Past Times
Looks at how shocked a plucky British studio budget... us all on shoestring
ZOMBIES, vampires and werewolves all found a welcoming home in the Hammer horror films.
They promised a scary night out at the movies for cinema audiences and there was always some evil lurking in the shadows and a damsel in distress in need of rescuing.
The London-based production company was founded in 1934, but focused on making a string of hit Gothic horror films from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involved classic horror characters such as Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy. Produced in the early days of special effects and on “minuscule” budgets, they still managed to thrill audiences.
The Curse of the Werewolf in 1961 was its only werewolf film and gave Oliver Reed his first starring movie role. He was paid £90 a week to play the cursed Spaniard Leon and it is said he used to enjoy giving motorists a fright by driving home after filming still wearing his make-up.
Many famous acting stars made their names in the Hammer movies. Sir Christopher
Lee appeared as Frankenstein’s creature in the 1957 film
The Curse of Frankenstein and a year later was getting his teeth into the title role of Dracula. Peter Cushing played Dr Frankenstein in the first movie and vampire hunter Van Helsing in Dracula. Their on screen collaborations would lead to a life-long friendship between the two actors.
Christopher Lee, who stood 6ft 5ins tall, later said of his role in Frankenstein: “I was asked to play the creature chiefly because of my size and height which had effectively kept me out of many pictures I might have appeared in during the preceding 10 years.”
Peter Cushing also appeared in several Hammer movies over 20 years, often playing the character battling an evil nemesis. He said he approached every role seriously and remembered of The Curse of Frankenstein “no-one had any idea it would be successful. It took the world by storm.
“The whole thing cost £65,000. You wouldn’t be able to get a lead actor for that today”.
The horror flowed on with films like Plague of the Zombies in 1966. The Mummy’s Shroud came out the following year and warned “Beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet!” as a Mummy went on a murderous rampage killing archaeologists.
The budget wouldn’t stretch to a location shoot in Egypt. The cast and crew settled for the less arid Bray Studios in Berkshire. Christopher
Lee’s stunt double, Eddie
Powell, played the Mummy. The Vampire Lovers in 1970 saw Ingrid Pitt play the female vamp. She later admitted it was hard to stop giggling on set because every time she tried to bite her co-star Kate O’Mara her fangs fell out into Kate’s cleavage. Valerie Leon, best known for her Carry On films, got the chance to scare film audiences in Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, which also came out in 1971. She played a reanimated Egyptian queen. British star Glynis Johns appeared in 1973 movie Vault of Horror – an anthology of five stories – in a segment called The Neat Job.
By the mid-70s Hammer’s gothic horrors had started to fall out of favour.
The studio’s last major horror film would come just three years later with To the Devil a Daughter in 1976. It featured Honor Blackman, Denholm Elliot and the return of Hammer regular Christopher Lee as a rogue priest heading a cult. Christopher passed away in 2013 at the age of 93. The star once said: “I’ve always acknowledged my debt to Hammer... They gave me this great opportunity, made me a well-known face all over the world, for which I am profoundly grateful.”
The original studio’s last film was a remake of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, shortly before liquidation in 1979.
But in a twist worthy of any of its best films, the Hammer name rose from the grave in 2007, when the iconic brand was purchased by Dutch producer John de Mol, going on to have horror hits with The Woman in Black and The Quiet Ones. Long may the Hammer scares continue!
MARION McMULLEN