Bloodsucking Freaks

INCENSE FOR THE DAMNED (1970)

In a non-speaking role, Imogen Hassall is bewitching as the leader of a perversion-driven vampire cult.

DIRECTLY after THE BLACK TORMENT in 1964, director Robert Hartford-Davis and cinematographer Peter Newbrook quit Compton and formed Titan. After making the musical GONKS GO BEAT, Michael Bentine's THE SANDWICH MAN and Norman Wisdom vehicle PRESS FOR TIME, the studio turned out their lasting legacy in 1968 with the seedy CORRUPTION. A brutal picture which sees Peter Cushing as a surgeon killing in order to restore his young fiancée's facial tissue, Cushing departed to make another low point in his filmography with Tigon's THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR. Titan, however, went on to nearly complete their greatest folly, a take on Simon Raven's novel Doctors Wear Scarlet - INCENSE FOR THE DAMNED.

If you ever wanted to see Patrick Macnee and Imogen Hassall ride donkeys in a British vampire picture, then INCENSE FOR THE DAMNED is the film for you. Richard Fountain (Patrick Mower) - an Oxford don and the Foreign Secretary's son - falls into the clutches of Chriseis (Hassall) while researching ancient Minoan rites in Greece. Chriseis heads a non-supernatural bloodsucking cult of socialites who murder innocents as a form of sexual perversion. In an attempt to avoid a scandal, a search party flies to the island of Mikonos in a desperate search for Richard, which contains Major Derek Longbow (Macnee), British Foreign Office assistant Tony Seymore (Alexander Davion), friend Bob Kirby (Johnny Sekka), and Fountain's somnambulant fiancée Penelope (Madeleine Hinde). After apparently halting the cult's influence over Richard, the don returns to his sheltered life, but we discover that the marks left by Chriseis still resonate.

Also known as BLOODSUCKERS and FREEDOM SEEKER, INCENSE FOR THE DAMNED is based on Simon Raven's 1960 novel Doctors Wear Scarlet. Raven - a Luciferian provocateur who was also a journalist and television writer - rejected faith and possessed a deep contempt for the English unwillingness to offend.

According to David Pirie's The Vampire Cinema, INCENSE FOR THE DAMNED was a long-gestating project of Terence Fisher, who was never able to interest Hammer in its subversive content. With the rights acquired by Titan and Hartford-Davis at the helm, it was the beginning of a painful production and editing process. While shooting in Cyprus funds were exhausted, leaving the picture unfinished. With a compressed narrative and lame narration introduced to cover the cracks, the director disowned the picture and prints only exist under a directorial psydonym (Michael Burrowes) or with no director credit at all. The ending was also shot against Hartford-Davis' wishes, where Kirby and Seymore go to Fountain's coffin to administer a stake through his heart. This climax vilifies the rest of the film, which had explained vampirism as a psychological distortion, rather than reverting to cliché. Also jarring is an extraordinary six-minute sequence of a hallucinogenic orgy, which was either cut or excised completely for overseas prints.

Mower’s character is revealed as impotent - and possibly bisexual - making vampirism his only means of satisfaction. Richard's liberating climactic outburst at a Oxford dinner not only frees him from the stifling academic system championed by provost Dr Walter Goodrich (Peter Cushing) - Penelope's father - but also plays as a rousing counter-culture statement of the times ("the thieves who come to take our souls ... smooth deceivers in scarlet gowns.") As Tim Lucas points out in his Video Watchdog review, INCENSE would play well with Fisher's THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, where Mower plays another privileged upper class individual who falls under the power of persuasion. As well as Cushing - who is used far too fleetingly - Edward Woodward appears as an anthropologist who tries to explain vampirism where the drinking of blood serves as surrogate orgasm.

Hammer Rides Out

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968)
TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER (1976)

"The Goat of Mendes! The Devil Himself!" Eddie Powell dons the monster suit for Hammer's  THE DEVIL RIDES OUT.

TERENCE Fisher's THE DEVIL RIDES OUT is based on Dennis Wheatley's pot-boiling 1934 novel, and benefits from a Richard Matheson script which surgically cuts the fat from the author's most famous - but sprawling - work. It is also the most sumptuous-looking Hammer film produced by the studio after their move from Bray to Elstree. Set in 1920s London, Nicholas, the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene, dubbed by Patrick Allen) decide to pay a visit to Simon (Patrick Mower), the son of a late comrade. The duo find him hosting a gathering of The Left Hand Path, and under the influence of satanic priest Mocata (Charles Gray), Simon escapes. Consequently, our heroes must seek out the mysterious Tanith (Nike Arrighi) - the daughter of a French countess - who is destined to join their friend at a satanic ritual. When de Richleau and Van Ryn rescue the seemingly doomed pair, Mocata sends his supernatural forces to obtain those promised to him.

Aleister Crowley served as technical adviser to Wheatley's book, and THE DEVIL RIDES OUT illustrates a series of genuine arcana. Ceremonial details, allegiances to nineteenth century magician Eliphas Levi and dialogue (the Susamma ritual is not Matheson but the actual incantation) are all clearly Crowleyesque in tone. A penny-dreadful villain in the novel, Gray's Mocata is the living incarnation of what Fisher often described as "the charm of evil." His central battle of wills with Lee as de Richleau are perfectly played, and the casting of Arrighi is also noteworthy, as her quirky beauty is suited to a role for a woman seeking spiritual awakening. But even with these strengths, the film was not the box office success Hammer had hoped, and packs less dread today when viewed outside of the cycle of satanic movies that would sweep through cinema until the mid-1970s. Particularly detrimental are the crude special effects, and the orgy that presages The Goat of Mendes is too tame to seem even remotely diabolical.

Christopher Lee and Nastassja Kinski in TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER. A tour de force for Lee, even Astaroth's effigy - a crucified bat in the source novel but a spread-legged hermaphrodite mounted on an inverted black cross in the film - befits Dracula.

Crowley's mandate to bring the Devil's offspring to Earth was channelled into his 1929 work Moonchild. This inspired a 1953 Wheatley novel that acts as the springboard for TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, the last Classic Era Hammer Horror. The film tells of excommunicated Father Michael Rainer (Lee), who is head of a cult which rears innocent minors in a closed Catholic convent to serve Astaroth. One of his charges - Catherine Beddows (Nastassja Kinski) - has been chosen to reign as the Devil's representative on Earth when she comes of age ("she's some sort of nun!"). Catherine's haunted father Henry (Denholm Elliott) enlists occult author John Verney (Richard Widmark) - an obvious Wheatley alter ego - as the girl's temporary guardian, and with the aid of his agent Anna (Honor Blackman) and her gallery-owner boyfriend David (Anthony Valentine), aim to halt Rainer's plans.

