The newspapers and other media have been full this week have been full of items proclaiming that Hammer Films Ltd., the British Studio responsible for dozens of gothic horror classics, has been reborn. Sadly, this is, not to put to fine a point on it, abject bollocks.
Hammer is dead, gone, caput, and over with. It wasn't so much a studio,as a genre. Many of it's competitors films also get popularly lumped in the category Hammer Horror. The Independent claimed that Donald Sutherland was a stalwart - In fact he never appeared in any of their films, although he was in DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORROR, made by Amicus. The rest of the film world copied the Hammer style, leading to a glut of American movies starring Vincent Price and Italian films with Barbara Steele. They permeated into the far East, where Hammer made two co-productions. Hammer would even have entered Bollywood had changes to the Indian currency laws not scuppered 1975's proposed Peter Cushing starrer KALI: DEATH BRIDE OF DRACULA.
There is quite a history behind this new palava. The genre that Hammer created and that dominated Horror for twenty years was killed by THE EXORCIST and will never return. I can remember getting quite excited, years ago, when publicity seeking Hammer-owner of the time Roy Skeggs announced a raft of new films, including a Richard Donner remake of THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE. Actually, Skeggs, a former Production Manager turned Cinematic Arthur Daley, had no money to make any films and had planted the story to try and raise some. He failed. Hammer made all it's money in the days of Sir James Carreras, a greedy industrialist who's final act was to rip-off his own son, Micheal, by selling him the failing studio. Micheal Carreras subsequently ran it into the ground, then Skeggs seized control and lived comfortably off the back catalogue for over 20 years. Now Charles Saatchi is supposedly backing the new supremo, Terry Illot and the British public are being fed a whole new raft of nonsense about remakes and new projects.
It will never happen. Hammer films are classics, as indeed are many of the horror films of that era. They will generate money in perpetuity. This is why Hammer has been bought. Any new film would be highly expensive, and, it's safe to assume, more likely to reflect the tastes of present-day audiences. The recent THE MUMMY, although based on the Universal original rather than Hammer's remake, is probably as close as we're going to get to the rebirth of the Hammer aesthetic. And there's no way that shite Americanised action movies would either seek or deserve the Hammer name.
Still, I could be wrong. DRACULA KNOWS WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER anyone?
Chris Denton.
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