first to terrify us and then to unlock our ambivalence about human nature and forbidden desires.

It is something that Terry Ilott understands too. He has promised that Hammer horror will continue to use “fantastical beings� with confounding dilemmas to match the hero’s own troubles, beings that speak to and for the subconscious of the audience. One can only hope.

lovegod

yes, lets start a new chapter for Hammer Films

of course , the new Peter Cushing can only be one man

...... Robert Powell

Can t think who the new Christopher Lee will be,
I ll have to give that some thought.

smiffy

HMMM!! How about the old Christopher Lee

I May be getting older ,but I refuse to grow up

Jim

Hey DB! What are all those 'wrong fonts' in your post?

Good morning boys.

Steve Crook

They're what is known in the trade as "Bloody Micro$oft".
There are international standards for fonts. But bloody Mico$oft tend to ignore all international standards and do things their own way.
They have their own fonts for what they laughingly call "smart quotes" - and if you know that if Micro$oft call it "smart" then it'll be spectacularly dumb.
But if, when it's copied somewhere else and you don't tell that somewhere else to use the Micro$oft font, then it'll come out looking all wrong.
I don't know if in this case it happened when the message was copied into this forum or if it was like that in the place where you copied it from. Either way, I blame bloody Micro$oft

Steve

DB7

It's a 2003 post so would have become corrupted during the port over from IPB to Vb last year.

Steve Crook

It's still the fault of bloody Micro$oft

Steve

ChristineCB

Over my shoulder, there is a snort and snicker about the writer's mistaken assertion that Hammer and American Drive-In B-Movies were similar. "There is still a huge difference - no kid in America didn't recognize a Hammer film from everything else."

(Then he admits he believed THE DEADLY BEES was a Hammer film.)

Redstar

Of course do not forget all the tv series Hammer made. Along with Tales of the Unexpected, they were also part of the golden age of TV. So sadly lacking now with no taste or panache, we get screaming and unintelligable things like "Waking the Dead" Why do they have to shout all the time?
Many tv series back in the sixties were filmed of course which added to their charm.

lovegod

Tales of unexpected are on itv3 every friday
night usu 2 episodes.

I was only thinking how brilliant they were, so well
filmed and with actresses like ...... Judi Bowker, Jane Asher,
Liza Goddard, Susan George etc
I thought....... they are timeless and like the avengers TV they will be on our screens forever.

Did nt realize that Hammer made the Tales of Unex,
just shows you what class those guys were (are) at Hammer.

smudge

Hammer were not responsible for TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED ; these were from back in the days when we had truly regional television and were produced for the network by ANGLIA TELEVISION.

Hammer did TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN (a pilot for an abortive series in the US, starring Anton Diffring as the Baron) ; JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN (their classic TV series of the 60s which, sadly, led to the resignation of the great Anthony Hinds from the company) ; HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR and lastly the watered-down HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY & SUSPENSE, all for the small screen.

SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

lovegod

All Credit to Anglia , those Tales of Unex are timeless
and I think will be repeated forever. Anglia must have had a great production team back then.

The series was of course based on Roald Dhals short stories
and goes to show what a brilliant and inventive writer he
was,,,,, sitting there day after day in his garden shed , scribbling away.
(where did he get that name from ? )


Funny, I was writing in an earlier post about
Hammer and the Carry ons running in parallel and
both hitting the buffers around the mid 70s

I know that the Carry Ons were a kind of spin off
from the 50 s tv show The Army Game

The army game was televised from Granada s own studio
in Chelsea ( prob live back then ) it made Alfie Bass and Bernie Bresslaw household names (and faces )

I did nt know that Hammer made a spin off film
" I Only Asked " with Bernie Bresslaw. and then another movie with him as a teddy boy ..... " The Ugly Duckling "

So the connection between the two production companies is even closer than I thought !

Reading about the 50 s you begin to see that the swinging sixties really began around 1956
Mary Quant was getting her shop together in the Kings Road
A 20 year musicians union ban on US artists was lifted allowing for visits by Bill Halley and Buddy Holly.

Coffee bars were springing up all over London, Jazz was giving way to the new phenomenon of Rock and Roll ....
Swinging London , dolly birds and pop music was all just waiting to happen ..............!

Steve Crook

It's the name he was given when he was born. Although born in Wales, he is of Norwegian ancestry. The Dahlia, was named in honour of another member of the family, botanist Anders Dahl.
Roald's first name was in memory of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.

Steve

smudge

And there was me thinking that the NOT THE NINE O'CLOCK NEWS gag was true,

"Roald Dahl's father couldn't spell Ronald.."

SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...