Directed by Peter Sykes, TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER was afforded the largest budget for any Classic Era Hammer film, but it was a troubled production. Widmark allegedly punched an electrician on set and considered the subject matter distasteful and beneath him; Christopher Wicking's typically anarchic script was constantly being rewritten by THE DUELLISTS scribe Gerald Vaughn-Hughes; and stuntman Eddie Powell suffered burns when set on fire for David's church-bound demise. There was also controversy surrounding Kinski, the scandalous teenage lover of Roman Polanski at the time; her naked cavorting in the final scenes - as the actress was born in 1961 - made them highly illegal. Even the money shot - when Catherine presses the bloodied demon child into her womb - exists only to adhere to EXORCIST-style shock tactics. Equally disappointing is the notoriously flat ending: in the original rough cut, an alternate conclusion saw Catherine return to the Bavarian convent to perpetuate the evil of Father Michael, but all we get is Verney halting the wave of evil by throwing a rock at Rainer's head.

Aliens, Mutants and Terence Fisher

THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING (1964)
ISLAND OF TERROR (1966)

Invading alien robots - impervious to bullets, but not to Land Rovers - shamble around in THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING. Resembling a visage put together from whatever the film maker's could find lying around Shepperton studios, the creation reminds of Cybermen to come. 

ONLY a few weeks after completing his directing assignment on Hammer's THE GORGON, Terence Fisher was at the helm of THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING, a hardly feature-length offering from Lippert Films. An alien gas attack has wiped out the entire population of England - possibly the world - and caused some to be reanimated as white-eyed zombie slaves. Amongst this carnage, American test pilot Jeff Nolan (Willard Parker) is soon joined by Quinn Taggart (Dennis Price), Peggy (Virginia Field), Vi (Vanda Godsell) and husband Eddie (Thorley Walters). All share the same unifying factor, that during the previous evening they were all in purified air conditions, thus avoiding the threat. When two space-suited humanoids are seen walking in the street, Vi runs out to greet them in the mistaken belief they are military assistance; in fact, they are alien robots who kill her by lethal touch. After another pair of survivors arrive - Mel (David Spenser) and his pregnant wife Lorna (Anna Palk) - the group venture to a local Royal Engineers TA drill hall in the hunt for weapons.

THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is somnolent sci-fi on a shoestring budget - the opening montage even utilises stock footage from VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED - which attempts to host an apocalyptic invasion with two robots and a conservative scattering of dead bodies filmed in the Surrey village of Shere. No-one dies screaming; even the zombies - when shot - regress to the dramatics of a school playground, and the invasion is finally foiled by the destruction of a rickety old radio mast. Fisher was no fan of science fiction, but he does inject some atmosphere into the village-under-siege dynamic, especially the reanimated Vi staircase walk, and the eerie framing of an alien watching Lorna through a netted window. The performances are purely functionary, with the exception of Price and Walters; Walters is entertaining as ever in his trademark role of frightened alcoholic, but Price is the standout as Taggart. There is a wonderful scene where he attempts to rescue wads of useless money from a fire - hinting at a seedy past which is never fleshed out - and the slippery character fittingly leads the robots to his colleagues when in zombie-state.

Menacing bone-sucking tendrils erupt in this German poster for ISLAND OF TERROR.

Two years later Fisher directed the guilty pleasure ISLAND OF TERROR for Planet Films. On Petrie's Island off the coast of Ireland, researchers are working on a cure for cancer, but accidentally create a race of bone-sucking creatures dubbed silicates. After the discovery of a body which has been reduced to jelly, local Dr Landers (Eddie Byrne) seeks help from scientists Dr Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing) and Dr David West (Edward Judd), who travel to the island with West’s socialite girlfriend Toni (Carole Gray). The two scientists discover that bullets, fire and dynamite won’t stop the silicates from advancing on the island’s humans and cattle.

Co-produced by science-horror specialist Richard Gordon, ISLAND OF TERROR can be seen as a inferior re-imagining of his earlier FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. Everything is in place for an effective monster movie: a laboratory destroyed by a new life form, creatures who emit an eerie slurping sound, unexplainable corpses ("like mush with the two eyes a-sittin' in it"), no telephones or form of escape, and Peter Cushing. Although the veteran actor's screen time is shared by Judd's younger, more bullish scientist, it is testament to all of the players who attempt to create tension away from the appearance of the silicates. They may have a fast-moving tentacle, but their plastic-looking bases move so slowly that you wonder how they have effectively snared so many victims (they can even climb trees). Despite all the impending doom, as Kim Newman states in his Video Watchdog review, "as often in British SF, we learn that crises should be left to the experts, even if boffins have started the trouble."

Hammer Monster Mash

THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955)
THE GORGON (1964)



"All Earth Stands Helpless!" Aware that the Quatermass name held no weight in the United States, THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT was retitled SHOCK! then THE CREEPING UNKNOWN, and cut by United Artists. The movie was released with THE BLACK SLEEP, which featured Basil Rathbone as a mad scientist opening the brains of his victims to discover a means to cure his wife's tumour. It was alleged that this double-bill literally scared a nine-year-old boy to death, who died of a ruptured artery during a showing in Illinois.

HAMMER were always happy to capitalise on established hits; having drawn on radio (Dick Barton, PC49), the studio looked towards television with a truncated version of Nigel Kneale's THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT. While most British production houses regarded the X certificate as a kiss of death for the box office, Hammer hoped that the title change to XPERIMENT would be a marketing ploy to help the financially stricken company. Thankfully the film was a hit; without THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, it would be doubtful that Hammer would have survived to create the celebrated Gothic horrors that are so entrenched in our heritage.

The film begins with experimental rocket ship Quatermass 1 crash landing at Oakley Green. This opening - where the phallus-like craft plunges into the ground breaking the monotony of two coy lovers - is a fitting allegory for the arrival of Hammer horror. In this instant, the domesticity of the British feature film makes way for a new order of directness. Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) - the British rocket group scientist responsible for launching the ship without official sanction - discovers that two of the three crew members have disappeared. The sole survivor - Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) - is suffering from low blood pressure, pulse and heart rate. As Carroon's condition worsens, the astronaut plunges his fist into a cactus, starting a consumption by an alien organism which mimics the plant form. Quatermass tracks the creature to Westminster Abbey, and before its spores can spread, is electrocuted.

Richard Wordsworth's alien-infected Carroon in THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT is an unwilling martyr to Professor Quatermass' abrasive scientific crusade. The actor would later bring similar sympathetic tendencies to the role of the feral beggar in THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF.

