{"id":10574,"date":"2014-04-09T13:18:40","date_gmt":"2014-04-09T19:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=10574"},"modified":"2014-04-09T13:18:40","modified_gmt":"2014-04-09T19:18:40","slug":"hammer-gets-its-scare-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=10574","title":{"rendered":"Hammer Gets Its Scare Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been dismissed over the years as cheesy, cheap and laughable but, as has been the case on many occasions, Hammer Films have had the last laugh. They boast a back-catalogue that is to horror movies what The Rolling Stones\u2019 discography is to rock music. Fifty-nine years after the release of their first horror movie proper (The Quatermass Xperiment), Hammer\u2019s films have survived scrutiny and re-evaluation and have now attained National Treasure status. Moreover, in terms of sheer importance, the Hammer films were some of the most influential of the past half-century. The ripple-effect of their imitators cashing in on their success would beget the careers of some of the biggest names in Hollywood today.<\/p>\n

And yet since 1984 Hammer has been a dormant entity, existing only in the memory: a pile of ashes, a cape and a signet ring waiting to be reanimated by the crimson, jugular discharge of some poor, unfortunate traveller\u2026or an experienced CEO who knew what he was doing. Finally though, after three decades of false starts it seems that Hammer has awakened once more\u2026<\/p>\n

Now that we have passed through the Gorno period of onscreen teenage disembowelment and young people being stitched together into human centipedes, it requires a bounce of the imagination to understand just how vomit-raising the sight of Peter Cushing dropping a brain into a glass jar \u2013 in gaudy Eastmancolor no less \u2013 was to global audiences in 1957. The Curse of Frankenstein drove its flag, stake-like into the ground, and nothing was ever the same again. National outrage, moral panic and unimaginable box-office returns followed immediately.<\/p>\n

Before Curse, horror movies were a withering presence in world cinema. The glory days of Universal\u2019s classic horror cycle had been spoofed into insignificance. Threats to life and limb were represented by creatures from outer space, robot monsters and giant ants, watchable in 3-D, Percepto and Emergo-vision. There was nothing in this B-movie, teenager-appeasing saga that was ever going to damage your soul.<\/p>\n

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Hammer had been making movies since 1934, mainly quickly-filmed movie versions of radio hits like Dick Barton: Secret Agent. With their version of TV hit The Quatermass Experiment in 1955, Hammer tasted blood and liked it. The public did too and lapped up the follow-ups, X-The Unknown and Quatermass 2. These were all shot in cinema-verite<\/em> style and in black and white. For The Curse of Frankenstein, colour was deployed, pointedly and with deliberate controversy in mind. This movie and the following year\u2019s Dracula (also in colour) took those flaccid and lifeless Hollywood staples, by now stooges for Abbott & Costello to mock, and brought them terrifyingly to life. Never before had blood flowed to such primal effect. When Peter Cushing hammered a stake through Carol Marsh\u2019s heart, cinema audiences genuinely fainted in their seats.<\/p>\n

Hollywood arrived with several suitcases full of cash \u2013 Sir Christopher Lee maintains that the head of Universal Pictures told him that Dracula\u2019s success would save the studio from bankruptcy. With major studio distribution in place, Hammer released dozens of popular horror movies. An exploitation company and proud of it, they saw no shame in giving the public what they wanted \u2013 Frankenstein gave birth to six sequels; Dracula eight. However, they broadened their remit with a surprising number of Saturday-Morning Swashbucklers like The Devil-Ship Pirates and Sword of Sherwood Forest, and had colossal non-horror hits with One Million Years BC and She.<\/p>\n

\"Dracula<\/a><\/p>\n

Their 1960s gothic horrors were a key influence on many creative teens who would soon pick up cameras themselves. Johns Carpenter and Landis were devotees, as were Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese, who said of Frankenstein Created Woman, \u201cThe implied metaphysics (of the isolated soul) is close to something sublime.\u201d Scorsese and Dante both became prot\u00e9g\u00e9s of Roger Corman, who bankrolled their early respective efforts Boxcar Bertha and Piranha. Corman\u2019s was the sincerest form of flattery. The success of Hammer emboldened him to create his gaudy Edgar Allen Poe series (which gave an early role to a young Jack Nicholson) and his company American International Pictures became a serious challenger to Hammer\u2019s position as Master of Horror.<\/p>\n

Horror pictures were comparatively cheap to produce and proved an irresistible source of quick profit, and so further imitators cropped up like Lippert Films, Tigon and Amicus, with their famous portmanteau chillers. As was the case with the entire British film industry after the Sixties stopped Swinging, box office revenue started to dry up and the Hollywood money disappeared back across the Atlantic. Hammer\u2019s budgets were slashed, and their lucky-streak vanished.<\/p>\n

At the end of the 1960s, revolutionised by the violence of world events, the Hollywood Studios had stopped paying other people to make horror movies and had started doing it themselves. Independent smash hits like Night of The Living Dead