Hammer horror refers to a series of gothic horror films produced from the late 1950s until the 1970s by the British film production company Hammer Film Productions Ltd., although it is sometimes also used to refer to other British horror films of the period made by different companies, such as Amicus Productions. Besides its original meaning, of or relating to the Goths, a Germanic tribe and thus the Gothic language and the Gothic alphabet, and aside from its Early Modern connotations of rough, barbarous, the word Gothic has been used since the 18th century to refer to distinctly different things. ... DVD cover showing horror characters as depicted by Universal Studios. ... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ... Hammer Film Productions Ltd. ... Amicus Productions was founded in the UK by American producer and screenwriter Milton Subotsky, and served primarily as vehicle for Subotskys anthology horror films such as Dr Terrors House Of Horrors and The House That Dripped Blood. ...

Hammer was founded in London in 1932 by Spanish-born cinema owner Enrique Carerras and music hall comedian William Hinds. Hinds performed as one half of a double-act called Hammer and Smith, from which the partnership took its name. Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Hammer produced numerous very low-budget comedies and crime dramas. Carreras and Hinds brought their sons - Michael Carreras and Anthony Hinds - onboard in 1939, and it was they who, in the late 1950s, noted a taste for horror subjects in the post-war public, and moved the studio toward the production of that type of film. St Stevens Tower - The Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster which contains Big Ben London (see also different names) is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ... 1932 is a leap year starting on a Friday. ... Music Hall is a form of British theatrical entertainment which reached its peak of popularity between 1850 and 1960. ... // Events and trends The 1930s were spent struggling for a solution to the global depression. ... // Events and trends The 1940s were dominated by World War II, the most destructive armed conflict in history. ... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the... 1939 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air, August 9, 1945 after the Allied atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ...

Their first experiment with horror came in the form of a 1955 adaptation of Nigel Kneale's BBC Television science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment, which was directed by Val Guest. American actor Brian Donlevy was brought in to star, and the title was changed to The Quatermass Xperiment to cash in on the new X certificate for horror films. The film was an unexpectedly bit hit, and led to an almost equally popular 1957 sequel (Quatermass 2) again adapted (this time by Kneale) from a Kneale television script. In the meantime, Hammer had produced another Quatermass-style horror film X the Unknown. // Events November 3 - The musical Guys and Dolls, starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, debuts. ... Nigel Kneale (born Thomas Nigel Kneale on April 18, 1922 in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England, UK) is a Manx television and film scriptwriter, who has worked mostly in the UK. He is best known for his creation of the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass, who has appeared in three... BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which began in 1936. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... The Quatermass Experiment is a British television science-fiction serial, transmitted by BBC Television in the summer of 1953. ... Val Guest (born December 11, 1911) is a British film director, best known for his science-fiction films for the Hammer company in the 1950s, but who also enjoyed a long, varied and active career in the film industry from the early 1930s up until the early 1980s. ... Donlevy (right) with costar Ella Raines in Impact (1950) Brian Donlevy (born Waldo Bruce Donlevy on February 9, 1901 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA; died April 6, 1972 in Woodland Hills, California, USA) was an American actor, known for many film roles from the 1930s through to the 1960s. ... The 1955 advertising poster for the films UK release. ... X-rated, X certificate, X classification or similar terms are labels for movies implying strong adult content, typically pornography or violence. ... 1957 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Categories: 1957 films | Films based on television series | Movie stubs | Science fiction films ... Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional character, created by the writer Nigel Kneale originally for BBC Television, who appeared in three influential BBC science fiction serials of the 1950s, and made his swansong in a final serial for Thames Television in 1979. ... X the Unknown is a British science-fiction / horror film made by the famous Hammer Films company and released in 1956. ...

At this point, Carreras and Hinds began to look for more horror material that would be cheap to adapt. Realising that no-one had made versions of the classic horror stories - specifically Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy - since Universal Studios' 1930s films and their numerous sequels, they decided on a new Frankenstein film as their next project. To avoid copyright disputes with Universal, Jimmy Sangster's script was based very clearly on the original novel, with an appropriate period setting, and the make-up devised for Christopher Lee bore little relation to Jack Pierce's iconic creation for Boris Karloff. Another innovation, and one which took advantage of the studio's investment in a more expensive colour production, was the amount of gore in the film. Previously, horror films had not shown blood in a graphic way, or when they did it was concealed by monochrome photography. In The Curse of Frankenstein, it was bright red, and the camera lingered upon it. Bela Lugosi as Dracula United States stamp Dracula is a fictional character, arguably the most famous vampire in fiction. ... The Frankenstein Monster Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is a novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. ... The Mummy is the title of: a 1932 movie starring Boris Karloff: see The Mummy (1932 movie) a 1959 movie starring Christopher Lee: see The Mummy (1959 movie) a 1999 movie starring Brendan Fraser: see The Mummy (1999 movie) a novel by Anne Rice: see The Mummy (novel) This is... Universal Studios logo This article is about the Universal Studios movie studio and Universal Hollywood theme park. ... The Frankenstein Monster Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is a novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. ... British scriptwriter and director, b. ... Cosmetics or makeup are substances to enhance the beauty of the human body, apart from simple cleaning. ... Christopher Lee This article is about the actor. ... Jack Pierce (May 5, 1889 in Greece – July 19, 1968), born Janus Piccoulas, was a Hollywood make-up artist most famous for creating the iconic make-up worn by Boris Karloff in Universal Studios 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. ... Boris Karloff (November 23, 1887 - February 2, 1969), born William Henry Pratt, was a famous actor in horror films. ... The Curse of Frankenstein is a 1957 horror film made by Britains Hammer Films. ...

The film itself is directed excitingly by Terence Fisher, with a lavish look that belies its modest budget. Peter Cushing's performance as Baron Victor Frankenstein, and Lee's as the imposingly tall, brutish monster provide the film with a further veneer of polish. Movie director who worked for Hammer Films. ... Peter Cushing (left) as Grand Moff Tarkin Peter Cushing (26 May 1913–11 August 1994) was a British actor, best known for playing Dr Frankenstein and Professor van Helsing in Hammer films, often opposite Christopher Lee as Dracula. ...

The film was an enormous success, not only in Britain, but also in the USA, where it inspired numerous imitations from, amongst others, Roger Corman and his American International Pictures. It also found success on the European continent, where Italian directors and audiences were particularly receptive. Roger William Corman (born April 5, 1926) is an American producer and director of low-budget films; as such, he has apprenticed many now-famous directors, stressing the importance of budgeting and resourcefulness. ... American International Pictures was formed in 1954 as American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, dedicated to releasing independently produced, low-budget films, primarily of interest to the teenagers of the 1950s. ... A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ...

The Curse of Frankenstein provided the studio with a template which they stuck to for around the next ten years. In 1958, they produced a new version of Dracula (re-titled The Horror of Dracula in the US), starring Christopher Lee as the Count, and Peter Cushing as Abraham van Helsing, giving the studio another sizeable hit and adding to the criticism expressed over the amount of violence and gore in their films. The following year the company resurrected another Universal monster with a new version of The Mummy, again featuring Lee as the monster and Cushing as his opponent. The same year Lee and Cushing also starred in a new version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Although Cushing's performance as Sherlock Holmes was well-received, the film itself was not as big a hit as its predecessors. 1958 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Bela Lugosi as Dracula United States stamp Dracula is a fictional character, arguably the most famous vampire in fiction. ... Dracula (1958) is the first of a series of Hammer Horror movies inspired by Bram Stokers novel Dracula. ... US,Us or us may stand for the United States of America us, the oblique case form of the English language pronoun we. ... Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character in the novel Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker. ... Universal has several meanings: For the concept of a universal in metaphysics, see Universal (metaphysics). ... The Mummy was a 1959 British horror movie starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. ... The Hound of the Baskervilles is a crime novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, originally serialised in the Strand Magazine in 1901 and 1902, which is set largely on Dartmoor 1889. ... Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th century, created by British author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle. ...

While The Mummy sequels were relegated to second feature status, the Dracula and Frankenstein films would become a staple for Hammer for the next 10 years. Lee went on to play Count Dracula more times than any other actor. His other Dracula films for Hammer were: The Mummy is the title of: a 1932 movie starring Boris Karloff: see The Mummy (1932 movie) a 1959 movie starring Christopher Lee: see The Mummy (1959 movie) a 1999 movie starring Brendan Fraser: see The Mummy (1999 movie) a novel by Anne Rice: see The Mummy (novel) This is...

• Dracula, Prince of Darkness 1966
• Dracula Has Risen From the Grave 1968
• Taste the Blood of Dracula 1969
• Scars of Dracula 1970
• Dracula AD 1972 1972
• The Satanic Rites of Dracula 1973

Cushing, for his part, went on to make five more Frankenstein films: 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ... 1968 was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... 1969 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... 1973 was a common year starting on Monday. ...

• The Revenge of Frankenstein 1959
• The Evil of Frankenstein 1964
• Frankenstein Created Woman 1967
• Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed 1969
• Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell 1974

Cushing also appeared in Dracula sequels without Lee, such as 1960's Brides of Dracula, in which David Peel played an intriguingly decadent Count and 1974's The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires which melded Hammer's englishness with Hong Kong film makers The Shaw Brothers 1959 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1967 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1969 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... 1974 is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ... 1960 was a leap year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Brides of Dracula is a 1960 British horror film directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Studios. ... Peel playing in Washington Square Park, Million Marijuana March, 1994 David Peel is a NYC based musician who has stayed amazingly true to his unique personal vision since the late 1960s and in the early 21st century still shows no sign of slowing down. ... Decadence was the name given, first by hostile critics, and then triumphantly adopted by some writers themselves, to a number of late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers associated with Symbolism or the Aesthetic movement. ... 1974 is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ...

