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Hammer Time

Known for its revitalization of classic monsters, low budgets, and the presence of powerhouse actors like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Hammer Horror is a brand like none other in the world of genre cinema. For fans and devotees, it is almost religious. For directors like Martin Scorsese, going to the movies and seeing one from Hammer meant “it was a very special picture.”

Founded in 1934, but known primarily for its horror films of the  60s and early 1970s, Hammer all but collapsed into obscurity in the 80s and 90s, only to be gloriously resurrected recently with the infusion of new investors and the success of Let Me In (the English language version of Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In)) along with the spooktacularly atmospheric Woman in Black starring Daniel Radcliffe.

For children of the 70s who spent their Saturday afternoons behind closed doors, glued to the tube while others played out in the terribly bright sunshine, Hammer films were the stuff of dark secrets — the cinematic equivalent of Playboy magazines hidden under the mattress. Hours were spent staring at blood run red and breasts laid bare.  This wasn’t your grandparents’ Dracula: no Bela Lugosi staked off-screen with a anti-climactic thud. This was the towering threat of Christopher Lee, writhing in agony as Peter Cushing’s vigorous Van Helsing pulls a Douglas Fairbanks, and with one great leap, yanks the drapes that strip the flesh from the vampire Count, exposing a toothy skeleton — one that pops and fizzles before dissolving into dust.

Tame by today’s standards, Hammer Horror kept the British censors busy with X certificates for decades. At it worst, the studio could be and, in fact, was accused of poor taste (even exploitation). But at its best, Hammer re-interpreted — even re-invented — many of Universal’s classic monsters for more modern, mature audiences. Dracula. Frankenstein’s monster. The Wolf-Man. The Mummy. Re-imagined. Made more menacing. All in vibrant color. Crimson wounds gushed. Dark green forests loomed. And flesh? Skin tones of the scantily clad Hammer stable of beautiful women lit up the screen.

Still, what made Hammer films all the more memorable — immortal even — was that good always triumphed over evil. The nihilism that so saturated genre film in the post-Vietnam period that followed Hammer’s heyday was as much a world away as the amalgam of unnamed eastern-European towns that were so often the settings of many of Hammer’s greatest films. A handful of them are explored in detail below; their trailers are included in a YouTube playlist:

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

The first of Hammer’s gothic horrors is also its first foray into re-imagining Universal’s monsters. Also the first pairing of director Terence Fisher with actors Peter Cushing (as the Doctor) and Christopher Lee (as the monster). Here, Hammer would establish its trappings: castles, costumes and a decidedly British sensibility in a European setting that at the same time never existed yet was always there. Cushing’s charisma is captivating. And Terence Fisher, who would go on to make four more movies with both Cushing and Lee, sets the tone for every Hammer Horror film to come.

The Horror of Dracula, British Quad Poster
The Horror of Dracula, British Quad Poster

Dracula(U.S. title Horror of Dracula) (1958)

Lee’s Dracula is aristocratic, powerful and sexual. He would go on to play the Count more times than any other actor (10 total; 7 for Hammer), but no performance is more (un)dead “on” than Lee’s first. The aforementioned ending, with Dracula crumbling to dust in the sun, may very well be the best ending of any vampire film ever made.

The Mummy (1959)

Another successful reboot by Hammer directed by Terence Fisher and starring actors Peter Cushing and Christoper Lee, The Mummy is the least radical of Hammer’s overhaul of classic monsters, but its mashup of Universal’s many mummy plotlines (primarily The Mummy’s Hand and The Mummy’s Tomb) coupled with a very modern attitude regarding respect for antiquities makes it more than the standard moan and stomp fare.

Curse of the Werewolf, French Poster
Curse of the Werewolf, French Poster

The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

Loosely based upon Guy Endore’s seminal novel The Werewolf of Paris (1933) and far superior to any of the Lon Chaney Jr. movies — from sets to cinematography to a gripping performance by an overzealous Oliver Reed — Curse of the Werewolf curiously did not spawn a franchise for Hammer. The studio’s only experiment with lycanthropy, it remains one of the better werewolf movies ever made (the best, of course, being An American Werewolf in London).

The Gorgon (1964)

While not the best of director Fisher’s work with stars Cushing and Lee, The Gorgon is interesting for its odd choice of monster from mythology that turns the villagers of a middle-European town to stone. Ignore the sillier scenes where it’s clear that the lady is wearing a wig of rubber snakes and enjoy the creepy atmosphere and solid performances, once again, from Cushing and Lee.

Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)

Christopher Lee’s return to the role that made him famous finds the actor with nary a line of intelligible dialog nor a foil as compelling as Van Helsing; still, the formula works. Barbara Shelley is wonderful pre- and post-transformation, the sets (shared with Rasputin the Mad Monk and The Reptile — all filmed at the same time!) are fantastic, and the ending, while unusual, is quite unique.

