Yes – there is a “Golden Age” of British horror – from the early 60’s through the 70’s studios like Hammer and Amicus and other, independent companies churned out horror and fantasy entertainment for an eager public – producing classics and trash alike. As a genre, British Horror could take on many faces: period monster tales, sadistic adventure yarns, hauntings and ghost stories, slashers and psychos, witches and weirdos. No matter the subject – vampire vixen or clothbound mummy – there was a distinctly British sense of decorum in the face of the grotesque: a literariness of language and unbending propriety that lend these films an edge of seriousness (at least until Ken Russell came along) – making them all the more powerful. Despite a critical backlash of distaste and indignation that would climax in the establishment’s outcry against Michael Powell’s
Peeping Tom – the short heyday of ’57-’74 formed a prolific, profitable and diverse era for the British Horror genre-producing companies. Later, they would become the staple of the late-late shows – strangely familiar and yet blearily half-remembered …and always haunting our subconscious…
Hammer Time
Hammer Films as a studio had already over 60-odd films under its belt before tackling their first period horror film with Terence Fisher’s 1957
The Curse of Frankenstein. Specializing already in adaptations of television and radio programs to the screen – Hammer made a bold step in enticing the public back to the theater and away from their tv sets: by taking those old Universal monster films and giving them the shock of blood-red-color. Critics reviled (“without hesitation…among the half-dozen most repulsive films I’ve encountered” said C.A. Lejeune) and the public ate it up – thus starting a new wave of British horror and fantasy that the studio (and many in it) would become known for. From their home base at Bray Studios Hammer heads Anthony Hinds and James and Michael Carreras built up their close-knit family: directors Terence Fisher (who directed some 28 films for Hammer), Seth Holt, Roy Ward Baker, Freddie Francis; writers Jimmy Sangster, Tudor Gates and John Elder (Anthony Hinds in disguise); composer James Bernard; production designer Bernard Robinson – together they created a world that was true English Gothic. It was a recipe for success: literate, serious minded adaptations of material that already had public recognition; colorful, rich production; and – most of all – a stable of actors who brought to their roles a solemnity and seriousness that defies campiness – even given the strange and sometimes outlandish circumstances of the characters.
Despite the hermetic world of Hammer Films’ productions – the results were anything but homogonous. Even Terence Fisher – who made some 28 films for Hammer – could bring something fresh to each project. And, with his Frankenstein films, we get to see Peter Cushing’s title character grow more bitter, more sadistic and madder with each further tale. Fisher’s
The Revenge of Frankenstein finds the Baron escaped the Guillotine – only to end up (posing as a ‘Dr. Stein’ in a beggar’s hospital) repeating his sins of creation. By now the process has become a ritual of doom for the doctor in which he will undoubtedly fail once again.
Fisher’s
The Stranglers of Bombay is, as well, steeped in ritual – this time that of religious-ritual-murder. In its gritty depiction of a brutal cult of Thugge stranglers’ destruction of the British East India Trading Company – it manages to achieve a fairy-tale like beauty of Good vs. Evil while still being one of Hammer’s most notoriously sadistic films. The success of Hitchcock’s
Psycho prompted Hammer into the more psychological realm of horror (what James Carreras would call their “mini-Hitchcocks”). Seth Holt’s
Scream of Fear being the first and best of these – full of unexpected twists and much earned shocks from a tightly structured script.
Brian Clemens’
Captain Kronos – Vampire Killer was an early 70’s attempt by Hammer to add some youthful zest to its market. The dashing swash-buckling hero is all blond locks and quick to fancy a fetching damsel. Van Helsing never had an eye for the women. Clemens’ previous stint on ‘The Avengers’ television program ensured the film a snappy popish look and pace as well as some wry and heady humor. By ’74 Bruce Lee had exploded kung-fu into the mainstream and Hammer went East for a two-film deal with the legendary Shaw Brothers – making Roy Ward Baker’s horror/kung-fu hybrid
Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and the crime thriller
Shatter (begun by Monte Hellman and finished by Michael Carreras). Although lacking the power of some of the earlier Dracula films (along with lacking Christopher Lee who vowed never to play the Prince of Darkness again)
Legend… still manages some impressive images and the Far East location only adds a further fairy-tale-like aspect. And – where Hammer led others were sure to follow – in their own unique ways…(Ken Russell’s
Lair of the White Worm is both an homage and a send up of the Hammer traditions and themes – curses, rituals, family secrets, blood-sucking ghouls in old English homesteads. And, like he did previously for musicals in
The Boyfriend - he beautifully elucidates the genre’s cinematic splendor)
Monsters, Maniacs, and Multiples
Freddie Frances had made a number of films for Hammer before going on to direct
Tales from the Crypt for Amicus Studios (and much later going on to photograph three David Lynch films). Amicus had a specialty – the omnibus or anthology film: multiple stories of murder and mayhem and the occult interwoven with a connecting story – usually jam packed with an all-star horror cast.
Tales… is based on old E.C. Comics and with Francis’ flair for style and wit – it’s more tongue-in-cheeky than the Hammer films were. Francis’
The Creeping Flesh, however, takes its horror slightly more straight in an old-fashioned monster-movie sort of way with sumptuously colored and atmospheric settings and a fine match up of the Cushing/Lee team. It’s Gothic down to the bones of its slimy ancient skeleton. And – it’s a domestic drama at heart. But the British horror film wasn’t always rooted in monsters, demons, ghouls and ghosts – there were other evil forces at work – like the European ‘art’ film, more lenient censorship, and youth.
Robert Hartford-Davis’
Corruption literally takes a stab at the lifestyles of England’s young swinger-set where sexual freedoms and youth-on-the-lose are the catalysts for the horror that ensues. Cushing’s serious and aging surgeon looks a fish out of water amongst hipsters half his age (including his wife) whose only concern is ‘having a gas’(a similar, jaundiced view of London’s youth-on-the loose is explored in Michael Reeves’ brain-twister
The Sorcerers).
The softcore/horror hybrid of José Ramón Larraz’ deliriously sexy
Vampyres: Daughters of Dracula takes the sexual aspects of the vampire mystique to its bloodlust-orgy limit. The enticing duo of female blood-suckers uses the degenerated mores of sexual freedom to snag their prey. And yet it’s not the victims we feel sorry for – they are, after all, just men out for what they think is an easy lay. Michael Reeves’ short career left but three complete films before his death at age 25 of a sleeping pill overdose (at the time – conflicting stories had him dying in a car accident or falling from a window). In both
The Sorcerers and
The Witchfinder General – his is a bitter, angry view of the world and humanity corrupted by power and helpless against it’s evil – characterized by brutality and man’s inherent cruelty to others.
The Sorcerers turns a kindly elderly couple power-hungry and violence addicted. What at first seems a traditional mad-scientist movie explodes into a mind twisting psychedelic descent into lust for thrills.
In
The Witchfinder General the evil is all encompassing – overwhelming and invulnerable. Vincent Price’s Matthew Hopkins (a real-life witch-hunter) rides across the countryside torturing confessions from and putting to death accused “witches”. Townspeople comply – turn on one another – no one is incorruptible. Even the innocent, loving couple will succumb in the end…
The Witchfinder General – regarded as his most accomplished film – went virtually unnoticed in America when it was released by AIP as
The Conqueror Worm. It was initially thought to be just another in the long line of Price-starred Poe adaptations. It proved to be something quite different.