Other Hammer films from this period include a version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde in 1960's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, Phantom of the Opera starring Herbert Lom (1962) and Plague of the Zombies (1965). Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894), was a novelist, poet, and travel writer. ... The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll1and Mr. ... 1960 was a leap year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... The title character as depicted by Lon Chaney, Sr. ... Herbert Lom (born January 9, 1917) is an international film actor. ... 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Plague of the Zombies is a 1966 British horror film directed for Hammer by John Gilling. ... 1965 was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar). ...

As audiences became more sophisticated in the late 1960s, with the release of films like Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, the studio struggled to maintain its place market. Accordingly, later films in the series seem to turn increasingly to self-parody. Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula abandon period settings in pursuit of a "swinging London" feel, which drew fire not only from critics, but also from Christopher Lee himself. Roman Polański Roman Polanski (born August 18, 1933) is a celebrated Polish film director and actor. ... Spoiler warning: Rosemarys Baby is the title of a 1967 horror novel by Ira Levin, in which a young religious woman and her husband move into a New York City, New York apartment next door to enthusiastic, oversolicitous neighbors. ...

Hammer films had always featured sex heavily, but both this and the amounts of gore came to be intensified in the studios later films. Most notable were the films of the Karnstein Trilogy based very loosely on J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (August 28, 1814 - February 7, 1873) was an Irish writer of short stories and novels concerning the strange and supernatural. ...

• The Vampire Lovers, 1970
• Lust for a Vampire, 1971
• Twins of Evil, 1972

The first film featured Polish actress Ingrid Pitt, and were somewhat daring for the time in explicitly depicting lesbian themes. 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... 1971 is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ... 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... Ingrid Pitt (born November 21, 1937 in Poland), is an actress. ... A lesbian is a homosexual woman. ...

These experiments were, broadly speaking, not successful in box-office or critical terms, although some, including Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, written and directed by Hammer newcomer Brian Clemens, better known as the creator of The Avengers, later developed a cult following. The most famous incarnation of The Avengers, John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) appear on the cover of a 1994 reprint of an Avengers novel co-written by Macnee. ... A cult film is a movie that attracts a small but devoted group of obsessive fans or one that has remained popular over successive years amongst a small group of followers. ...

In the early 1980s Hammer Films created a series for British television, Hammer House of Horror, which ran for 13 episodes. In a break from their cinema format, these featured plot twists which usually left the protagonists falling to whatever malign form the evil took. These varied from sadistic shopkeepers with hidden pasts, to witches and satanic rites, and were marked by their dark destructive irony, the haunting title music, and by the interingling of horror within everyday people's lives. // Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...

A second television series, Hammer House of Mystery & Suspense, was produced in 1984 and also ran for 13 episodes. The stories were originally to have been the same 1-hour length as their previous series, but it was decided to expand them to market them as 'movies of the week'. The series was produced in association with 20th Century Fox and as such, the stronger elements of sex and violence as seen in the earlier series were toned down considerably for US television. Also, every episode featured a star well-known to US viewers (not all of them necessarily American). This series was Hammer's final production of any kind to date. 1984 is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Fox Plaza, the company headquarters. ...

The Hammer Horror films were generally critically derided when they appeared, although Terence Fisher's direction was often praised. Critics accused them of being over-the-top and gruesome in the manner of the Grand Guignol tradition. In recent years, however, they seem tamer, and have developed a following based on their atmosphere and camp appeal. Grand Guignol is an adjective describing any dramatic entertainment featuring the violently gruesome and gory. ... The term camp—normally used as an adjective, even though earliest recorded uses employed it mainly as a verb—refers to the deliberate and sophisticated use of kitsch, mawkish or corny themes and styles in art, clothing or conversation. ...

In recent years, although the company has seemed to be in hibernation, frequent announcements have been made of new projects. In 2003, for example, the studio announced plans to work with Australian company Pictures in Paradise to develop new horror films for the DVD and cinema market.

Further reading

• Jack Hunter, House of Horror
• Ken Hanke, A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series (has good chapters on the Dracula and Frankenstein films)
• Wayne Kinsey, Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years (riveting, information-packed guide to all the films up to 1967)
• Randall Larson, Music from the House of Hammer
• David Pirie, A Heritage of Horror (out-of-print, but a seminal book exploring Hammer and other British horror films critically
• Jonathan Rigby, "English Gothic" (seminal work on the entire British Horror genre. Hammer obviously features throughout)

See also

• Amicus Productions

Amicus Productions was founded in the UK by American producer and screenwriter Milton Subotsky, and served primarily as vehicle for Subotskys anthology horror films such as Dr Terrors House Of Horrors and The House That Dripped Blood. ...

External links

• Online Dictionary of Hammer Horror
• Official web site
• An unofficial tribute site
• A history of Hammer Films
• 1980s TV series episode guide
• The World of Hammer Glamour