Hammer Horror Introduction
| Hammer Horror Introduction With American horror dying off in favor of sci-fi effects, there was no more shivery or stylish guilty pleasure than the Hammer movies, whose low budgets were belied by striking direction, imaginative sets and slumming star actors having the campy time of their lives. The gore quotient was quite high for the time, so much so that British censorship of some bloody sequences was not relaxed for years. This salute to Hammer's heyday includes the studio's two breakthrough horror films, both directed by Terence Fisher and making stars of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee: The Curse of Frankenstein [1957], starring Cushing as the mad scientist and Lee as his monster, and Horror of Dracula [1958], with Lee as the bloodsucking count and Cushing as Van Helsing. Among seven TCM premieres are such provocative titles from director Fisher as The Brides of Dracula [1960], which imbues the vampire myth with hints of incest, sadomasochism and homosexuality, and Frankenstein Created Woman [1966], with former Playboy centerfold Susan Denberg as the suicidal beauty given a new lease on life by the good doctor [Cushing again]. Appropriately enough, the festival leads into Halloween weekend, which offers a collection of "Deadly Jealousy" films on Saturday and movies about "Haunted Houses" on Halloween itself. So tune in to TCM during October for a full month of frightfully good fun! TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: HAMMER HORROR FESTIVAL Friday October 8, 2010 8:00pm Plague of the Zombies, The (1966) Friday October 15, 2010 8:00pm Mummy, The (1959)
Friday October 22, 2010 8:00pm X The Unknown (1956)
Friday, October 1,2010 8:00 PM Hammer had made horror films before. In fact, it made all kinds of movies in the years before it took on the legend of the bloodsucking count. Until the mid-1950's, this family-owned studio was little-known outside England. Even there, Hammer's claim to fame was for film versions of BBC radio serials. This changed after an adaptation of the early television science-fiction drama The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) proved to be a moneymaker in the U.S. where it was released as The Creeping Unknown. From science-fiction it was a short step to outright horror movies and here, Hammer found a way to add something new: color. Until then, horror was closely associated with black and white. This not only created what was considered the appropriate shadowy atmosphere but also downplayed the gorier aspects of horror. Weak stomachs could handle a bit of blood spilling when it was black instead of red. Hammer obliterated that monochrome world with their first classic horror adaptation, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), presented in widescreen and brilliant Technicolor. The critics carped but audiences loved it, leading the studio inevitably to the other great monster of classic cinema, Dracula. Jimmy Sangster adapted the story liberally from the Bram Stoker novel, making Dracula's opponents more active than in the original book. Jonathan Harker is here only pretending to be a real estate agent. He is actually a vampire hunter sent by Dr. Van Helsing, Dracula's main nemesis. Peter Cushing turns Van Helsing into an action hero. At one point Cushing insisted on leaping over a banister despite the studio's fears that the star would injure himself. Cushing is still considered to be the screen's best Van Helsing, a remarkable feat since both Anthony Hopkins and Laurence Olivier have played the role. As for being typecast as a horror actor, Cushing doesn't mind the stereotyping. As he said in the biography, Hammer Horror by Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio,"for any actor to be associated with a form of success like Hammer's, I think it's absolutely wonderful; and if that means being thought of as a 'horror actor,' then I think it's the most marvelous thing that could happen to me." Surpassing the casting of Cushing as Van Helsing, however, is Christopher Lee as Dracula. His deep, aristocratic voice and regal six-foot, five-inch stature combined with an ability to suddenly exhibit animalistic fury allowed Lee to turn the count from Bela Lugosi's Continental seducer into a truly terrifying monster. Lee would forever be associated with Dracula, much to his personal chagrin. Ironically enough, Lee is only on the screen a total of seven minutes in Horror of Dracula yet his frightening presence is felt through the film. Dracula was the title in the United Kingdom, but in America it became Horror of Dracula because of fears that audiences would assume it was yet another re-release of the 1931 movie. Under any title, it was massively popular. One theatre set a British attendance record less than a month after the movie's release. However, not everyone was so pleased. British film critics went into hysterics over the combination of bright-red blood and the low-cut nightgowns of Dracula's female victims. One typical review came from the Daily Telegraph: "This British film has an X certificate. This is too