Hammer Horror retrospective

Hammer Horror

Words: Scott Burns.

Founded in 1934, Hammer Films was a genre-film studio specialising in B-movies made with low budgets but impeccable standards. After making successful movies in several genres, mostly lurid thrillers, the studio would become a household name when it produced a series of Gothic horrors based on classic literature.

Beginning with The Curse Of Frankenstein in 1957 and continuing with Dracula (aka: Horror Of Dracula) in 1958, the studio had a couple of hit movies here, in Europe and across the pond, starting a chain reaction of similar films being produced all over the world, notably the series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations from American International Pictures, starting with Roger Corman’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher in 1960; also Riccardo Freda’s The Mill Of Stone Women (1960) and the films of Mario Bava in Italy, and the films of actor Paul Naschy in Spain.

The films were typified by strong performances from the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, both of whom became cult superstars as a result, a pushing of the boundaries of sex and violence then permissible in British cinema (usually in the form of wanton sexuality and lots of bright red fake blood, nicknamed “Kensington Gore”, the liberal use of which would bring Hammer into constant trouble with the BBFC), and solid film-making from industry veterans like Terence Fisher, utilising fantastic cinematography and production design as well as outdoor location filming (quite rare in genre cinema).
The Curse Of Frankenstein and Dracula were directed by former editor Fisher who brings a high-energy and pace to the pictures, focussing on performance and atmosphere as well as dynamic photography and editing. The scripts, by Jimmy Sangster, were well-crafted, unpretentious and unapologetically mainstream. These were not art movies but entertainment for the masses, and the masses ate them up, responding to the universal narrative of Good vs. Evil and enjoying the gruesome thrills.

This was the Hammer “formula”, and Reel Steel are presenting a quartet of their later works, all fine examples of the company’s dedication to making quality low-budget cinema for the widest audience imaginable.

See screening details
>here<

–

See our retrospective feature on
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
>here<

See our retrospective feature on
The Devil Rides Out (1968)
>here<

See our retrospective feature on
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
>here<

See our retrospective feature on
The Gorgon (1964)
>here<

–

–