In keeping with a long-established pattern, a Hollywood star was contracted for the benefit of stateside distribution. Fading heavy Donlevy was selected much to Kneale's horror (Donlevy's alcoholism reducing the actor to read off cue cards) and in 1995 the writer was still vociferous of the actor's portrayal: "I may have picked Quatermass' surname out of a phone book but his first name was carefully chosen: Bernard, after Bernard Lovell, the creator of Jodrell Bank. Pioneer, ultimate questing man. Donlevy played him as a mechanic, a creature with a completely closed mind. He could make nothing of any imaginative lines, and simply barked and bawled his way through the plot. A bully whose emotional range ran from annoyance to fury." Donlevy's Quatermass is indeed pointed and bullish, refusing to waste time even when considering Carroon's increasingly catatonic suffering ("there's no room for personal feelings in science ... some of us have a mission").

As well as the wayward Donlevy, American Margia Dean plays Carroon's wife Judith. Suffering from indifferent post-synching, Dean was imposed upon director Val Guest because she was reportedly the girlfriend of American co-producer Robert Lippert. Thankfully the British cast feature strongly: David King-Wood as Dr Briscoe, Harold Lang as private eye Christie and Thora Hird as Rose the baglady are uniformly excellent, with Jack Warner's Inspector Lomax shadowing his trademark role in DIXON OF DOCK GREEN. Wordsworth's heart-rending performance, however, is the highlight; communicating an unbearable loneliness through mime, the success of the actor's illustration of a once intelligent man consumed by forces beyond his control was key to Hammer when contemplating their re-imagining in THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Discovering body horror years before Cronenberg, Wordworth's poignancy matches Karloff's Frankenstein, particularly in the scene with a little girl (Jane Asher), which mirrors Karloff's lakeside encounter with Maria (Marilyn Harris). It is this sequence that we glimpse Carroon in human form for the last time, as if the innocence of the child evokes a last note of sympathy.

The girl who befriends Carroon in THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT is played by Jane Asher, who seventeen years later would star in Nigel Kneale's THE STONE TAPE.

Many characters and sub-plots are inevitably missing when compressing the television serial to feature length - for example, the intriguing notion that the alien ether had made Carroon absorb the other two astronaut's minds - but such trimming makes THE QUATERMAS XPERIMENT a fast-paced thriller which is made even more immediate by Guest's gritty, semi-documentary style. Perhaps one constriction too many was the change made to the Westminster Abbey conclusion; instead of the explosive climax in the film, on television Quatermass appeals to the human consciousness within the alien, which wills itself to death. Totally lost upon the feature is the teleplay's framing of this climax within a fictionalised live BBC broadcast - which must have raised a few eyebrows of those tuning in late - but although THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT loses this particular faux realite, Guest's feature does incorporate one of the earliest examples of found footage in cinema history: a silent video feed shows the bombardment of Q1 by the cosmic rays which cause Carroon's transformation.

While the changes to the teleplay are in the interests of producing a box office success, the cuts made by United Artists for the Americanised THE CREEPING UNKNOWN release are, in fact, insulting. Nearly three minutes of footage is removed - mostly cheapening the London Zoo sequence - but the devil is in the detail: Donlevy and Dean receive above the title billing opposed to Donlevy and Warner in the British version, and the titles also downplay the importance of Kneale's play. Furthermore, American prints eliminate acknowledgments to the BBC, The Air Ministry, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co, The British Interplanetary Society, The Post London Authority and General Radiological Ltd, as well as replacing the closing "A Hammer Production, produced at Bray Studios" with a simple "The End."

Having exhausted the gallery of classic movie monsters, Hammer turned to mythology for inspiration, resulting in THE GORGON being one of the studio's most poetic and haunted achievements.

When THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN was unleashed, it set in motion an initial burst of robust Hammer Horrors that focused on dominating male characters. THE GORGON, however, made seven years later, started a trend towards predatory yet well-spoken female parts that fundamentally weakened narrative. Hammer's later move from Bray to Elstree was detrimental enough, but this gender shift resulted in a hit-and-miss series of films which portrayed murderous but sexualised lead woman: for every measured entry like FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN and HANDS OF THE RIPPER, there was THE WITCHES and LUST FOR A VAMPIRE.

The last Hammer film to combine the talents of stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and director Terence Fisher, THE GORGON is overwhelmingly fatalistic.  Set in 1910, the film focuses on the village of Vandorf, which has been suffering a series of mysterious deaths for five years. However, the local doctor Namaroff (Cushing) has been concealing that the victims were all turned to stone, and suspects that the derelict Castle Borski is housing Megaera, the last of the legendary Gorgons. When an artist's model and her unborn child are turned to stone, her boyfriend Bruno (Jeremy Longhurst) hangs himself, which results in the boy's grieving father Professor Heitz (Michael Goodliffe), his second son Paul (Richard Pasco) and Paul's mentor Professor Meister (Lee) investigating.

Barbara Shelley in THE GORGON. Ballet dancer Prudence Hyman played Shelley's monstrous alter ego with the infamous stiff snake-hair.

Ambiguities add to this dream-like storyline. Hammer may have looked to mythology for new monsters, but the Greek Megaera was not even a Gorgon, rather a deity who causes jealousy. It is unclear why The Gorgon only appears during the full moon, as is the question of why - after thousands of years - the spirit has possessed a human, Namaroff's assistant Carla (Barbara Shelley). Although her back story is never elaborated on, Carla was an amnesia victim who came to Vandorf for treatment, the doctor exhibiting both concern and deeper feelings for his patient. Shelley brings her usual grace and strength to the role, but the inversion of Cushing and Lee's usual screen persona's creates mixed results. Cushing plays the stern, humourless authority role that Lee would normally be presented with, Namaroff a tormented variation of Cushing's Frankenstein as he struggles with guilt and unrequited love. Lee, however, seems uneasily cast in an unflattering greying facade.

The doctor's observation "the most noble work of God, the human brain, is the most revolting to the human eye," underlines Fisher's grim approach. With only some humorous asides from Meister to relieve the gloom ("don't use long words, Inspector; they don't suit you"), the director's emphasis on the pain of romance has great depth, with the central love triangle being the most poignant to be found in Fisher's oeuvre. Despite THE GORGON being considered a second-tier release by Hammer historians, It is an intimate picture which uses its careful pace as a necessity of its mood. Indeed, there are scenes that rank with the best of Fisher: Heitz's call to the Castle Borski, for example, and the sequence where the doomed father attempts to pen a letter to Paul during his gradual petrification.

Love Will Tear Us Apart

THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961)

Oliver Reed and Yvonne Romain in an impossibly-staged publicity still. Reed and Romain had a closely tied association with Hammer; the actress plays Reed's mother - who dies in childbirth - for THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, then became his fiancee in CAPTAIN CLEGG before sharing their third appearance in THE BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR.

