In the hallowed halls of Hollywood, there are only a handful of movie studios whose name bears the same stamp of quality – or at least, consistency – that is usually reserved for the filmmakers who work there. Pixar, Marvel Studios, Studio Ghibli and even Troma are members of this very select club. And so is Hammer, whose prolific output of colorful, sexy, violent supernatural thrillers are better known as “Hammer Horror.”
Hammer Horror dominated the screen for almost two decades in the middle of the century, elevating Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing into genre icons and dazzling audiences with bright red blood, busty ladies and bizarre reimaginings of classic monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy, when they weren’t experimenting with new breeds of thrillers and genre mash-ups that combined classic monsters with kung fu and westerns.
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Although Hammer Horror laid dormant for the latter part of the 20th Century, they made a dramatic return in the 21st with popular supernatural thrillers like The Woman in Black, the sequel to which – The Woman in Black 2 Angel of Death – opens this Friday. So we figured this was as good a time as any to highlight the studio’s legendary output on Best Movie Ever, challenging CraveOnline’s film critics William Bibbiani, Witney Seibold and Brian Formo to decide, individually, which movie represents the best that Hammer Horror had to offer.
Read on to discover what each film critic picked, and scroll down to the bottom of the page to vote for your own Hammer Horror favorites. And come back every Wednesday for yet another installment of CraveOnline’s Best Movie Ever.
Witney Seibold’s Pick: Horror of Dracula (1958)
I have to admit: Hammer Horror is not my area of expertise. I know a bit about the history of the studio, and I am familiar with the studios pervading aesthetic thrust, but of the 100-or-so of films the studio has made, I have only seen about a dozen.
And while my sampling may not be too large, I feel like I have a handle on all things Hammer because I have seen 1958’s gloriously lurid horror melodrama Horror of Dracula. Indeed, I have seen all the Hammer Dracula films, which I watched in rapid succession, and find most of them to be incredibly entertaining, even when they’re being incredibly stupid. By the time we get to Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires – that’s the kung-fu Dracula film for the layman – we’re having too much fun to care about quality. But the golden standard is still the film that kicked off the studio into horror in a big way, and that is Horror of Dracula.
Imagine if Douglas Sirk made a horror film, and you might see where this film is coming from. Gloriously technicolored, over-the-top, and very, very British, Horror of Dracula is the classic Bram Stoker tale, told in that wonderfully chintzy, but somehow still amazingly effective, 1950s milieu. It also doesn’t hurt that you have such classy actors like Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, and the legendary Christopher Lee as Count Dracula. Often horror can be scarier the less you see, and while Horror of Dracula isn’t as bloody as later films, it still feels deliciously lurid and subversive, especially when you consider the time and place it came from. I love it, and it’s the best Hammer Horror film.
Brian Formo’s Pick: Paranoiac (1963)
In the 1960s, Hammer Films was a reactionary production company. Unsure of the direction that horror was going, Hammer lifted established terrors from their 1930s coffins for a series of remakes (such as multiple Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, and Dr. Jekyll films), and, simultaneously, they released a bunch of Psycho and Les Diaboliques knockoffs. So, in the spirit of Hammer carbon copies, I’m going to choose Freddie Francis’ Paranoiac as the Best Hammer Horror Film Ever.
What does Paranoiac hold up to the mirror? Why, Francis’ own fantastic photography from The Innocents. Francis lensed Jack Clayton’s atmospheric, supremely recommendable, shadows-and-mirrors adaptation of Henry James’ gothic ghost story The Turn of the Screw in 1961 (retitled The Innocents). After his landmark achievement as the director of photography on that film – in which the movement of the camera truly sets up all the scares – Francis moved to directing his own films. And Paranoiac is the best film he directed, before he returned to the director of photography role for the likes of David Lynch (Elephant Man, Dune, The Straight Story) and Martin Scorsese (Cape Fear).
Similar to The Innocents, Francis shades out the edges of the frame which makes every image appear more dreamlike. And Francis’ attention to shadows heightens both climactic fires, and accentuated hints at incest in the home.
So what is Paranoiac and why am I only focusing on how it looks? Because the plot is a series of red herrings. The only way the film isn’t totally ludicrous is due to Francis’ photography (aided by Arthur Grant). A long lost brother (Alexander Davion) arrives back at the family mansion, where it seems that both the sister (Janette Scott) and aunt (Sheila Burrell) – hell, maybe even the mummy in the basement – are under the perverse sexual spell of Simon Ashby (Oliver Reed). And with Oliver Reed in full-on Oliver Reed smolder, you know that the mystery of who’s actually diddling who (and whose body is in the basement?) is gonna be fun. Those two components: controlled photography and a smoldering Reed make Paranoiac the most handsome Hammer Film. (With apologies to Christopher Lee.)
William Bibbiani’s Pick: Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974)
While I love many a Hammer Horror film, with their poster paint blood, heaving bosoms and sometimes cheesy storylines, I feel as though many of the classics in the canon bleed together. The many Dracula sequels have all seemingly congealed together into one elongated mega-sequel, and the many Frankensteins and Mummies are all hard to tell apart in my memory as well. The only films that remain vivid after all these years are the original Horror of Dracula (the film that started it all), the lesbian-themed Karnstein Trilogy (The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil) and Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter. And alas, Horror of Dracula has more quality atmosphere than quality storytelling, and The Karnstein Trilogy cannot be taken as a whole.
So let’s talk about Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, the Hammer Horror film that could best be described as FUCKING AWESOME. The film stars Horst Jansen as a swashbuckling vampire hunter, wielding samurai sword (naturally), who travels medieval England seducing accused witches (Carolyn Munro, rawr) and saving villages from different breeds of nosferatu. In the world of Captain Kronos, no two vampires are alike. Some suck blood, some drain the youth from their victims. Some can be killed by sunlight, others by hanging, and the one in this movie can only be dispatched with one of the best movie sword fights. Period.
Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter has the Hammer Horror atmosphere but only as a backdrop for slick heroism. The film was directed by Brian Clemens, best known for his work on the inventive TV series “The Avengers,” and that sense of humor and pulp adventure transitions smartly to Captain Kronos. It was intended to be the start of a franchise but Hammer fell on hard times shortly after the release, and all this groundwork was laid for nothing. But I hold out hope that one day Hammer will realize what a great property it has on its hands and finally green light a big budget reboot, or a bitchin’ TV series on BBC. I’ll be happy either way.
