Still, Hammer did initially follow-up The Quatermass Xperiment - which follows macho professor-cum-adventurer Bernard Quatermass’s encounters with a fungus-like alien - with more science fiction. Hammer’s board of directors went so far as to celebrate the film’s ten-year anniversary in 1966 despite knowing, by this time, that fans enjoyed the film more for its horror elements than its science-fiction tropes.
The Quatermass Xperiment, based on the 1953 BBC television series The Quatermass Experiment written by Nigel Kneale, was one of Hammer’s first major successes. Michael was also as business- and trend-savvy as James, and chose to continue his father’s initiative of leaning more heavily on sex and nudity, especially in the sexy vampire Karnstein trilogy of The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971), and Twins of Evil (also 1971). Michael tried to focus the studio’s output on horror movies, though he himself would direct a couple of non-horror titles, including the ill-fated, Shaw Brothers co-produced action-thriller, Shatter (1974). Enter: Michael Carreras, James’s son, who stopped his father from selling off Hammer’s name and film catalogue. as half of a double feature with the dismally kitschy Joan Crawford vehicle Trog, he boasted about how Scars of Dracula was financed exclusively with British money (i.e., he couldn’t convince any American backers). In 1970, James almost singlehandedly nuked the company’s vital relationship with Warner Brothers-Seven Arts: Resentful of the fact that Taste the Blood of Dracula was released in the U.S.
In 1966, he sold off Bray Studios - a palatial country manor that served as the company’s primary shooting location, thereby allowing them to significantly reduce production costs - after trying to sell the property for four years. Unfortunately, James also had a big hand in leading the company to financial ruin. James became the driving force of Hammer Productions during its most commercially successful period (until 1970) by actively securing distribution and financial deals with all of the major Hollywood studios, including United Artists, Warner Brothers-Seven Arts, Columbia Pictures, and Universal Pictures. Initially, Hammer focused on lightweight comedies, and melodramatic adaptations of stage plays and successful BBC serials, including dated and creaky comedies of manners like What the Butler Saw (1950), Life With the Lyons (1954), and Up the Creek (1958), the last of which co-stars Peter Sellers as a crooked navy officer. This initial outing didn’t go so well for Hinds, but Hammer bounced back in 1948 after Hinds teamed up with movie-chain owner Enrique Carreras and his ambitious son James. In 1934, jeweler turned music-hall performer William Hinds officially patented the business name “Hammer Productions.” Hinds initially used the company - whose name was taken from his “William Hammer” stage name - to import B pictures and some of Hinds’s own films. To celebrate the Quad’s upcoming survey, Vulture has compiled a brief Hammer Horror primer, detailing the many titles, artists, and trends that helped make Hammer such a vital institution.įamily Business: James and Michael Carreras
Featured films range from Hammer’s still-unnerving monster movies - like The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1959), and their increasingly graphic sequels - to a fantastic selection of equally sensational Hammer highlights from other genres, like war films and science-fiction flicks. The program is the first in a two-part series, and focuses on Hammer’s output from 1956–1967. On May 30, Manhattan’s Quad Cinema kicks off their gob-smacking “Hammer’s House of Horror” program, a 32-film survey of films produced by the studio. But many of their best movies are united in one way: They’re simultaneously bloody and titillating, haunting and atmospheric. But the promise of gore and nudity was central to Hammer’s production and advertising campaigns from the mid-1950s on.īy today’s standards, Hammer’s popular and now-iconic gothic horror films - stylish Technicolor (or Eastmancolor) updates of Universal genre staples like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Wolf Man - seem quaint. It’s a fact that many modern horror film fans either downplay or overlook, since many of their better titles are more than just showcases for blood and skin. Hammer Film Productions, the iconic British film studio, has always been synonymous with sex and violence.