UNLIKE the literary origins of Dracula and Frankenstein, zombies and werewolves are rooted in folklore. Consequently, the living dead and shape-shifting sub-genres have treated film as their developing texts: George A. Romero basically re-invented the zombie with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, while THE WOLF MAN similarly set the precedence for romantic dread. Subsequent werewolf appearances were negligible until advances in make-up effects unleashed a slew of transformation pictures in the early 1980s, where THE HOWLING and WOLFEN developed lycanthropic societies coexisting with humans, and THE COMPANY OF WOLVES a link with menstruation. This exploration also seemed in tandem with developing body horror concerns, not only with cinema spectacles such as THE THING and VIDEODROME, but with the onset of AIDS.

Werewolves were limited to a triptych of releases during the British horror period of the 1960s and 70s. Amicus’ lupine whodunit THE BEAST MUST DIE was joined by two features inspired by Guy Endore’s 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris: Hammer's THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF and Tyburn's LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF. Directed by Terence Fisher and written by producer Anthony Hinds under the pseudonym John Elder, THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF is by far the best remembered. It is a flawed, visceral melodrama of lycanthropy from birth to death, ponderous in its pacing, but the film effectively focuses on the inner turmoil of man into wolf, benefiting from make-up artist Roy Aston's most accomplished work and arguably propelling young Oliver Reed onto the road to stardom. Pulverised by the Monthly Film Bulletin which claimed the film was "a singularly repellent job of slaughter-house horror," the picture ranks as one of the most brutal of all Hammer productions.

Oliver Reed's werewolf was the cover star of Warren publishing's low-brow Famous Monsters of Filmland #12 (June 1961).

The film opens with a beggar (Richard Wordsworth) visiting Castillo Siniestro, where the Marquis (Anthony Dawson) is celebrating his wedding. The beggar irritates the nobleman, who has him thrown into the dungeons where he remains forgotten by all but the jailer and his mute daughter (Yvonne Romain). After many years - with the Marquis decrepit and his wife long dead from his brutish behaviour - the Marquis sexually assaults the servant girl. When she rejects his advances, he has her thrown into the dungeon where the beggar - now reduced to a slavering animal - rapes her then dies in the act of violation. When the girl is freed, she stabs the Marques to death and flees into the woods, where kindly scholar Don Alfredo (Clifford Evans) rescues her. The girl dies in labour after giving birth to a son from her ordeal, and as the young Leon (Justin Walters) grows, he is increasingly troubled by dreams of drinking blood. Diagnosed with lycantrophy, the only cure is for Leon to be within a loving environment. Reaching manhood, Leon (Oliver Reed) - denied access to his love Cristina (Catherine Feller) - goes on a murderous rampage.

Endore's source material emphasises a number of aspects that cinema - at the time - could not dare to adhere to. Endore's rapist was a priest, not a beggar, for example, and the afflicted Bertrand and his love Sophie in the book avoid the violent effects of his transformation by cutting into parts of her body and allowing him to suck her blood ("her body was a fountain of blood to him, and it was if her body responded to his needs, like a nursing mother with milk.") In contrast, the film superficially represents the bond between Leon and Cristina in typical Hollywood fashion - the closest to a love story Fisher achieved  - that never touches on such sado-masochistic tendencies. Furthermore, the movement of the novel's locales to Santa Vera, Spain, centre around the abandoned Spanish Inquisition drama THE INQUISITOR/THE RAPE OF SABENA. After distributors Columbia feared condemnation by the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency, the project was pulled from Hammer's schedule, leaving a number of sets taking shape on the Bray lot which were then integrated into Fisher's film.

The House of Hammer #10 (January 1978) included a comic adaptation of THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF. Drawn by John Bolton, the strip acted as the flagship for this special werewolf issue.

With Reed not appearing until roughly the halfway mark, the extended prologue detailing Leon's lurid conception is suitably heady but prolonged. It is detrimental to the mechanics of the film that Reed and Evans' central performances could not be afforded more screen time, but the movie suffers from a number of time anomalies, surprising considering Fisher's trademark linear style: Leon’s feelings for his eternal love develop too quickly and off-screen, and Alfredo somehow narrates the preceding events which he could not have been akin to. Hammer also adheres to several cliches of the werewolf picture but also establishes new ones of its own. Lycanthropy is presented not as a disease but as an accursed birthright, and Leon's bestial instincts can be suppressed by the feelings of inner peace and comfort brought about by love, while the emotions of rage and frustration have precisely the opposite effect. Therefore Leon is subconsciously in control of his own fate, his werewolf dependent not just on the occurrence of a full moon but also upon Leon's state of mind. But like most cinematic werewolves, the character is not painted as a villain but as a personable young man ultimately condemned to a second existence of blood lust by circumstance.

Ashton's make-up effects for the wolfman, the Marquis and the beggar are uniformly excellent. Aston himself had suggested to Hinds that Reed's bone structure would be ideal for the role, and the success of the monster is that it is part-man and part-wolf, encapsulating Reed's ferocious snarls, especially starling when blood drips from his mouth. With this avenue for human expression, the tragedy of the werewolf is not lost, unlike later films which are reliant on mechanical effects and CGI, which overshadow any levels of performance. The Marquis' design explored how make-up could define a character's prolonged debauchery - especially memorable in the scene where Dawson picks his skin in an attempt to improve his appearance for the servant girl - and the beggar's own mutation into beast would not feel out of place on The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Universal - who owned the source material - contracted Hammer to make THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF. A film very much playing like THE WOLF MAN's bastardised relative, its horde of "Angry Mob" villagers who hound Leon at the climax - seen here underpinning this one-sheet - was Universalesque in its own right.

Dawson is suitably lecherous as the Marquis, and Wordsworth - having been similarly effective as the man/monster of THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT - is both touching and frightening in a role ranging from abused beggar to feral man. Evans brings a subtle facade to the role of adoptive father, emotionally distraught yet resolved to end his sons misery. Without question, however, it is Reed's film. While the "Hammer Heavy" was evidently not quite the finished article at this point in his career, his portrayal conveys pathos and menace and amusingly, when he does appear, he's soon working in a winery, surrounded by bottles. Romain is enchanting as the exotic, raven-haired servant, but the rest of the cast are a mixed bag. Michael Ripper is wide-eyed as Old Soak and Desmond Llewellyn makes an appearance as a footman, but John Gabriel - as a priest - and Martin Matthews - as Leon's best friend - bring nothing to their roles. And in a refreshing quirk, Peter Sallis appears as mayor Don Enrique, 45 years away from similar circumstances voicing Wallace in the clay-mation favourite THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT.

A Hammer Miscellany

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1959)
THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1964)
THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974)

In THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, Marla Landi plays the tempestuous Cecile, descendant of Sir Hugo Baskerville. A Hammer vampire without the fangs, Cecile is the Fatal Woman of Gothic literature. Her introduction - waiting bare-legged to lead men to their marshy doom - is one of the great images of the Hammer oeuvre.

