Hammer Films Biography

Hammer's next classic horror film proved to be The Revenge of Frankenstein. After the success of The Curse of Frankenstein, it was inevitable that Hammer would return to the Baron. But what of the story? The creature had been destroyed in a vat of acid at the end of Curse. After some deliberation, it was decided that Baron Frankenstein himself would be the focus of the series rather than his monster. Even so, this still created a problem, for Curse had concluded with the Baron being escorted out to the guillotine. Sangster's solution was ingenious; he simply arranged to have the priest who had read the Baron his last rites executed in his stead, the executioner and his hunchbacked assistant being Frankenstein's paid accomplices.

Late 1963 finally saw the end of the Hammer's anaemic stretch and a welcome return to full-blooded gothic form with Kiss of the Vampire, a tour de force in the studio's best manner. It doesn't feature the Count himself (Christopher Lee was still refusing all entreaties to repeat the role) but another disciple, this time one Dr Ravna, the leader of a vampire sect who plays host to the expected lost travellers - this time a honeymooning couple - only to have his ghoulish plans for them nipped in the bud by the Van Helsing-like Professor Zimmer. As they had done in 1964, throughout 1965 Hammer continued to offer the public a mixture of the tried and tested as well as the now and slightly more ambitious.

With Dracula - Prince of Darkness, Hammer finally persuaded Lee to return to the role of Dracula. Seven years and several films on, Lee felt the time was now finally right for a reprise, and so agreed to don the fangs, cape and red contact lenses once again. Similarly. Terence Fisher was brought back to direct the picture, while composer James Bernard revived his famous Dracula theme to give the film a sense of continuity, which is further established by the use of the climactic scenes from Dracula in a prologue to the new film, along with an explanatory narration. Production on Dracula - Prince of Darkness began on 26 April 1965, and progressed smoothly over the next five weeks. In fact, the only problems encountered in this phase came from the censors, the British Board of Film Classification, who objected to was the revivification scene.

Hammer's forthcoming venture was something of an epic, called One Million Years BC it was, like a good deal of their product, a remake, this time of the 1940 Hal Roach classic One Million Years BC, which had the added box office boost of being heavily promoted as Hammer's one-hundredth production (though in truth the figure was higher than this). A prehistoric adventure which pits humans against dinosaurs, Hammer for once decided to pull all the stops out and hired effects wiz Ray Harryhausen to provide the film with some rather more realistic-looking creatures. Helped by Chaffey's assured direction, an atmospheric score by Italian composer Mario Nascimbene and Harryhausen's superb motion work the film could hardly fail. Indeed, it's eventual world-wide take topped $9 million.

Hammer's move from Bray was brought about primarily through their connection with the American company Seven Arts, with whom they had by now co-produced a number of successful features. Run by Eliot Hyman, Seven Arts was one of the cinema's largest independent film organisations, yet Hyman had aspirations to become a 'major', an ambition he achieved when he bought Warner Bros in April 1967 for the then staggering sum of $95 million. Consequently, the two companies merged to become Warner Bros-Seven Arts.

Hammer's ties continued with this new amalgamate, as they did with the British company Associated British Pictures, who themselves had ties with Seven Arts. The upshot of all this involved wheeler-dealing was that Hammer was requested to make use of the studios owned by ABPC at Elstree. They thus said goodbye to the homely Bray and hello to the Elstree film factory in mid 1967. This move was by no means the end of Hammer. For the next few years they continued to make commercially viable films, some of which are good enough to be described as classics of their kind. What was gone, however, was the comfy, family atmosphere of Bray which, in essence, was Hammer Films. Worries that their first post-Bray film might not live up to expectations proved ill-founded however, for Quatermass and the Pit, the third episode in their on-going Quatermass series, turned out to be Hammer at its very best.