When I was a teen and I started getting into horror movies (a little late, being the scaredy cat I was), a large chunk of the movies I could easily lay my hands on were Hammer horror movies. “The Reptile”, “Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter”, and, of course, “Dracula”. That’s why the Hammer horror movies have a very special place in my heart even today.
Why were the Hammer movies so easy to get? Well, by the time I got into horror movies, VCRs were around and private TV stations were coming to Germany. Old movies, like the 1960s and 1970s Hammer movies weren’t too expensive to get, so they often were put up for late-night features at those private stations. Since I’ve always been very good at programming a VCR, I could tape the movies at night and then watch them later. I also saw a lot of AIP movies (including the two Dr. Phibes ones or the wonderful horror comedy called “The Raven”) and other horror movies from that period. Yet, Hammer stood out for me.
I didn’t quite realize why then, but was reminded of it when I recently watched a YouTube video about Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow” which mentioned that this movie actually used an aesthetic derived from Hammer horror: muted colours for everything but the overly bright and overly red blood.
I will be honest - even when I was a teen, Hammer movies usually didn’t scare me too much. While blood and gore (and sex) featured in them as heavily as was allowed at the time of their making, the mid- to late eighties were certainly a time when people were used to more of both. What stuck with me, however, was the acting. The movies had many good actors in them - quite often from before a time when those actors had gotten really famous - and those actors carried roles which would have been weak when played with less skill.
Recently, I added to my rather small Hammer DVD collection. I had the first and the fifth official “Dracula” movie, “Captain Kronos”, and “Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb” (an interesting version of Bram Stoker’s “The Jewel of Seven Stars”). I added a DVD collection with the first three “Dracula” movies (there are more, but not all of them are officially considered to be part of the series these days) and two DVDs with the fourth and sixth movie. The sixth one is still ‘18+’ here in Germany, but after watching it, I couldn’t say why.
Of course, all of the movies are very much ‘in name only’ (safe for Captain Kronos - there is no book version of that one around). That was what Hammer was all about. People would have fainted from shock, had they ever made a movie with a famous book’s name in the title and actually followed the story from the book. If you watched a Hammer version of Dracula or Frankenstein or another story that was famous, you didn’t expect for it to be close to the original in any way. You expected blood, gore, and as many bare bosoms as they could fit into it.
When it comes to “Captain Kronos”, certainly one of the lesser-known vampire movies Hammer made, I’m still sad it wasn’t enough of a success to become another series - the 2004 comic mini-series based on it was great and there was a lot of space for more vampire hunting by Captain Kronos (who, in addition, was played by a German actor of some renown over here). Captain Kronos would have been the first original series made by Hammer - but it wasn’t to be.
“Dracula”, on the other hand, was one of the big draws when it came to Hammer Films. They made an especially good choice with two actors chosen for the first movie: Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Professor Van Helsing (who was far more badass in the Hammer version, too). Lee read up on the character he was supposed to play and, despite the movie being nothing like the book, he managed to understand the character and to give it a vivacity which befits a vampire (how thirsty for life and the lovely throats of women do you have to be to get out of your coffin every night?). Lee played Dracula as an un-dead man who knew about his influence on women and who used it ruthlessly for his own wants and needs. One look at him, one touch of his hand, and the woman was completely under his thrall. Women only - but imagine having Dracula go for both men and women in the 1960s…
Lee became synonymous with Dracula for a lot of movie-goers, which wasn’t always pleasant for him. Being typecast is not a good thing for any actor and Lee was capable of a lot more than playing the vampire count. Yet, he also was so much Dracula in people’s minds that Hammer would pay him well for reprising the role, realizing that their Dracula movies only worked out successfully with him in that role. It would, however, be until the jump into the future (the then-present day) that he’d be reunited with Peter Cushing again, who would then play his opponent for two more movies, playing a descendant of the original Van Helsing.
Are the Hammer movies cheesy by today’s standards? Yes, they are. They’re also still fun to watch, though. After receiving my DVDs recently, I spent two evenings re-watching the movies and was well-entertained. Being able to look at the surroundings, the costumes, the sets as well as the story, I found that the Hammer style (muted colours for everything but the blood) actually makes a lot of sense. The blood is unnaturally red - it doesn’t look like blood, once you think about it. Yet, it jumps out at you with every bite of Dracula, with every look at his blood-smeared mouth, at the litres of blood streaming from the lesser vampires’ (usually women’s) chests when they get impaled while giving a very amusing ‘orgasm’ impression.
Then there’s the gore factor. Considering the technology available at the time - only practical effects, since CGI was nothing more than a producer’s dream then -, the death scenes of Dracula especially were impressive. As the main villain of the stories, Dracula never was simply impaled (until the beginning of “Dracula A.D. 1972”, that is, when it’s not his final end); he was forced into sunlight, drowned under ice, hit by lightning and burned, and other unpleasant things. His skin and flesh would then peel from the body as he slowly was turned into a mere skeleton and, finally, into a heap of ashes which would, some way or other, be resurrected later. It looks rather realistic, even by modern standards.
When you find yourself with some time on your hands and can catch a Hammer movie on TV or find a cheap DVD or video download (YouTube carries quite some of the movies, I think), give them a chance. They might not outright scare you, but they’ll definitely keep you entertained.
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