THESE Hammer releases typify their output by decade: the vibrant late 1950s, the rigor mortis that set in during the 1960s, and the experimental death throes of the 1970s. THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES is steeped in sexual unease and the oaken veneer of English nobility, making it the clearest demonstration of the studio's class-conscious approach to horror. The transportation of Arthur Conan Doyle to the bloody red Hammer universe is dubious as an adaptation but successful as a blend of murder mystery and terror. To move the 1902 source novel closer to the Hammer template, liberties are made with the dialogue; Sherlock Holmes (Peter Cushing) is given several lines which seem to have strayed from the Van Helsing phrasebook, and Doctor Watson (Andre Morrell) provides a brief nod to Jack the Ripper when he reflects that the escaped convict Selden (Michael Mulcaster) "murdered a number of street woman."

Though meeting with a mixed reception at the time, Cushing's master detective looks very much the ideal incarnation. Cushing's suitably gaunt Holmes - the actor fortuitously losing weight after a mild bout of dysentery while making JOHN PAUL JONES in Spain - mirrors many traits of Van Helsing and Baron Frankenstein: the furious concentration, the fervor of his convictions, an impatience for fools, and a physical dynamism. A life-long Conan Doyle fan, poor box office halted Cushing starring in a series of Hammer Holmes pictures, thus limiting the imperious actor's popularity with retreads of Dracula and Frankenstein.

Peter Cushing seemed a natural for the part of Sherlock Holmes. Cushing also played the detective in the BBC series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Channel 4's The Masks of Death, portraying Holmes in old age.

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES bristles with life whenever Cushing is on screen, and it is to the film's detriment that the actor isn't visible enough. Absent from the 17th century prologue - which has Sir Hugo Baskerville (David Oxley) roasting a manservant in the fireplace as a prelude to gang rape of the victim's daughter - Holmes also vanishes for most of the second act. Cushing's commanding and flamboyant lead is the only portrayal whose goodness is more assertive than his eccentricities, and the only one who seems bright rather than odd or remote. Also, Morrell's Watson is closer to Conan Doyle's perception than any other: conservative but observant, aging but not yet incapable. Of the other cast members, Milles Malleson is a hoot as the sherry-guzzling Bishop, and Christopher Lee gives one of his most sympathetic and subtle performances as the beleaguered Sir Henry Baskerville.

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES remains one of the most entertaining of all Sherlock Holmes films, as well as being the first ever in colour. Jack Asher's Technicolor camerawork gives the work a rousing and surprisingly sensual feel; in the interiors, vivid reds (Sir Hugo's hunting jacket) and blues (the gloom of Baskerville Hall) are striking, and exterior scenes of Dartmoor have an autumnal, shrivelled state odd for the Summer setting. With battle lines so clearly drawn between Holmes's rational milieu and the dark cruelty behind the Baskerville legend, director Terence Fisher is in his element. The detective is the perfect Fisher hero, the Renaissance scholar with mystical undertones who, like Van Helsing, marks a liaison between orthodox religion and the science of detection.

For THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB, stuntman Dickie Owens makes the automaton pathetic rather than tragic, and without Christopher Lee under the bandages, Owen's eyes remain dead and expressionless.

A follow-up to THE MUMMY was long overdue, but THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB is a poor relation to Fisher's original. Produced, directed and written (as Henry Younger) by Michael Carreras, the film ties together the those-who-defile-the-tomb-shall-die scenario with the tale of Adam Beauchamp (Terence Morgan) - the cursed-to-immortality brother of Mummy Ra-Antef (Dickie Owens) - who needs to bring Ra back to life as he can only die at his hand. Beauchamp may produce a speech about how tired he is by witnessing three thousand years of man's inhumanity to man, but in 1900 he still takes time in seducing Annette (Jeanne Roland) away from her fiance John Bray (Ronald Howard).

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB is a B-movie programmer which highlighted the extent to which Hammer were struggling to inject any inspiration into their early 60s horrors. This was not helped by Carreras' typically deadpan helming and the prodigal son's frustrated ambitions to move the studio away from its roots to more fantasy material. The original screenplay was suitably fantastic, which told of a group of archaeologists discovering an ancient tomb in the Sahara Desert and unleashing a giant Mummy which trashes Cairo. Unsurprisingly this draft was swiftly sidelined, though the pre-production image of a gargantuan Mummy clutching a girl was retained for the finished film's poster.

Julie Ege plays Vanessa Beren - a wealthy widowed suffragette who funds an expedition to exorcise evil - in the delirious THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES.

The comic relief is tedious, and the characters are cardboard throughout. Carreras has called Roland's performance "ornamental," but the twenty-one-year-old Anglo/Burmese model/non-actress doesn't even reach that level. When the film opens with her father's brutal slaying, Annette is hardly upset at all, preferring to spend the rest of the picture swooning after Beauchamp. Howard – who was close to fifty at the time – is far too old for the role of "intrepid young Egyptologist," and Fred Clark's crass, P. T. Barnum-like promoter Alexander King is irritating, but even so is the liveliest thing in the film. THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB leaves a bad taste in the mouth because, for all its mediocrity, the murder scenes are eerily memorable. The attacks are not staged with the vigor of Fisher, but instead are bludgeoning sadistic: archaeologist Sir Giles Dalrymple (Jack Gwillim) is hammered to death with a small statue of an Egyptian cat goddess, and George Pastell - playing a sympathetic Egyptian official after his high priest role in THE MUMMY - willingly sacrifices himself to Ra-Antef in a skull-crushing scene that ranks amongst Hammer's most vicious.

Billed as "The First Kung-Fu Horror Spectacular," THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES - directed by Roy Ward Baker - was Hammer's uneasy co-production with Run Run Shaw, a leading light in the Kowloon-based Shaw Brothers company. Not originally written as a Dracula film, the hasty prologue sees The Count (James Forbes-Robertson, thanklessly replacing Christopher Lee and looking like a drag queen) revived by Kah (Chan Sen). Dracula possesses Kah's body and returns to the village of Ping Kuei, where he commands the Seven Golden Vampires, who raid the town and harvest the blood of naked woman in a blood trough - eight gullied slabs arranged like petals around a central, bubbling cauldron. Lecturing at China's Chung King university, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is approached by student Hai Ching (David Chiang), a native of Ping Kuei, for his help. The film benefits from a powerful James Bernard score and John Wilcox's Panavision framing, but is structured more like a Western than a Horror or Kung-Fu film. THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES possesses an entertaining air of derring-do, but ultimately acts as a substantial fall from grace for the often operatic Hammer vampire film. 

Disciples of Dracula

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)
DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966)

"Say you forgive me for letting him love me";
Andree Melly is one of THE BRIDES OF DRACULA.

