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Hammer Film Productions is a film production company in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films produced from the late 1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers and comedies — and in later years, television series. Hammer films were cheap to produce but nonetheless appeared lavish, making use of quality British actors and cleverly designed, or second-hand, sets. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was due, in part, to distribution partnerships with major United States studios, such as Warner Brothers. During the late 1960s and 1970s the saturation of the horror market by competitors and the loss of American funding forced changes to the previously lucrative Hammer-formula, with varying degrees of success. The company eventually ceased production in the mid-1980s and has remained in effective hibernation since. In 2000 the studio announced plans to begin making films again, however this move has so far failed to materialise. The term "Hammer Horror" is often used, incorrectly, to refer to other films of the period made in a similar style by different companies, such as Amicus Productions and Tigon British Film Productions. Early history (1935 to 1937) — Hammer Productions In November 1934, William Hinds, a comedian and businessman registered his own film company — Hammer Productions Ltd.•• — based in a three-room office suite at Imperial House, Regent Street, London. The company name was taken from Hinds' stage name, Will Hammer. Work began almost immediately on the first Hammer film, The Public Life of Henry the Ninth at the MGM/ATP studios, with shooting concluding on 2 January, 1935. During this period Hinds met Spanish émigré Enrique Carerras, a former cinema owner, and on 10 May, 1935 they formed a film distribution company Exclusive Films, operating from a single office at 60-66 National House, Wardour Street.• Hammer produced a further four films distributed by Exclusive: A slump in the British film industry forced Hammer into bankruptcy and the company went into liquidation in 1937. Exclusive, however, survived and on 20 July, 1937 purchased the leasehold on 113-117 Wardour Street, and continued to distribute films made by other companies. Resurrection (1938 to 1955) — Hammer Film Productions James Carreras (son of Enrique) joined Exclusive in 1938, closely followed by William Hinds' son, Anthony. At the outbreak of World War II, both James Carreras and Anthony Hinds left to join the armed services and Exclusive continued to operate only in a limited capacity. In 1946, James Carreras rejoined the company after demobilisation. He resurrected Hammer as the film production arm of Exclusive with a view to supplying 'quota-quickies' - cheaply made films designed to fill gaps in cinema schedules and support more expensive features. 1952 brought the first of Hammer's science fiction films: Four Sided Triangle and Spaceways. The birth of Hammer Horror (1955 to 1959) 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. As a consequence of the contract with Robert Lippert, 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 from one of Kneale's television scripts, this time by Kneale himself and with a budget double that of the original: £92,000. In the meantime, Hammer had produced another Quatermass-style horror film X the Unknown. At the time, Hammer voluntarily submitted its scripts to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) for comments before beginning production. Regarding the script of X the Unknown, one reader/examiner (Audrey Field) commented on the 24 of November: "Well, no one can say the customers won't have had their money's worth by now. In fact, someone will almost certainly have been sick. We must have a great deal more restraint, and much more done by onlookers' reactions instead of by shots of 'pulsating obscenity', hideous scars, hideous sightless faces, etc, etc. It is keeping on and on in the same vein that makes this script so outrageous. They must take it away and prune. Before they take it away, however, I think the President of the BBFC should read it. I have a stronger stomach than the average (for viewing purposes) and perhaps I ought to be reacting more strongly." The Curse of Frankenstein As production began on Quatermass 2, Hammer started to look for another U.S. partner willing to invest in and handle the American promotion of new product. They eventually entered talks with Associated Artists Pictures (AAP) and its head, Eliot Hyman. During this period, two young American film-makers, Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, submitted to AAP a script for an adaptation of the novel Frankenstein. Although interested in the script, AAP were not prepared to back a film made by Rosenberg and Subotsky, who had only one film to their credit. Eliot Hyman did, however, send the script to his contact at Hammer. Regardless of the BBFC's stern warnings, Hinds supervised the shooting of a virtually unchanged script. Hammer's first Gothic horror went into production. The use of colour encouraged a previously unseen level of gore. Until The Curse of Frankenstein horror films had not shown blood in a graphic way, or when they did it was concealed by monochrome photography. In this film, it was bright red, and the camera lingered upon it. 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. Dracula
