Hammer Film Productions

File:Dracula Prince of Darkness Poster.jpg

A poster for Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966).

Hammer Film Productions is a British film production company, best known for its horror films.

This series of Gothic "Hammer horrors" were produced from the late 1950s until the 1970s, although the company began making films in other genres in the 1930s. The term is also sometimes used to refer to other films of the period in a similar style made by different companies, such as Amicus Productions and Tigon.

Hammer's success was due, in part, to distribution partnerships with major American studios like Warner Brothers. Hammer films were also early examples of low budget film-making. The fact that their films were extremely cheap to produce, but nonetheless lavish, making use of quality British actors and cleverly designed, or second-hand, sets, contributed to their dominance of the horror market.

Early history (1935 to 1954)

Hammer was founded in London in November 1934 by Spanish-born cinema owner Enrique Carerras and music hall comedian William Hinds. It operated alongside their film distribution company, Exclusive Films. Hinds was well known as "Will Hammer", one half of a double-act called Hammer and Smith, and it was this which gave the production company its name. Between 1935 until 1937, Hammer produced only four films:

The Public Life of Henry the Ninth (1935)
The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (US The Phantom Ship) feat. Bela Lugosi (1936)
The Song of Freedom feat. Paul Robeson (1936)
Sporting Love (1937).

The company then fell into inactivity for the duration of the World War II, although Exclusive Films continued to distribute films made by other companies.

Enrique Carreras' son James had been working for his father since 1935, and was joined by his son, Michael, on his return from active service. Anthony Hinds, William Hinds' son, also joined at the same time. It was these two younger partners who, in the mid-1950s, noted a taste for horror subjects in the post-war public, and moved the studio toward the production of that type of film.

In 1950 and American film producer, Robert Lippert, signed a five-year production and distribution contract with Hammer and Exclusive. The contract meant that Lippert and Hammer would, in effect, exchange product for distribution on their respective sides of the Atlantic. It was Lippert's instistence on an American star in the Hammer films he was to disribute that led to the prevalance of American leads in so many of the company's 1950s productions.

As a response to the influx of investment, Hammer bought its own studio complex based at a manorial estate at Down Place, in Bray. This came to be known as Bray Studios, and was used for interior sets. Its expansive grounds were used for almost all of the location shooting in Hammer's films, and are a key part of the "Hammer look".

The birth of Hammer Horror (1955 to 1960)

Hammer's first significant experiment with horror came in the form of a 1955 adaptation of Nigel Kneale's BBC Television science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment, which was directed by Val Guest. Under the Lippert contract, American actor Brian Donlevy was imported for the lead role, and the title was changed to The Quatermass Xperiment to cash in on the new X certificate for horror films. The film was an unexpectedly big hit, and led to an almost equally popular 1957 sequel (Quatermass 2) again adapted (this time by Kneale) from a Kneale television script. In the meantime, Hammer had produced another Quatermass-style horror film X the Unknown.

At this point, Carreras and Hinds began to look for more horror material that would be cheap to adapt. Realising that no-one had made versions of the classic horror stories - specifically Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy - since Universal Studios' 1930s films and their numerous sequels, they decided on a new Frankenstein film as their next project. To avoid copyright disputes with Universal, Jimmy Sangster's script was based very clearly on the original novel, with an appropriate period setting, and the make-up devised for Christopher Lee bore little relation to Jack Pierce's iconic creation for Boris Karloff. Another innovation, and one which took advantage of the studio's investment in a more expensive colour production, was the amount of gore in the film. Previously, horror films had not shown blood in a graphic way, or when they did it was concealed by monochrome photography. In The Curse of Frankenstein, it was bright red, and the camera lingered upon it.

The film was directed by Terence Fisher, with a look that belied its modest budget. Peter Cushing's performance as Baron Victor Frankenstein, and Lee's as the imposingly tall, brutish monster provide the film with a further veneer of polish.

The film was an enormous success, not only in Britain, but also in the USA, where it inspired numerous imitations from, amongst others, Roger Corman and his American International Pictures. It also found success on the European continent, where Italian directors and audiences were particularly receptive.

The Curse of Frankenstein provided the studio with a template which they stuck to for around the next ten years. In 1958, they produced a new version of Dracula (re-titled The Horror of Dracula in the US), starring Christopher Lee as the Count, and Peter Cushing as Abraham van Helsing, giving the studio another sizeable hit and adding to the criticism expressed over the amount of violence and gore in their films. The following year the company resurrected another Universal monster with a new version of The Mummy, again featuring Lee as the monster and Cushing as his opponent. The same year Lee and Cushing also starred in a new version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Although Cushing's performance as Sherlock Holmes was well-received, the film itself was not as big a hit as its predecessors.

Sequels (1960 to 1969)

From 1960, Hammer made occasional one-off forays into new territory with, for example:

The Curse of the Werewolf (1960)
a version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde in 1960's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll
Phantom of the Opera starring Herbert Lom (1962)
She (1965)
Plague of the Zombies (1965).

Running alongside production of the Gothic horror films, Hammer also made a series of what were known as "mini-Hitchcocks". These very low-budget suspense thrillers, often in black-and-white, were made in the mold of Psycho, and, lacking a distinctive visual style, are not often recognised as Hammer productions. Examples include Paranoic (1964) and Hysteria (1965).

In the main, however, Hammer's concentrated on the production of sequels to its first wave of horror films, which were guaranteed money makers.

