31 Days of Horror: Hammer Films’ Icons of Horror

Posted by Kevin Carr (kevin@filmschoolrejects.com) on October 22, 2008

The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964), Scream of Fear (1961), The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) and The Gorgon (1964)

Synopsis: From the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, Britain’s Hammer Films made an indelible mark on the landscape of horror movies. These films bridged the gap between the rather tame films of the 40s and 50s to the more visceral, violent faire of the 1970s and beyond. They launched the careers of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as icons of the horror genre, and they introduced a fair amount of blood and sex (well, a fair amount for the 60s) to the traditional monster movies that Universal pioneered twenty years prior. For this Halloween, Columbia Pictures (who owns the American distribution rights to a handful of these films) have released a new DVD that includes four titles from the Hammer library.

Killer Scene: For the violence fan, this would have to be the relatively graphic decapitation depicted at the end of The Gorgon. For the sex fan, you might like the reserved but still oddly arousing belly-dance sequence from The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll.

KILLSHEET

Violence: By today’s standards, the violence is pretty low-key. There’s nothing in these films that would bother a censor scheduling the films for a mid-day programming block on a Saturday. However, during their time, the Hammer films were pretty shocking. Paint-red blood flowed freely, especially in the traditional monster flicks . For the films in this collection, you get to see stabbings and stranglings with the Mummy, rape and murder with Dr. Jekyll and people turning into stone in The Gorgon. Scream of Fear has very soft violence but is a bit unnerving with how cavalierly they throw people off cliffs.

Sex: Like the violence of the 1960s, the Hammer films were pretty tawdry for the Ozzie and Harriet crowd. It was not uncommon to see a sexy woman’s naked back, which might even include the swell of her breast. These films also were not shy in presenting the uglier side of sex. In particular, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll is pretty daring with its depiction of the London’s sexual underground.

Scares: Yeah, these films are British, so I wouldn’t expect anything too scary. They relied more on suspense and atmosphere, much of which can be lost in the pastel Technicolor of the day and the locations which often looked like built sets.

Final Thoughts: The Hammer Films are often lost on the new generation of horror movie fans. However, they were crucial in the development of the modern horror genre. Where would we be without Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing? This studio kept the grand tradition of monster movies alive long after Universal Studios closed up shop on these characters. They lose a bit of their shine since many of them are almost half a century old, but they are historically significant and often quite decent when given a chance. The four films in the Icons of Horror DVD set are worth checking out, as are some of the movies not included in this collection like the Dracula films, the Frankenstein films (both series available through Warner Home Video) and The Curse of the Werewolf (available through Universal).

What’s your favorite Hammer horror film?

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