The Mummy With the agreement in place, Hammer's executives had their pick of Universal International's horror icons and chose to remake The Invisible Man, The Phantom of the Opera and The Mummy. All were to be shot in Technicolor at Bray Studios, by the same team responsible for Dracula, Curse of Frankenstein and Revenge of Frankenstein. The Mummy was made in 1959, The Phantom of the Opera followed in 1962, but The Invisible Man was never produced. Principal photography for The Mummy began on 23 February, 1959 and lasted until 16 April, 1959. It starred both Peter Cushing (as John Banning) and Christopher Lee (as the Mummy, Kharis), and was again directed by Terence Fisher with a screenplay from Jimmy Sangster. The Mummy went on general release on 23 October, 1959 and broke the box-office records set by Dracula the previous year, both in the UK and the U.S when it was released there in December. During the period 1955-1959 Hammer produced a number of other horror and non-horror films, including The Hound of the Baskervilles starring Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes, and comedies such as Don't Panic Chaps!. Nevertheless, it is the three films, The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy that set the direction and provided a template for many future films, and for which the company is best known. Sequels (1959 to 1969) Hammer consolidated their success by turning their most successful horror films into series. Six sequels to The Curse of Frankenstein were produced between 1959 and 1974: All starred Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein, except The Horror of Frankenstein, where Ralph Bates took the title role. Cushing also appeared in the first Dracula sequel, The Brides of Dracula (1960), in which David Peel played a decadent Dracula substitute "Baron Meinster". Christopher Lee returned to play Dracula himself in six sequels: The first three were direct sequels to the original film, and employed much ingenuity in finding ways to resurrect the Count. Hammer broke continuity with Scars of Dracula in an attempt to re-imagine the character to appeal to a younger audience. The commercial failure of this film led to another change of style with the latter two films, which were not period pieces like their predecessors, but had a then-contemporary 1970s London setting. Peter Cushing appeared in both films playing a descendant of Van Helsing. Further "mummy" movies were unrelated to the 1959 remake and one, The Mummy's Shroud, was relegated to second feature status. The films were The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), The Mummy's Shroud (1966) and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971). The latter was a modern day version of Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars and featured Valerie Leon as a reincarnated Egyptian Princess, rather than an actual mummy. The same novel also served as the basis for the 1980 Charlton Heston film The Awakening. From the mid-1960s, the "Mummy" films and some of Hammer's other horror output were increasingly designed for double-billing. Two films would be shot back-to-back with the same sets and costumes to save money. Each film would then be shown on a separate double-bill to prevent audiences noticing any recycling. for example The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile (both 1965), Hammer also made occasional one-off forays into new territory, and would sometimes import American stars, including Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead and Raquel Welch. Examples include: 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 mould of Psycho and, lacking a distinctive visual style, are not often recognised as Hammer productions. Examples include Paranoic (1964) and Hysteria (1965). On 29 May, 1968, Hammer was awarded the Queen's Award to Industry in recognition of their contribution to the British economy. The official presentation ceremony took place on the steps of the Castle Dracula set at Pinewood Studios, during the filming of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.• 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. Speaking at a press conference in 1973 to announce The Satanic Rites of Dracula, then called Dracula is Dead... and Well and Living in London, Lee said: "I'm doing it under protest... I think it is fatuous. I can think of twenty adjectives - fatuous, pointless, absurd. It's not a comedy, but it's got a comic title. I don't see the point."• The film itself also indulges the turn toward self-parody suggested by the title, with more humour appearing in the script, undercutting any real sense of horror. 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. The Karnstein Trilogy 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: These three were written by Hammer newcomer Tudor Gates, who was recruited at about the same time as Brian Clemens (creator of The Avengers). Clemens wrote two unusual films for Hammer. Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) featured Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick and Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, which he also directed, were not successful at the time, but have since become cult favourites. The experimental films of this period represented 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 then-unfashionable Gothic horror films on which the studio had built its reputation. Neither The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a co-production with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers which attempted to combine Hammer's Gothic horror with the martial arts film, nor To the Devil a Daughter, an adaptation of the Dennis Wheatley novel, were very successful. The company did, however, have some surprising commercial success with the film version of the ITV sitcom On the Buses, which was popular enough to produce two sequels, Holiday on the Buses and Mutiny on the Buses. Hammer's last production, in 1979, was a remake of Hitchcock's 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes, starring Elliot Gould and Cybill Shepherd. The film was a failure at the box office and all but bankrupted the studio. Critical response The Hammer Horror films were often praised by critics for their visual style, 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. Television series (1980s) 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. Notable episodes include: Episodes were directed by Brian Gibson, Peter Sasdy and Tom Clegg, among others. A second television series, Hammer House of Mystery and 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. Hammer House of Horror Hammer House of Mystery & Suspense 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. See also | |||||||||
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