good for it. There should be a new certificate - 'S' for sadistic or just 'D' for disgusting." Such reviews only increased the box office take. "HAMMER - the company that's injecting fresh blood into the film industry," bragged the studio in the trade press. The success of Horror of Dracula led the studio to cancel all their non-horror productions, focusing instead on remakes of classic chillers like The Mummy (1959) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962) as well as an on-going series of Dracula films Producer: Michael Carreras, Anthony Hinds, Anthony Nelson Keys by Brian Cady The Plague of the Zombies Many fans of horror movies agree. The Plague of the Zombies (1966) may have a garish title but an excellent script by Peter Bryan (The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Brides of Dracula, 1960) and atmospheric cinematography makes this one of Hammer Studios' finest productions. Hammer ruled the field of horror movies in the late 1950's and early 1960's with its updates of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy and many others. With color and generous doses of sex and gore, Hammer created new stars like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and a showcase for talented director Terence Fisher. By the mid 1960's, however, these talents were beginning to leave Hammer and the vein of well-known monsters had been tapped out. By late 1965, Hammer was cranking out cheap double features and relying far too heavily on old formulas. For this reason, The Plague of the Zombies, one of their more imaginative productions, was ignored at the time. In the early 1800's, a professor is called to a small village in the Cornish countryside by one of his former pupils, now the town doctor. There is a mysterious plague killing off the locals and, despite the terror in the community, the local squire refuses to allow autopsies. Unearthed graves reveal empty coffins and one woman claims to have seen her brother walking the hills near the squire's mine, despite the brother's death the week before. Bryan's script lets the story play out with a growing feeling of dread and mystery making the most of its setting. Unlike many Hammer films that pit stalwart British investigators against the dank corruption of a continental European setting, The Plague of the Zombies presents a horrific view of England itself. Aristocrats have a bloodlust fueled by fox hunting and the local squire has found a unique way to exploit the working class. With the makeup for the zombies, Hammer again pushed the boundary of classic horror. Whereas in White Zombie (1932) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943) the living dead were merely people with a shuffling gait and a wide-eyed stare, the zombies in The Plague of the Zombies are clearly decaying corpses. This more horrific and effective portrayal would inspire George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the many similar films that followed including director Danny Boyle's recent update of the British zombie movie 28 Days Later (2002). Originally intended to be released with another Hammer horror film set in Cornwall, The Reptile (1966), The Plague of the Zombies was ultimately shown as a double feature with Dracula - Prince of Darkness (1966), making what many horror aficionados consider one of the best double bills of the 1960's. Attendees of these movies during their original release received "zombie eyes" for the men and "vampire fangs" for the ladies. The combination of a classic horror movie and giveaways made The Plague of the Zombies a great bargain as well as a wonderful source of chills. Producer: Anthony Nelson Keys by Brian Cady The Mummy (1959) Hammer's successes wound up spurring a 1958 agreement with Universal, wherein the American studio granted remake rights to its legendary stable of monster properties. The first production made pursuant to the deal - The Mummy (1959) - stands as one of the most crisply crafted and memorable shockers to emerge from Hammer's heyday. This remake of the 1932 Karloff opus pulled together the signature talents of the House of Hammer. The leads were assigned to Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, already established as a fiend-and-foil tandem through playing the creature and his creator in The Curse of Frankenstein and the vampire and Van Helsing in Horror of Dracula. Director Terence Fisher, the once self-described "oldest clapper boy in the business" who found breakout success with The Curse of Frankenstein, was on board, as were screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and production designer Bernard Robinson. The narrative opens in 1895 at the site of an Egyptian archaeological dig, where a party headed by Dr. Stephen Banning (Felix Aylmer) prepares to breach the walls of its find, a tomb believed to be the lost resting place of the Egyptian princess Ananka. Banning's son John (Cushing), confined to camp with a fractured leg, cannot share the moment of triumph. So Banning and his brother-in-law Joseph Whemple (Raymond Huntley) enter the crypt without him, shrugging off the