British Horror Cinema.

Hammer Studios influence on the British Horror Genre.

Hammer Studios is said to have defined the horror genre. The studio was founded back in 1934 by actor and theatre entrepreneur William Hinds and owner of film distribution company Exclusive Films, Enrique Carreras. The company didn’t thrive through the 30’s and 40’s until after World War II in 1947 when the sons of the founders, James Carreras and Anthony Hinds, had taken over and there was a growing demand for British-produced supporting movies. The big hits of the studios didn’t come until the mid-1950’s when the company produced The Quatermass Xperiment (1955, Val Guest) and with the success of it the studio switched focus from struggling crime thriller pictures of the early fifties to horror.

The genre truly flourished in Britain with the rest of the Quatermass triliogy, X the Unknown (1956) and Quatermass 2 (1957), and other marking films like, Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958). The films both stared the same person, Christopher Lee, who played the ‘Creature’ in The Curse of Frankenstein and ‘Count Dracula’ the following year in Dracula and went on to play the well-known character six more times for the studio and appeared in numerous other productions. Peter Cushing played Baron Victor Frankenstein in The Curse of Frankenstein, a role he would play five times for Hammer Studios. The two actors became synonymous names for the company. 

One of these films was, of course, one of the many defining and previously mentioned Dracula (1958, Terence Fisher). This was a story many had made in the past, but Hammer Studios thrived off with its lurid colour, charismatic performances and was just different from the others. It displayed many conventions expected to be seen in a horror film like one of the most common ones of sound/music, fear of the unknown and death. The film was the first ‘vampire’ movie to be in colour and show many of the now very well-known features to vampires like fangs and oozing blood from a bite.  

The film broke the mould of the ‘typical’ Dracula and Van Helsing that was set by its ancestors. Dracula was now young, charming and well-spoken rather than a hypnotic stare, stylised movements and thick accent. Van Hesing wasn’t the elderly savant typified Edward van Sloan in 1931, he was younger and more dynamic, fiercely intelligent and physically capable. The new and reinvented characters were best shown through the ‘final fight’ scene. 

Hammer Studios had influenced the British Horror Genre by giving it a new meaning and updating it. They brought in actors that became the faces of well-known characters and directors that made such successful films. Although their ‘gothic horror’ reign lasted until the 1970’s they still left a mark in history and influenced other British Horror films in the modern day and even produced them. They made their return to features alongside Hollywood with Let Me In (2012, Matt Reeves) which was a literary adaptation and they went on to make another adaptation, The Woman in Black (2012, James Watkins) and in 2014 made The Quiet Ones.