DIRECTOR Terence Fisher's reputation rests almost entirely on the horror films he directed for Hammer in the 50s and 60s, but he was a more versatile filmmaker than this output suggests. Fisher had previously helmed projects with a variety of themes - such as tragic romance and light comedy - but he was accused of representing a conservative and pedantic force within British horror. Yet within his construction a primal yet supremely visual ethos was created, mixing precise framing and acting with negligee-wearing vampire brides and claustrophobic burial vaults. In fact, Fisher epitomised Andrew Sarris' definition of the auteur in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 "…to evoke a self-contained world with its own laws and landscapes." Above all, Fisher was a storyteller, preserving the coherence of his films by containing few flashbacks and virtually no dream sequences.

Fisher's THE BRIDES OF DRACULA begins with Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) - en route to a teaching engagement - taking shelter at the invitation of Baroness Meinster (Marita Hunt). From her room's balcony, Marianne sees a young man chained by his ankle, Baron Meinster (David Peel), her hostess’ vampire son whom his mother has been acquiring peasant girls for feeding. After freeing the Baron without knowing of his past, the woman escapes into the woods where she is rescued by Dr Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), who must face the Seal of Dracula once more.

Despite a relatively late introduction, Peter Cushing effortlessly commands the screen in THE BRIDES OF DRACULA. The scene where Van Helsing proceeds to burn out his bite from Meinster with holy water and a red-hot branding iron is one of Hammer's most heart-rending.

Despite a contradiction from DRACULA that vampires cannot change their form (though curiously unavailable to the Baron when held in leg irons), and the arrival of Hammer's customary unconvincing bat, THE BRIDES OF DRACULA is a sumptuous production. With the absence of Christopher Lee, the androgynous Peel makes for an engaging, Byronic, manipulative charmer in his role "to spread the cult and corrupt the world." Subsequent Lee/Dracula Hammers all de-vitalised rather than embodied The Count, and the followers of the vampire in THE BRIDES OF DRACULA are painted with a complex stroke that the series would not feature so successfully again; when the cackling Greta (Freda Jackson) - Meinster’s childhood nurse - lies full length on a freshly dug grave beckoning its occupant "I know it’s dark, but you’ve got to push, push…", no wonder Van Helsing is startled. Van Helsing demonstrated a cool but obsessive intensity in DRACULA, but his character changes substantially here; now a vampire slaying hero, much of his scientifically detached persona and harsher edges have been smoothed over. With Lee not taking centre stage, it is Cushing that must carry the film.

What is often overlooked with Lee's return in Fisher's DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS is that THE BRIDES OF DRACULA was the last film to feature Cushing until his modern day return in DRACULA A.D. 1972, although DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS does have a Van Helsing replacement, Andrew Keir’s warrior-monk Father Sandor. However, Lee's much-anticipated reprisal is reduced to a series of mute, melodramatic and repetitive attacks, and the two stand-out sequences don't feature The Count at all: the sacrifice of Alan (Charles Tingwell) and the controversial ecclesiastical gang rape of his wife Helen (Barbara Shelley). Such sequences, however, do subscribe to the poetry of flesh and blood akin to Bram Stoker's source material. The Count slipping through broken ice to be swallowed by the running waters of the moat around his castle makes for a powerful ending, with the scene seeming reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, which shows Satan trapped in the ice in the lower pit of hell.

Barbara Shelley succumbs to DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

Whereas the economic retelling of Stoker’s novel in DRACULA left no room for the characters of Dr Seward and Renfield, a Renfield substitute appears in the guise of Ludwig (Thorley Walters). Here an obsessive but chivalrous bookbinder in the hospitality of a monastery, Ludwig is the one Renfield in cinema who actually encapsulates the character as Stoker describes him. Although partial to eating flies, Walters never radiates total madness, instead performing such transgression as mischief in an existence vague to everyone and thing except the needs of his Master.

Brains That Wouldn't Die

THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958)

THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN (1964)
FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969)

Michael Gwynn suffers THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

HAMMER's THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN - a direct sequel to THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN scripted by Jimmy Sangster - consolidated the feel of Hammer Horror. The Baron (Peter Cushing) has also undergone a rethink, changing from the aloof and self absorbed into a visionary, becoming the obsessive that we would become familiar. The film begins with hunchbacked Karl (Oscar Quitak) helping the Baron escape the guillotine, with Frankenstein promising him a new body. Michael Gwynn is cast as the physical form which incorporates the brain of Karl, remaining sympathetic even after developing cannibalistic tendencies. His emotional confrontation with Frankenstein at a dinner party, which ultimately exposes the Baron's true identity, is as moving as anything Hammer ever achieved. Elsewhere, performances are equally solid, particularly from Francis Matthews as the Baron's assistant Hans Kleve who, it's interesting to note, has the only real success in creating an artificial man in the entire cycle. Curiously, THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN has rarely achieved the level of analysis bestowed on others in the series, particularly in its pointed portrayal of the middle class medical elite using the impoverished working class as a mass donor bank.

The next film, THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN, sits uncomfortably among the Hammer cannon, and the title is a complete misnomer, for the Baron was never less evil than here. Frankenstein (Cushing) discovers his original monster (Kiwi Kingston) perfectly preserved inside a mountain glacier attended by feral deaf-mute Rena (Katy Wild). The Baron gives his monster renewed life, but its brain has been traumatised by gunfire. A circus comes to Carlstaad, featuring the mesmerist Zoltan (Peter Woodthorpe), whom the Baron recruits to stimulate the creature's brain. But when officials order Zoltan out of town for operating without a licence, he uses his mesmeric hold over the monster to exact revenge.

New Zealand wrestler Kiwi Kingston is the “Cornflake Box” creature of THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN. Kingston reunited with Hammer and Freddie Francis in the murder mystery HYSTERIA a year later.

Previous entries were skilfully directed by Terence Fisher; THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN was helmed by Freddie Francis, and legend has it that Fisher was temporarily relieved of his duties as punishment for the commercial failure of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Whatever the reason, it is a rogue entry which negates the genetic advancements made by Fisher by forcing an ill-advised return to the feel of Golden Age Horror. The film was made for Universal, and consequently has an emphasis on ruined castles, sparkling lab equipment, villagers and burgomasters, which recall the American studio rather than the bloody tragedies of Hammer; also the Creature make-up design is very Karloffesque).

The Hammer Frankensteins were always superior over the Christopher Lee Draculas thanks to Cushing; he was always the glue that held them together, his coldly articulate Baron pitch-perfect for FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, which shows an England struggling under the environmental weight of lunatic asylums and abandoned estates. On the run from the police, Frankenstein blackmails Anna Spengler (Veronica Carlson) and her fiancé Karl Holst (Simon Ward) into helping him kidnap his former colleague Dr Brandt (George Pravda) from a sanatorium. Anxious to exploit Brandt's knowledge, the scientist cures his insanity and after death transplants his brain into the body of Dr Richter (Freddie Jones). Unable to communicate with his "widow" Ella (Maxine Audley), the "new" Brandt is determined to kill his tormentor.

"Scientist … Surgeon … Madman … Murderer … Search the length and breadth of Europe … hunt him … track him down. No matter what the risk … FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED.”

Fisher's FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED comes closest of all to Mary Shelley's original concept. For the first time, the Baron's creation is a sensitive, misunderstood being who finally turns the tables on his maker. Here, Frankenstein avenges himself not only on the medical establishment but also on womanhood. Given that he is working on projects which, in effect, excludes women from the creation of life, it's perhaps understandable that he should treat women with increasing disdain. In FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN, it was a female who unsportingly terminated his experiment by taking her own life. Now he systematically turns on all women, raping and killing Anna and treating a traumatised Ella Brandt with emotional sadism. It is Cushing at his finest, a genuinely frightening performance matched in its quality by Jones's moving turn as the bewildered Richer/Brandt. That Frankenstein himself is now the monster couldn’t be clearer.

Twilight of the Dead

FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (1974)

David Prowse is The Creature in Hammer’s last gasp for Gothic Horror.

WITH an absurdly low budget, Terence Fisher's asylum-set FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL - scripted by Anthony Hinds - is a grim epitaph for the Baron and Fisher himself, a Hammer Horror - unlike many of the period - which didn't rely on sex to try to elevate its fortunes. Hollywood had once stood in line to finance the studio's profitable output, yet the vogue for Gothique had passed; when Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is told that he’s mad, he laughs and in a line penned by the actor himself replies "oh possibly. I must admit I’ve never felt so elated in my life. Not since I first … but that was a long time ago."

As in TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, a franchise character is partnered with a younger equivalent - here surgeon Simon Helder (Shane Briant) - and the film benefits from remaining focused on the making of the monster, rather than cutting away to various asides (even the Baron's servant (Madeline Smith) is mute and inconsequential). Cushing - looking alarmingly gaunt and frail - is ill-served by a blonde curly wig and top hat, which only accentuates his thin frame and bony structure. Despite this, the actor remains as obsessive and athletic as always; a standout scene features Cushing's trademark leap, jumping onto - then off - a table, and wrapping a chloroformed coat around the Monster's head. Underneath the awkward, hulking and hairy creature suit, David Prowse gives perhaps his only performance in movies. None too pleased about his new skin, the abomination's dilemma is best conveyed when he caresses the violin possessed in his previous life, only to moments later smash it when realising the futility of the situation.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD made Hammer
seem outdated by comparison.

The decline of Hammer can be linked to its failure to understand the cultural shift that the end of 60s cinema represented. British filmmakers such as Michael Reeves and Pete Walker - together with American directors George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven - moved horror into a new phase of intense violence that made Hammer's output positively quaint. Even by the mid-60s trouble was looming, with rising production costs and increasing competition, but Hammer seemed uninterested in nurturing new talent as their output became increasingly formulaic and threadbare both intellectually and in physical production (a good example being the unconvincing exteriors of the miniature asylum here).

Romero's nihilistic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD did for the horror genre what Hammer achieved in 1957 with THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN: it made everything before it seem dated and predictable. Romero's film looked like a newsreel, where economy was turned into an artistic value; Hammer, still largely stick in a Victorian world of vampires and mummies, lacked any connection to contemporary existence. This New Order created a change away from the tidiness of the British horror film and created a tableau where monsters and humans could no longer be easily distinguished. This loss of generic identity pulled British horror towards sexploitation, which was proving to be a formidable and cost-effective box-office attraction during a period of decline. But there was also an acute divergence and mutation in storylines: consider the Hammer and Shaw Brothers marriage for THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES, and Amicus' werewolf whodunit THE BEAST MUST DIE.

The Soul of Frankenstein

FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967)

Austrian model Susan Denberg had a limited screen career, and is best remembered for her role in this Hammer classic. Here Denberg appears as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in August 1966.

FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN - scripted by Anthony Hinds - is the most metaphysical of all Hammer Horrors, with Terence Fisher returning to the studios' mad scientist cycle after Freddie Francis' controversial departure THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN. The Baron (Peter Cushing) is engaged in a series of experiments to determine whether the soul departs the body at the point of death, assisted by alcoholic Doctor Hertz (Thorley Walters), and dogsbody Hans (Robert Morris). In a local tavern, three young bloods taunt Hans' disfigured sweetheart Christina (Susan Denberg), and are forcibly expelled by Hans and her landlord father Kleve (Alan MacNaughtan). When the trouble-makers return, they bludgeon Kleve to death and Hans - the son of a convicted murderer - is unjustly accused and executed. Distraught, Christina drowns herself. When the Baron succeeds in placing Hans' soul in Christina's body, the combination fuses the woman's emotional scars with Hans' vengeful rage, resulting in a split personality bent on using her new-found beauty to seduce and kill the murderers.

Cushing is seldom better than the trial scene, which includes a priceless thumbing of the Bible. Rapier-witted, Frankenstein is clearly an intellectual giant compared to the inhabitants of this particular rural Balkan setting, where his arrogance seems justified. Although Denberg does not have the gravitas of a Barbara Shelley or an Ingrid Pitt, the dubbed actress holds up remarkably well. Morris recalls Denberg as sweet and friendly, yet caught up with the Roman Polanski "crowd," often appearing on set under the influence. Unfounded rumours have circulated over the years that Denberg died of a drug overdose in 1967, and that she had mental health problems due to an addiction to LSD.

Martin Scorsese selected FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN as part of a National Film Theatre season of his favourite movies in 1987.

Rigorously circular in structure - its first phase framed by two decapitations, the second by two drownings - the miserable events of FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN take on a tragic inevitability. The film's low-key finale has been greatly criticised, but as Christina recreates her suicide, she is at once putting Hans to rest and reclaiming her individual soul. What most engages the viewer is the human identification, and it is this element for which Frankenstein has neither time nor appreciation. With his work once again in tatters, it fails this time because there is something in the fragmented Christina that cannot permit it to succeed. The Baron is unwilling or unable to accommodate this humanity, providing the first clue to his disintegration in FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, and eventual downfall in FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL.

Murder Across Millennia

THE MUMMY (1959)

Towards the end of the Universal Mummy cycle, the monster devolved into a harmless joke, shambling and closing on his prey with all the menace of a turtle. Hammer makes Christopher Lee’s Kharis a constant threat, an automaton that crushes the throats of his victims.

ALTHOUGH most modern readers have been conditioned by decades of horror stories and movies to expect a Mummy to be intrinsically evil, initial literature portrayed them as intelligent, reasonable and even philosophical beings, such as in Leopardi’s 1827 The Dialogue of Frederick Ruysch and his Mummies. It wasn’t until later in the century, however, that the Bad Mummy became a stock device, particularly in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lot No. 249, which illustrates the shift in tone in the wake of important archaeological discoveries, and the increase in Britain’s involvement and later occupation of Egypt. Hammer’s spin on such mysticism is one of the studio’s most glamorous productions, enriching the expected violence and spectacle with a memorable, melancholy undertow. Continuing director Terence Fisher’s fascination with Gothic Romanticism, THE MUMMY sees John Banning (Peter Cushing) excavating the tomb of Princess Ananka, only to have the mummified corpse of her former lover Kharis (Christopher Lee) instructed to murder the desecrators.

