<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Hammer Films was initially launched in 1934 and operated for years as Exclusive Films, producing forgettable, modestly budgeted movies for decades. It began to find its way in 1955 with the release of The Quatermass Xperiment (known in the United States as The Creeping Unknown). This black-and-white thriller about a man horribly transformed by a voyage into space, directed by Val Guest and based on a TV play by Nigel Kneale, was a hit that got Hammer interested in horror.

The big breakthrough came with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), a huge international success whose period setting and color photography set it apart from earlier versions of the classic novel. Critics also noted a reliance on voluptuous starlets and gruesome shocks to sell the story, when they might have paid more attention to the taut direction of Terence Fisher, the economical scripting of Jimmy Sangster, the handsome art direction of Bernard Robinson, the dynamic scoring of James Bernard, and powerful performances by Peter Cushing as the creator and Christopher Lee as his creation. The same team was back again in 1958 for Dracula (known in the United States as Horror of Dracula), with Lee in the title role and Cushing as Van Helsing. Each of these films spawned a series that would last fifteen years.

The company’s profitability established, Hammer head James Carreras arranged American financing and embarked on a program that made Hammer a byword for horror. More classics were revamped Hammer style, including The Hound of the Baskervilles (1958), The Mummy (1959), and The Phantom of the Opera (1962), and the studio also offered new menaces like The Gorgon (1964) and The Reptile (1966).

In 1960, Taste of Fear (aka Scream of Fear) inaugurated a group of mystery thrillers, and the studio also branched out with swashbucklers like The Scarlet Blade (1963) and epic fantasies like She (1965) and One Million Years B.C. (1966). Stars like Oliver Reed and Raquel Welch were introduced. Yet, gradually, the once-radical Hammer began to seem old-fashioned and repetitive, and its theme of a predatory aristocracy fell out of style. Even innovations like bare bosoms (first exposed in 1970’s The Vampire Lovers) only postponed the inevitable. Hammer’s final feature, To the Devil a Daughter, was released in 1976.