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"In my early teens, I went with groups of
friends to go see certain films. If we saw
the logo of Hammer films we knew it was
going to be a very special picture...a sur-
prising experience, usually- and shocking...

MARTIN SCORSESE
from THE STUDIO THAT DRIPPED BLOOD

In May of 1957, a British horror film called THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN opened in London. It was a film that would make international stars of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and HAMMER FILMS a household word. At the time Hammer Films was making 5 films a year and no one at the studio had any idea what a success this film would be. Costing under 70,000 pounds, THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN was an overnight success. Hammer films was not born here. The history of that famous studio goes much further back.

Enrique Carreras (1880-1950) was born in Spain. He moved to England and opened up a theater which could be considered one of the first multi-plex. It was actually two theaers that showed different movies and seated 2000 people. The theater was called Blue Halls and was soon turned into a chain of theaters. In the late 1920's Carreras formed Exclusive Films to serve as a distribution company for films in England. During this time a vaudeville act billed as Hammer And Smith began appearing in England. William Hinds was the Hammer of Hammer and Smith. Carreras and Hinds met and formed a partnership in 1932 and secured the distribution rights to several British Lion pictures. It was decided that a seperate company would be formed to produce movies for Exclusive the distribute. The studio was to be called HAMMER FILMS.

Their first film was THE PUBLIC LIFE OF HENRY THE 9TH, followed by THE MYSTERY OF THE MARY CELESTE (THE PHANTOM SHIP). Over the next 2 decades Hammer Films existed to create a myriad of B Grade films and short subjects. Most of the films were crime dramas. Many of these films can no longer been seen but they provided a comfortable existance for Carreras and Hinds.

The studio began to for a family environment when James Carreras (1909-1990), Enrique's son, joined the Exclusive team in 1939. Anthony Hinds (1922- ), Williams son also joined the studio in 1939. Their first stay with the company was short lived though. War had broke out in Europe and both sons went off to fight. In 1946, both returned to their father's little film company. James Carreras son Michael joined the Exclusive team in 1943. Like his father, he was called of to military service. He also returned to the studio after the war.

The making of Hammer Films was done is several country houses instead of the conventional studio, like in Hollywood. While filming THE LADY CRAVED EXCITEMENT in 1950 at Oakley Court, the studio became interested in obtaining the neighboring Down Place as a permanent home for their studio. It was owned by George Davies and his wife. George was a bit of a film fan who agreed to sell the place provided that he and his wife could stay on. Though they never really got involved in the process of making movies, George served as a clapper boy on several Hammer Productions.

Oakley Court had an historical background. It was built in 1859 by Sir Richard Hall Say. It was used by the French Resistance in Word War II and served as host to many film companies until 1979, when it was sold and converted into a hotel.

In the 1950's Exclusive fell into the good fortune of establishing important distribution rights with American companies. One key acquisition was with Robert Lippert Productions. The partnership was important because it allowed Hammer the rights to use fading but recognizable American stars in their British productions making them more accessible to the American audiences.

A staple of Hammer Films was the BBC radio serials. Hammer secured the rights to several of these productions and turned them into feature films. After the purchase of the Dick Barton series from the BBC they found a BBC series called THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT and with some negotiation, the Quatermass series became the property of the studio and the feature film version of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT began.

The film proved to be successful encouraging the studio to look for other horror properties that could be exploited since the monster theme worked very well in QUATERMASS. They decided upon Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, since the book was public domain and the Universal film FRANKENSTEIN (1931) was viewed by many as a horror classic. As soon a Universal heard of the remake they made HAMMER aware that if they copied anything from the UNIVERSAL film that wasn't in the Mary Shelley novel, including the classic make-up, they would sue. A script was devised and new make-up designed. Though still not very faithful to the original story, the Hammer version was faster paced and featured more shock elements than the original. This was also true of the gruelling make-up that imprisoned Christopher Lee's expressive facial movements. It all worked together though and the audiences were shocked and amazed by this new version of the familiar story.

Critics were shocked and amazed too. In fact, most critics warned against seeing the film calling it disgusting and horrendous. This only served to fuel the fire, a lesson that critics have not learned to this day. When the critics hate a horror film, it must be worth seeing. Looking at the film today, it's difficult to imagine why the film was found to be so repulsive, but there had never been anything like it up to that time.

But beyond the images two actors began to break through, Peter Cushing, who developed the cold, impassioned and amoral Baron Frankenstein into a likeable anti-hero and Lee turned the monster creation into his own, carving a niche beside Karloff's classic interpretation.

By now the family environment was spilling over at Bray Studios. Besides the Carreras and Hinds connections, a careful study of the film credits reveals many similar names both in the cast and production credits. Jimmy Sangster, who would write many of the classic Hammer screenplays, Len Harris, a skilled cameraman giving the filmsthat special HAMMER look and James Meade who served as editor many of the classic HAMMER films giving them those tremendous shock sequences that we all remember so well.

Also coming aboard the HAMMER FILM team was Terence Fisher as director. His visionary style and imaginative use of Bray Studios would set the tone for the HAMMER FILMS to come. His background as an editor helped save the studio thousands of dollars in developing just the right shots. His styling and the committed work of the technical staff turned a studio that was cranking out B films into a studio who granted the illusion of A quality films and the look of much larger studios like Pinewood and England's MGM studio.