arcane warnings of Mehemet (George Pastell). After confirming their find, Whemple leaves Banning to share the news with John, but returns to the tomb to find his brother-in-law reduced to gibbering lunacy. Britain, three years later: the institutionalized Banning finally becomes lucid, and John is summoned to his side. The elder archaeologist warns his son of a curse on their entire party, which John chalks up to continuing delusion. However, they soon gain a new neighbor in the shire in the person of Mehemet, who in turn has transported the mummy of Kharis (Lee), the high priest who had been entombed alive with Ananka, and resuscitated him with an incantation from an ancient scroll. John and Whemple pore over their research on the legend of Ananka, as a flashback sequence reveals how the princess was abruptly taken mortally ill, and how the heartsick Kharis was condemned for his heresy in attempting to revive her through the power of the scroll. They are also struck by the resemblance of a rendering of Ananka to John's beautiful wife Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux). This coincidence, of course, will come into play as Mehemet seeks to fulfill his promise of vengeance. Swathed in the effective makeup of Roy Ashton, with his imposing physical presence and the profound sadness conveyed through his eyes, Lee added another classic monster characterization to his resume. The scene where Kharis emerges from the bog where Mehemet's porters lost his crypt remains memorable. As always, Cushing provided the ideal complement, as a man of reason forced to confront the terrible truth underlying a legendary curse. In retrospect, The Mummy is surprisingly free of the degree of gore that marked the early Hammer Dracula and Frankenstein efforts. In an interview given to The Kinematograph Weekly during production, Fisher stated that "I have always strenuously tried to avoid being blatant in my pictures. Instead, whenever possible, I have used the camera to show things - especially nasty things - happening by implication." Further, The Mummy bears more commonality with the subsequent entries in the Universal series than with the Karloff original. "I must, at some point, have been shown these earlier Universal films," Sangster recalled for Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio's Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography (McFarland & Company, 1995). "How else could one explain the same character names and plot elements? But I honestly don't recall doing so - it has been thirty-five years, you know!" The Mummy would prove prodigiously successful in Britain and abroad, and Hammer would plumb the Egyptian sands a few more times over the years with The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), The Mummy's Shroud (1967) and Blood From the Mummy's Tomb (1971). Of the other projects initially contemplated under the Universal deal, The Phantom of the Opera (1962) proved a double rarity for Hammer flicks of the era, with its large budget and largely disappointing returns. The third property ultimately went unproduced, and a Hammer remake of The Invisible Man (1933) would, ironically, never be seen. Producer: Michael Carreras, Anthony Nelson Keys by Jay S. Steinberg In many ways a precursor to The Blob (1958) and Caltiki the Undying Monster (1959), X the Unknown (1956) is a much more thought-provoking and serious attempt to demonstrate the consequences of science run amok than your standard monster-on-the-rampage chiller. The film, directed by Leslie Norman, was actually inspired by the success of The Quatermass Xperiment (1955, aka The Creeping Unknown), which was released the previous year and was a box office hit for Hammer Studios. Hammer executive Tony Hinds entrusted fledgling writer Jimmy Sangster with the screenplay for X the Unknown - it was his first feature script - and the result was another hit for Hammer, despite the fact that it earned an 'X Certificate,' restricting it to adult audiences. This was due to some of the more disturbing and explicit special effects, especially in the scene where a hospital intern, interrupted during a sexual tryst, is devoured by the creature, reducing his face and hands to bubbling flesh, then bone. The Quatermass Xperiment, which had also been slapped with an 'X Certificate,' had featured similar scenes as well but the controversy only helped boost the box office receipts of both movies when they were distributed in the U.S., Japan, and Europe. According to some sources, Joseph Walton, a pseudonym for blacklisted director Joseph Losey, was initially hired to helm X the Unknown but left the production after a week due to illness. Losey, of course, would go on to cover similar thematic ground in his 1963 psychological sci-fi drama, These Are the Damned (aka The Damned). As a replacement for Losey, Leslie Norman (Dunkirk, 1958) proved to be an exacting craftsman but was highly unpopular with the cast and crew. Len Harris, one of the film's camera operators later said, "He [Norman] was one of the few people that wasn't liked at Hammer, and you'll notice that, despite the film's quality, he never did another for us. He was a good technical director, but he couldn't direct people very well. Dean Jagger simply wouldn't be directed by him! Leslie was always complaining and could be very harsh. He didn't think much of the film, either.....The thing we disliked the most was his using abusive language through a loud hailer for all to hear. That simply wasn't done at Hammer!" To give you some idea of Norman's alienating behavior, consider this anecdote from supporting actor Michael Ripper: "When I introduced myself to Leslie Norman, he told me that he would have hired Victor Maddern in my role if he had been casting the film!" Some of the exterior shots of the moors and the surrounding countryside in X the Unknown were filmed in Buckinghamshire in South East England. The striking black and white cinematography of Gerald Gibbs (Station Six-Sahara, 1962) perfectly conveys the paranoid, fearful mood of the film through the desolate moors and the often sterile interior settings, which are further enhanced by James Bernard's ominous score and the disturbing sound effects. Some of X the Unknown's most effective scenes are shot from the creature's point-of-view such as one where it stalks a terrified little boy in the woods and the suspenseful climax where it advances toward a chapel full of villagers. The film also provides a lively supporting role for Anthony Newley, who was married to Joan Collins at the time, and on the rise as a young actor in the British film industry. Reviews for X the Unknown were much more positive than most sci-fi genre efforts screened by mainstream movie critics, who usually dismissed them as junk. In England, Films and Filming called it "A welcomed change from interplanetary yarns," The Daily Telegraph proclaimed it "good, grisly fun," and The Kinematograph Weekly pegged it as "gripping science fiction." It was also well received in the U.S., where it was distributed by Warner Bros. after an earlier deal with RKO never materialized. Variety noted that it was "a highly imaginative and fanciful meller....There's little letup in the action, and suspense angles are kept constantly to the forefront." A more contemporary review of X the Unknown in the TimeOut Film Guide by David Pirie puts the film in the appropriate context: "1956 - the year of the Suez crisis, a sharp increase in the crime rate, and uneasy preparation for WWIII - spawned a series of gloomy thrillers (both in Britain and in America) in which the weight of the military is mobilised against various alien organisms from the bowels of the earth or outer space...in a lot of ways it [X the Unknown] communicates the atmosphere of Britain in the late '50s more effectively than the most earnest social document." Hammer Studios would go on to release other well-regarded sci-fi efforts such as Enemy from Space (1957, aka Quatermass 2) and These Are the Damned but their bread and butter were horror films which dominated their production schedule for the next two decades such as their Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy franchises. As for Leslie Norman, he would go on to direct episodes of the cult TV series, The Avengers, and to dabble in the sci-fi genre one more time with The Lost Continent (1968), a deliriously entertaining fantasy adventure in a which a ship is blown off course in a storm and ends up stranded on an island populated by giant crustaceans and descendants of Spanish conquistadors! Producer: Anthony Hinds by Jeff Stafford SOURCES: In a catacomb of laboratories beneath his mansion, Victor Frankenstein and his faithful assistant Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart) work on radical experiments to reanimate the dead. They start with small animals, but when Frankenstein begins talking about playing God with human beings, Paul becomes wary. When Frankenstein's beautiful, trusting fianc¿Elizabeth (Hazel Court) comes to stay in the castle before their marriage, Paul warns her that there is danger brewing in the basement laboratories. Plundering graveyards and procuring body parts at the Municipal Charnel House, Frankenstein assembles a creature he imagines will astound the scientific community. The only element he lacks is the brain of a genius. But the devious Frankenstein finds a way of procuring that too, killing a fellow scientist for a much-needed body part. When his demented monster, implanted with an accidentally damaged brain escapes from Frankenstein's laboratory, a reign of terror and bloodshed is unleashed across the countryside. The Curse of Frankenstein is invested with a sense of sexual and criminal perversity rarely conveyed in the more staid and restrained movie renditions of Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein (1818) novel. Peter Cushing's Baron Frankenstein is a study in science without conscience, and a villain who uses murder, theft and deception to realize his ambitions. Ultimately, his Frankenstein is a far more grotesque monster than the pathetic creature he assembles in his laboratory. In his private affairs, Frankenstein is a cad too, seducing his comely maid Justine (Valerie Gaunt) with a promise of marriage, while his own fianc¿is a guest in his house. Cushing, largely a TV actor of some renown in Britain before being cast in this career-defining role, is exceptional as Frankenstein and brilliantly conveys the decadence lurking beneath Frankenstein's facade of an upper-crust gentleman. That gift for conveying Baron Frankenstein's complexities explains why Cushing so often appeared in Hammer productions, including an entire cycle of Frankenstein films: The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1974, which was also director Fisher's last film for Hammer). Cushing also appeared in Hammer productions as Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Van Helsing (Dracula's nemesis) and other icons of the horror and mystery cinema. Hazel Court, who plays Elizabeth, the baron's fianc¿ went on to become one of the more famous scream queens in the horror cinema (Dr. Blood's Coffin (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), The Masque of the Red Death, 1964). That's her own daughter, Sally Walsh, who plays young Elizabeth in the flashbacks, and regarding her wardrobe Court revealed (in Peter Cushing by Deborah Del Vecchio and Tom Johnson) that her period dresses were "actually part of a real Victorian wardrobe that had [been] handed down over the years." The monster was played by Christopher Lee, who also made a name for himself in Hammer horror films, appearing twenty-two times alongside Cushing. Lee played a variety of monsters and fiends, from the Mummy to Dracula, from Fu Manchu to more realistic villains like Rochefort in The Four Musketeers (1974). Lee's make-up in Curse was designed to be more realistic looking and in-keeping with the descriptions of the monster in Shelley's Frankenstein. It was also created so as not to imitate the copyrighted Jack Pierce make-up for the monster in James Whale's 1931 version of Frankenstein. Director Terence Fisher was once quoted as saying "We wanted a thing which looked like some wandering, forlorn mistral of monstrosity, a thing of shreds and patches." In the biography, Hammer Horror by Tom Johnson and Deborah Del Vecchio, cameraman Len Harris recalled that the actual filming posed numerous risks: "We had some near-misses. When Peter Cushing pushed the professor off the balcony, we had part of the floor padded - the part where the stunt man's head (Jock Easton) should have hit. Well...he missed! Easton also doubled for Lee in the climactic fire. "This was an extremely dangerous stunt," said Harris. "We had more men with fire extinguishers on the set than you could count! They don't pay these chaps enough!" The Curse of Frankenstein's lurid storyline is well-accentuated with the shocking colors that characterized the look of Hammer productions and was quite a dramatic departure from the black and white look of the Universal horror films. Now there were garish red pools of blood and the ghastly chalky blue face of Frankenstein's monster glows with a sickly, gory intensity. Though critically attacked by many for its sadism and unprecedented emphasis on gore (criticism which would continue to dog the studio and undoubtedly helped advertise and attract younger audiences), The Curse of Frankenstein was a huge financial success (it only cost $250,000 to produce) and inaugurated Hammer's 10 year domination of the horror film. Once again Frankenstein's monster and other famous creatures had the power to terrify audiences anew and were no longer seen as comical as they were in the late forties when the horror genre descended into self-parody with fare like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Director: Terence Fisher by Felicia Feaster Hammer Horror Introduction Carl Ray Louk "FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS" SG-1996 "LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY" SG-2000 "THE PHOENIX SHALL RISE" SD "EVEN A MAN WHO IS PURE IN HEART AND SAYS HIS PRAYERS BY NIGHT, MAY BECOME A WOLF WHEN THE WOLFBANE BLOOMS AND THE AUTUMN MOON IS BRIGHT." LT-1941 "FLESH OF MY FLESH; BLOOD OF MY BLOOD; KIN OF MY KIN WHEN SAY COME TO YOU, YOU SHALL CROSS LAND OR SEA TO DO MY BIDDING!" CVTD-1895 "FROM HELL'S HEART I STAB AT THEE, FOR HATE SAKE I SPIT MY LAST BREATH AT THEE" CA-1895 "I HAVE BEEN, AND ALWAYS SHALL BE YOUR FRIEND" Spock "TRICK OR TREAT, TRICK OR TREAT CANDY IS DANDY BUT MURDER, OH MURDER, IS SO SWEET" CRL-2003 "EYE OF NEWT, AND TOE OF FROG, WOOL OF BAT, AND TONGUE OF DOG ADDER'S FORK, BLIND-WORM'S STING, LIZARD'S LEG, AND OWLET'S WING. FOR A CHARM OF POWERFUL TROUBLE, LIKE A HELL-BROTH BOIL AND BABBLE. DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE, FIRE BURN, AND CALDRON BUBBLE" WS MySpace.com: www.myspace.com/carlraylouk http://www.myspace.com/carlraylouk Yahoo Group: Yahoo! Groups : LouksHauntedGraveyardhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/LouksHauntedGraveyard/ Yahoo Group: Yahoo! Groups : TheWorldAccordingtoCarlRayLouk http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheWorldAccordingtoCarlRayLouk/ |
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