THE MUMMY was one of the last of the first wave of British horror films that enjoyed enormous world-wide success, and may arguably stand as the finest of all Mummy movies. The basic plot is little more than a series of predictable monster attacks, but Jimmy Sangster’s script uses politically-based complexities, as the priggish English battle the vindictive ideologies of the third-world. Mehemet Bey (George Pastell), the devout worshipper acting only out of love for his God, is mercilessly baited and dismissed by colonial contempt. In the most memorable scene, Banning’s midnight visit to Bey - a verbal confrontation between East and West – contains more malice than the violent sequences. Lee’s Kharis is a powerful and fast-moving adversary, a Golem-like juggernaut with a swift and deadly grasp. His human signs of adoration and weakness upon recognition of Isobel Banning (Yvonne Furneaux) as a dead ringer for Ananka, are all communicated through evocative eyes and precise mime; equally striking is the actor’s initial clumsiness after emerging from the swamp, as though unused to manoeuvring his limbs. In stark contrast is Cushing’s subtle performance as the cold fish archaeologist with a pronounced limp and death wish, his emotions as atrophied as the muscles in his leg.

A typically hyperbolic ad mat for THE MUMMY.

The film’s prevailing sense of atmosphere is generated in deeply saturated tones that include eerie greens and rich crimsons (Fisher's wide masters are equally sumptuous and full of detail). Franz Reizenstein's sweeping score is the best in any Hammer film; the main theme carries the weight of a Hollywood Biblical epic, and its cues augment Kharis' murder missions with regal flourishes, and evoke his tenderness when confronted by the vision of his undying love. A sexual reading of THE MUMMY can see the men as weaklings, either cripples or sex slaves; even in afterlife, the female is in charge. This interpretation hits hard in the final confrontation, with Kharis reduced to a mere puppet in the hands of a woman who simply resembles the princess to whom he's so devoted. Seemingly, the power of the feminine sex trumps all - English society, ancient religions, and even magical prowess.

English Gothic

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957)
DRACULA (1958)

Phil Leakey’s make-up for Hammer's ground-breaking THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. The last-minute design was a collage of mortician’s wax, rubber, and cotton wool.

WITH their lurid, uncompromising tone, and relentlessly amoral protagonists, Hammer’s legacy as the most successful horror film production company is testament to the quality of the personnel involved. Released onto a market dominated by science fiction creature features, THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN was Hammer’s breakthrough picture; directors such as William Castle and Roger Corman in the United States, and Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava in Italy, were soon following Hammer’s grand guignol lead. Helmed by Terence Fisher, the film is a flamboyantly visceral retelling of Mary Shelley's classic, casting Peter Cushing as Baron Von Frankenstein, and Christopher Lee as his reanimated creation.

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN established Fisher’s ability to lend credible characterisation to formula-bound material. The John Ford of English Gothic cinema, Fisher's work presents a fascinating moral dilemma: the seductive appeal of evil, versus the close-minded representatives of good. The consistency of theme in Fisher's work, coupled with a distinctive style achieved through precise framing and dynamic editing, refutes the idea that he was merely a hack for hire. In the best of his work, there is an element of spirituality that remains unique in a genre supposedly larger-than-life; Fisher’s characters die less often from violence, than from their adherence to a belief. His five Frankenstein films for Hammer can be taken as a single work, a path that follows the metamorphosis of physician into metaphysician into quack, as the Baron’s preoccupations blind him to the importance of human life and, finally, his own mental health. In the last entry of the cycle, FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, a final judgement on the Baron seems that the asylum setting of the film is the best place for him.

Christopher Lee makes the role of The Count his own in DRACULA.

Fisher’s achievement is complemented by Jack Asher’s lavish Eastmancolor photography, the gothic opulence of Bernard Robinson’s production design, and James Bernard’s ominous score. Furthermore, Jimmy Sangster’s literate script sees the Baron misguidedly sincere rather than intrinsically evil; not the madman of popular myth, but a scientist challenging God as a triumph of Man’s intellect. In addition to this already bulging bag of riches, you have the casting of Cushing and Lee. Both actors’ consistently elegant performances would do much to elevate the British horror film to a position where it commanded international attention. Cushing was a master of eloquence and physicality, combining impeccable diction with a manic athleticism. Lee’s Creature, as Fisher once recalled, a "wandering, forlorn minstrel of monstrosity," fuses a colossal physical presence with an icy allure. The Creature wears a shabby military greatcoat - the very image of society’s dispossessed rejects - and its futile, puppet-like attempts at communication are followed by the inevitable, exasperated lapses into violence. The monster’s introduction, bandaged, and framed in a laboratory doorway, supplemented by an unearthly tracking shot, is a scene that determined Hammer Horror.

Reconvening the major talents from THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA is a maturing of style against the blueprint of its predecessor. Seminal in the character's film canon – the Count’s first colour adaptation – Terence Fisher’s film is, however, a free and melodramatic re-evaluation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) is now a dedicated vampire hunter working under the tutelage of Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), who, in turn, is no longer the priest-physician-teacher of the novel, or the elderly savant typified by Edward Van Sloan in Universal’s 1931 film, but younger and more dynamic. Yet the film is far truer in tone to the original text; The Count (Christopher Lee) represents liberation at its most overt, shifting the characters cinematic emphasis from the supernatural to the sexual. Initially presenting its female leads as submissive, stereotypical Victorian women, both Lucy (Carole Marsh) and Mina (Melissa Stribling) transform when they encounter their demon lover, breathless in anticipation, and eager for brutish, physical contact.

Valerie Gaunt, thirsting for blood, in DRACULA.

Cushing is impeccable, radiating an Old World charm and a confidence in his rightness, but this is Lee's movie. Instead of the stylised movement, hypnotic stare and thick accent of Bela Lugosi, Lee is more physically imposing than any other actor in the role, and intractably feral. Make no mistake, Lee's Dracula is Stoker's Dracula, a charming, well-spoken, imperious aristocrat, overwhelming his female victims with sheer animal magnetism. Biting his victims discreetly by modern standards, but explicit to audiences who might have expected this activity to be shielded by the judicious swirl of his cape, Lee’s Count is a flesh-and-blood monster to be grappled with at close quarters, rather than some ethereal, blood-drinking ghost in formal wear. Van Helsing and Dracula represent a myriad of Fisheresque dualities; good and evil certainly, but also order and chaos, civilisation and anarchy, the soul of humanity and the spirit of the beast.