Bray studio quickly became everything from European villages to London houses to Spanish villages as seen in THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, a film that launched the career of a young Oliver Reed.

It was during this time that a decision to make the Hammer films back to back was implemented. The decision was financially motivated since it would be cheaper to utilize the same cast and crew and make the films consecutively than it would be to stop and have to continually develop new stories in between. This style of filmmaking can be evidenced in DRACULA-PRINCE OF DARKNESS and RASPUTIN, THE MAD MONK. Both films feature much of the same cast and technical crew. In fact the same set used for the destruction of Dracula in the same set used in the final scene where Rasputin falls out of a window and onto his icy grave. THE REPTILE and PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES followed next using the same strategy.

To keep audiences from noticing the similarities to the films they were released on double bills as DRACULA-PRINCE OF DARKNESS with PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES and RASPUTIN, THE MAD MONK with THE REPTILE.

RASPUTIN provided Lee with a meaty role and many critics believes that this was Lee's best performance in any film. PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES was also a trendsetter in that it features zombies returning from the grave 2 full years before George Romero's classic nightmare NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD would ever hit the screen.

The studio flourished through the 1960's but as the decade was closing a change in the direction of the studio was becoming evident, thanks in part to Michael Carreras becoming the company director after his grandfather's death in 1950. The horror films began to look like they were following a simple formula and more psychological thrillers were coming out of the studio after the success of Hitchcock's PSYCHO. As the box-office receipts started to drop, Michael Carrerras demanded that the film place a stronger emphasis on sex and nudity.

The studio had already had the beautiful Hazel Court and Barbara Shelley in their films. This women offered touches of eroticism in a less is more approach. Their distinguished beauty and strength in character made young boys hearts beat faster all around the world. The film then started turning to sex kitten types with Veronica Carlson being the last of the true Hammer classic beauties. During the filming of FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED Peter Cushing and Veronica Carlson became alarmed at the inclusion of a rape scene that was both uncharacteristic of Baron Frankenstein and unnecessary to the story, they collectively approached Carrerras about the scene but it was decided that it would be filmed regardless. It true character to Cushing's real life persona, he apologized to Miss Carlson before the scene and had always regretted the inclusion of the sequence. This would begin the break down of barriers that Hammer had set for it's studio.

By the 1970's HAMMER had begun a series of highly charged vampire stories that were steeped in eroticism and nudity, as well as a touch of lesbianism. This films, referred to as the Carmilla or Karnstein series, focused on the sexual exploits of a female vampire who had a special taste for women. The first film featured Ingrid Pitt as the bisexual vampire. In VAMPIRE LOVERS she enters the home of an English nobleman and quickly seduces his virginal young daughter. Pitt returned for Hammer's COUNTESS DRACULA in which she played the legendary Elizabeth of Bathory, a woman notorious for her believe that virgin blood would sustain her youth. So steeped was she in this believe, legend has it, that she bathed in the blood of sacrificed virgins. Hammer was quick to exploit the possibilities of this storyline.

The second film in the Carmilla trilogy was LUST FOR A VAMPIRE. In this film the bisexual vampire attends an all girls school (how fortunate for her). An amorous male teacher arrives and is immediately smitten by her beauty and in a very steamy sequence, makes love to the vampire. For the third film in the trilogy, TWINS OF EVIL, little is seen of Carmila but two identical twin playboy playmates are featured. One, seduced by the dark side of life falls into the hands of a vampiric lord and the other is saved by her faith.

Hoping to inject new life into their vampire films Hammer attempted twists on the story with VAMPIRE CIRCUS. This highly originally story centers on a European village who lives to see the fulfillment of a vampires curse when a traveling circus comes to entertain them. They have, in fact come to take their children. This new trend of vampire films would continue with CAPTAIN KRONOS, VAMPIRE HUNTER but the study was seeing it's last days.

James Carrarras had retired leaving the studio in the hands of Michael who had neither the vision nor the business mind that his father had. The Dracula series had become routine and the other films, with rare exception became lesser entries in a market that was being exploited by big budgets. With the U.S. releasing films like THE EXORCIST and ROSEMARY'S BABY, Hammer, without the careful guidance of the skilled James Carrareas, was slowly taking the backseat in the horror genre.

With TO THE DEVIL...A DAUGHTER Hammer Films released it's last theatrical horror feature. An attempt was made to capture the excitement of the U.S. films but the film failed.

Michael Carreras tried getting several prjects launched, including a big-budget version of the Loch Ness Monster but couldn't keep backers on the film. Turning to a more comedic remake of The Lady Vanishes, Hammer studios released their last film leaving a legacy of work that was often ridiculed in the press but highly supported by it's English and American Audiences.

Today Hammer films is regarded as a truly classic Studio and is recognized, alongside Universal Pictures, as a reigning force in the Horror and Sci-Fi genre. Hammer Films isn't dead though. The company is still owned and controlled by financial supporters. Several attempts were made at resurrecting the studio. A limited TV series of original horror stories aired on the BBC called HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR. These films were more reminiscent of the psychological thrillers but were quite good for television. Recently Richard Donner has been rumored to be negotiating the resurrection of the classic studio with a reworking of the Quatermass series. Whether or not this happens remains to be seen, until then we have their legacy of films to watch over and over again, thrilling each new generation of horror fans who discover the glory that was once HAMMER FILMS.

THE HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR