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Hammer Horror
For a start, this isn’t going to be a full and varied history on the greatest movie franchise ever devised. If you wish to see something of this nature, then I recommend you grab one, or some – or ideally, all – the books I will list somewhere within these pages as they will do exactly that. However, nor is it going to be a catalogue of reviews of my favourite and least favourite films for you to moan about. All this section will be is an appreciation of Hammer Horror. I will talk about its influence on my life (and you can read it if you’re really interested) and I’ll even explain how I feel it has affected the modern film industry (no Hammer, no Saw). I’ll include pictures (some will show some classic Hammer gore, others some classic Hammer nudity) and I’ll no doubt rant and bitch about why the industry passed away and why it should be left to our memories. But anyway, I’m waffling.
Friday night. In my house, when I was a wee bairn, it was traditional that my dad would go the pub every Friday night. The local was literally a few doors away, and so my dad would wander on down there about 9 o’clock, have a few with the locals, come back and down a few rounds of cheese on toast. Saturday night would be the night he and my mother would venture out, but Friday was always his night. It was also the night I got to stay up late, wait for him to get home and sit with him to watch the late night horror films. I can still taste the excitement. Those hours between 9 and 11:30 would drag by at an excruciatingly slow rate for me as I waited for his familiar footsteps coming up the drive and the changing of the channel. The adverts would finish just as he would open the door, and there we would sit, in the living room, noshing away on tea and cheese, swallowing all the fake gore the TV could throw at us. There were times when the films on show were the Universal films, and whilst these were scary, I was a kid of the 70s, so I already knew about Halloween and The Exorcist (though I hadn’t seen them at that point in time). Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff freaked me out, but the effect they had once held was waning and I could sit through these films without any parental guidance (though I still find Creature of the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein uncomfortable viewing). When the Hammer films were on however, everything was different. As Christopher Lee opened his blood-splattered mouth to reveal freshly-used fangs, I would cling to my dad’s arm.
When Peter Cushing as the Baron locked his servant and mistress in the laboratory with his creation, I would scream at him to let her go.
When Barbara Shelley changed from uptight English middle-class to sensual Transylvanian vampire, I discovered what the thing in-between my legs was for.
And these were just the staple films: Dracula & Frankenstein (before anyone has a go, I’m talking about Horror of Dracula, Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula: Prince of Darkness). There were other films that even had my dad – a big burly Scotsman who knew exactly how to administer a Glasgow kiss – twitching. Films like Plague of the Zombies when Jacqueline Pearce lies in the coffin and opens her eyes; or Countess Dracula when Ingrid Pitt bathes in the blood of virgins, or even The Devil Rides Out when Beelzebub himself makes an appearance. All of these and more would scare the living daylights out of me and make my dad squirm (though he would deny it at the time, and would no doubt do the same today).
The films reached into me and scratched my basic fears. They created a reaction my younger self could relate to – something I would feel again when I eventually saw the Exorcist, The Haunting and The Wicker Man, but something I was too young to comprehend at that time.
Whenever the Hammer logo was displayed, I knew I was going to not only watch a film, I was going to have an experience. Something that’s sadly lacking in today’s cinema as this new band of horror film makers seem to forget about the boundaries of horror and taste. I Know What You Did Last Summer? So what. Urban Legend? Urban Bollocks. Wrong Turn – that’s exactly what I did when I picked it up in the DVD store (are they still called video stores?). These are pointless and crap. Hammer might have been crap (at times, even the greatest have an off day) but they always had a point.
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