Plague of the Zombies (1966)

Two years before George Romero gave new, um, life to the genre, Hammer produced a zombie picture with something uncharacteristic for the studio: a political message — one of the aristocracy abusing and exploiting the working class. Oh, and it’s scary, with iconic images of limbs erupting from the ground.

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

Directed by Terence Fisher. Based on a Dennis Wheatley novel. Scripted by Richard Matheson. Starring Christopher Lee (in what he considered to be one of his best roles). About a satanic cult. Culminates in the evocation of the Angel of Death. What more could any Hammer fan want?

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

Inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla and the first of three Hammer films to feature the Karnstein family of vampires, The Vampire Lovers made overt the sexuality that was always at the core of Hammer’s vampire films. Relaxed rules by the British censor and changing attitudes towards sexuality as the 1970s began meant all bets (and clothes) were off.

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, French Poster
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, French Poster

Starring the exotic, erotic Ingrid Pitt as Mircalla / Carmilla, Vampire Lovers has an ethereal quality that can be attributed to the film’s director, Roy Ward Baker. But it’s the soft-core lesbian scenes that most find memorable, unfortunately. For this is a very good film.

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)

If Vampire Lovers opened the door for Hammer to explore the intersection of horror and sexuality, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde broke through its wall. While at times silly (from the immortal power of female hormones to some of the film’s promotion via trailers and posters [EXCEPT the cool French poster shown here), it stands as one of Hammer’s most original offerings. From its script (which incorporates both Jack the Ripper and the body snatchers Burke and Hare) to its oddly look-a-like stars Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde ultimately succeeds because — as he did with The Vampire Lovers — director Roy Ward Baker plays the sexual themes, for lack of better words, straight.

No studio before or since more radically redefined gothic horror than Hammer. Though their reach may have exceeded their grasp, Hammer’s producers, directors, writers and actors pushed the limits of what horrors could be explored in cinema while still retaining that magic of film that is created when more is left to the imagination than on screen. By the mid seventies, audience tastes towards more explicit (Texas Chaninsaw Massacre) and big budget horror (The Exorcist) found Hammer scrambling to find its place. Ultimately, the studio stopped making as many features, explored other genres (kung-fu and urban thrillers among them), turned briefly to television, and then, finally, went into receivership.

The brand, however, survived, and with its recent successes among 21st century moviegoers, the “studio that dripped blood” (a title of a 1987 Hammer Films documentary) may possibly be back with a vengeance.

Fans can only hope.

Those wishing to explore the world of Hammer films further will find the following books invaluable: Marcus Hearn’s The Hammer Vault: Treasures from the Archive of Hammer Films along with The Hammer Story, also by Marcus Hearn with Alan Barnes (including a foreword by Christopher Lee).

For the die-hard Hammer fan, there’s also Hammer Films: The Unsung Heroes, a limited edition by Wayne Kinsey (with a foreword by Barbara Shelley) that goes into great detail about the many people that comprised “the team behind the legend.”

All titles are available from Amazon.com (along with this blogger’s book of fiction). Excuse the shameless self-promotion.

culture, film, occult

The Dead Will Not Lie Down: Towards An Understanding of Kinemortophobia

Get A Kit, Make A Plan, Be Prepared. emergency.cdc.gov

 

On May 31, 2012, The Centers for Disease Control made it official: Zombies do not exist.

Despite some emergency preparedness promotional materials that were always meant to be tongue-in-cheek (or in exposed jaw, as the case may be), the CDC came clean on its macabre zombie campaign following the cannibalistic acts of one Rudy Eugene five days earlier, who, in what was first assumed to be a drug-induced delirium due to “bath salts” (which an autopsy has since disproven), gnawed off most of a homeless man’s face at a Miami parking garage.

Kinemortophobia, the fear of zombies, can be traced back millenia, to the very dawn of civilization. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, from approximately 13th to 10th century Mesopotamia, the Goddess Ishtar, spurned by the hero Gilgamesh  threatens to “knock down the Gates of the Netherworld” and “let the dead go up to eat the living!” Emphatically, she adds that “the dead will outnumber the living!”

To some degree, most cultures throughout history have believed it possible for the dead to return. Not merely as non-corporeal ghosts returned to haunt the living or as vampiric entities possessed by demons, but revenants — animated corpses who have returned (as the name implies) to usually exact some revenge. Creatures of singular purpose as described in the works of William of Newburgh (1136?-1198?) and the English Abbot of Burton, writing in 1090.

The Dance of Death
The Dance of Death

The medieval European revenant, however, seemed to be satisfied to work alone. At most, in pairs. Not, as Ishtar promised, where the dead would outnumber the living. And so centuries passed with the mythology of the dead  getting mixed up in the latter medieval Danse Macabre, a momento mori consisting of the dead or personified Death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave (see The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut to the right).

It would be the early twentieth century before the creole word ‘zombi’ — apparently derived from Nzambi, a north African Deity — would enter the language. Taken from Haiti to American shores via the pages of Magic Island, a little known travelogue by William Seabrook published in 1929, the zombie was unnerving.

“The eyes were the worst… They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable of expression.” — William Seabrook, The Magic Island

White Zombie (1932)
White Zombie (1932)

Within three years, Hollywood was quick to capitalize on Seabrook’s discovery by casting Bela Lugosi in White Zombie as Murder Legendre, a Voodoo master with the power to turn men and women into zombie slaves, incapable of free will and under his complete control.

Similar themes would continue with Val Lewton’s atmospheric I Walked With a Zombie (1943) up through the glory days of Hammer Horror and 1965’s Plague of the Zombies where an English country gentleman who had spent some time in Haiti dabbles in voodoo and unleashes a scourge as the film’s title implies: an unstoppable force of re-animated corpses that, in many ways, culturally herald the endless parade of parasites to come in George Romero’s pivotal 1968 Night of the Living Dead.

In his small, independent black and white offering that few assumed would find distribution and ever be seen at all, George Romero changed the mythology of zombies forever. His visceral approach to the content, subversive social commentary, and deft removal of all references to the supernatural (no hearkening to Haiti… no mention of the word zombie at all) transforms the genre. No longer the occasional slave of a sadistic shaman, the resuscitated dead in Romero’s world are accidental creatures of science. A force beyond our ability to control, as what was once dead — long dead or recently buried — returns. In seemingly insurmountable numbers.

Mindless creatures of unending hunger that gather in droves like walking — or in the case of the infected from 2002’s 28 Days Later —running flesh-eating machines, zombies can’t be reasoned with, can’t be appeased, won’t stop (as they feel no fatigue or sense of defeat), and — perhaps worst of all — spread loathing and despair among those that remain alive. The underlying cause of whatever created the zombies is now coldly scientific, irrevocably biological — perhaps even introduced into the population by mankind itself.

It is this palpable despair that leads to desperation, and ultimately, the breakdown of civilized norms in the work of Robert Kirkman (writer) and Tony Moore (artist) in The Walking Dead from Image Comics (published since 2003). A hugely successfully television series on AMC recently renewed for a third season, The Walking Dead blurs the lines of morality in a post-apocalyptic world. The zombies are relentless. But man can be scheming. Cruel. More dangerous than the dead.

Zombie from The Walking Dead
AMC’s The Walking Dead

It is ultimately this notion of an apocalypse of some kind — the “zombie apocalypse” as the phrase has become popularly known, where man fights his fellow man and zombies alike — that has become cemented in popular culture, prompting everyone from the CDC to Miami news anchors to adopt the phrase. But it is in the word apocalypse that we can possibly find the black heart of the condition called kinemortophobia. It is not necessarily a fear of death. We all die, and the fear of death has been with us since the dawn of time. Instead, it’s the fear of losing one’s identity to the zombie. A loss of dignity. Being able to live well and to die well. Not in a pile of clawing hands and gnashing teeth.

Is it something even simpler? The fear that comes with all monsters? The fear of The Other? No, profound though the fear of the outré is, this goes deeper. Especially when so many monsters have been humanized to become the stuff of soap operas. Romantic vampires and sensitive werewolves. Tortured souls that lament their power over others. The zombie knows nothing of this, because the zombie knows nothing.

We look at the vampire and think therein lies the attractive power of  possessing another through the blood and its seduction. We behold the beast that is the werewolf, and envy its sheer power and freedom from social norms. We can even sympathize with a spectral entity, a ghost traveling dimensions in an attempt to communicate. Each of these has humanity.

But a zombie? A zombie is the flesh and blood and bone and muscle that are the leftovers of every body. What remains when the soul has gone. A reminder that we are bags of meat.

Zombies move towards us for reasons we do not know in numbers we can’t possible count to do things to us too horrible to imagine.

Zombies are an unstoppable force of nature, ready to wipe us from the planet, taking from us the very humanity we would learn to truly cherish in the moments before the bleak inevitability of our situation becomes clear: that death comes to all — some more violently than others.

 

 

I’d like to acknowledge Tom Hutchinson and Roy Pickard’s HORRORS for the title “The Dead Will Not Lie Down,” the third chapter in their History of Horror Movies from 1983 — one of a small handful of treasures that introduced me to the wonderful world of horror movies.