Sequels to The Mummy were relegated to second feature status, and have markedly lower production values than the Dracula and Frankenstein films which filled Hammer's release schedule throughout the 1960's. Lee went on to play Count Dracula more times than any other actor. His other Dracula films for Hammer were:

Cushing, for his part, went on to make five more Frankenstein films:

Cushing also appeared in Dracula sequels without Lee, such as 1960's Brides of Dracula, in which David Peel played a decadent Dracula substitute called Baron Meinster, and 1974's The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a co-production with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers which attempted to combine the British style of Gothic horror with the martial arts action film.

In 1968, Hammer Films was awarded the Queen's Award for Industry as recognition for their contribution to the UK economy.

Market changes (early 1970s)

As audiences became more sophisticated in the late 1960s, with the release of artfully directed, subtly horrific films like Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, the studio struggled to maintain its place in the market. It responded by bringing in new writers and directors, testing new characters, and attempting to rejuvenate their vampire and Frankenstein films with new approaches to familiar material.

Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, for example, abandon period settings in pursuit of a modern-day setting and "swinging London" feel. These films were not successful, and drew fire not only from critics, but from Christopher Lee himself, who refused to appear in more Dracula films after these. The films also indulge a turn toward self-parody, with more humour appearing in the scripts.

Hammer films had always sold themselves, in part, on their violent and sexual content. After the release of films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch, audiences were increasingly able to see more explicit gore, more expertly staged, in relatively mainstream films. Night of the Living Dead, too, set a new standard for graphic violence in horror films. Hammer tried to compete as far as possible - Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell, for example, features a scene where the Baron stands on a discarded human brain - but realised quickly that, if they couldn't be as gory as new American productions, they could follow a trend prevalent in European films of the time, and play up the sexual content of their films.

In the Karnstein Trilogy, based loosely on J. Sheridan Le Fanu's early vampire novella Carmilla, Hammer showed some of the most explicit scenes of lesbianism yet seen in mainstream English language films. Despite otherwise traditional Hammer design and direction, there was also a corresponding increase in scenes of nudity in the films during this era. The Karnstein Trilogy comprises:

The Vampire Lovers, featuring Polish actress Ingrid Pitt, 1970
Lust for a Vampire, 1971
Twins of Evil, 1972

These three were written by Hammer newcomer Tudor Gates, who was recruited at about the same time as Brian Clemens (creator of The Avengers). He wrote two unusual films for Hammer. Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1972) featured Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick and Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, which Clemens also directed, were not successful at the time, but have since become cult favourites. The experimental films of this period represent a genuine attempt to find new angles on old stories, but audiences did not seem interested.

Final years of film production (late 1970s)

In the latter part of the 1970s, Hammer made fewer films, and attempts were made to break away from the now unfashionable Gothic horror films on which the studio had built its reputation. It's last production, in 1979 was a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes, starring Elliot Gould and Cybill Shepherd. It all but bankrupted the studio, and was a failure at the box office.

Television series

In the early 1980s Hammer Films created a series for British television, Hammer House of Horror, which ran for 13 episodes. In a break from their cinema format, these featured plot twists which usually saw the protagonists fall into the hands of that episode's horror. These varied from sadistic shopkeepers with hidden pasts, to witches and satanic rites. The series was marked by a sense of dark irony, its haunting title music, and the intermingling of horror with the commonplace.

A second television series, Hammer House of Mystery & Suspense, was produced in 1984 and also ran for 13 episodes. The stories were originally to have been the same 1-hour length as their previous series, but it was decided to expand them to feature-length so as to market them as 'movies of the week' in the US. The series was produced in association with 20th Century Fox and as such, some of the sex and violence seen in the earlier series was toned down considerably for US television. Each episode featured a star, often American, well-known to US viewers. This series was Hammer's final production of any kind to date.

Critical response

The Hammer Horror films were often praised by critics, although rarely taken seriously. "Altogether this is a horrific film and sometimes a crude film, but by no means an unimpressive piece of melodramatic storytelling" wrote one critic of Dracula in The Times (May 28, 1958, p10). Terence Fisher's direction has been praised, however, in, for example, Richard Roud's Cinema: a Critical Dictionary. Critics who specialise in cult films, like Kim Newman, have praised Hammer Horror more fully, enjoying their atmosphere, craftsmanship and camp appeal.

Recent developments

In recent years, although the company has seemed to be in hibernation, frequent announcements have been made of new projects. In 2003, for example, the studio announced plans to work with Australian company Pictures in Paradise to develop new horror films for the DVD and cinema market.

Hammer directors and writers

James Carrreras, as Henry Younger - writer and director of The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb
Terence Fisher - director of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Mummy and others
Freddie Francis - director of The Evil of Frankenstein and Dracula has Risen From the Grave
Tudor Gates - writer of The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, and Twins of Evil
Anthony Hinds, as John Elder - writer of The Brides of Dracula, The Curse of the Werewolf and others
Jimmy Sangster - writer of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein and others; director of The Horror of Frankenstein and Lust for a Vampire
Peter Sasdy - director of Taste the Blood of Dracula and Countess Dracula

Hammer Horror actors

Hammer's horror films featured many of the same actors in recurring roles; these actors are sometimes called the "Hammer repertory company".

Hammer Horror music

The scores for many Hammer horror films, including Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein, were composed by James Bernard.

External links