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Chapter 6 returns to industry, and charts the re-emergence of Hammer Films, which, after thirty years, finally went back into film production in the 2000s. Drawing from primary sources such as the industry trade press and interviews, the chapter reflects on Hammer’s recent history, considering briefly the tumultuous 1980s and 1990s, before assessing the company’s market positioning between its re-launch in 2007 with the web serial Beyond the Rave (Matthias Hoene, 2008), through its theatrical success with the blockbuster The Woman in Black in 2012, up until the release of its lower-budgeted ghost story, The Quiet Ones (John Pogue) in 2014. Ultimately, taking into account Hammer’s prominence in much discourse around classic British horror, I use its millennial incarnation to assess its relevance (or not) to the identity of British horror in the twenty-first century.

This chapter discusses how the production history of Hammer Films is illustrative of the complexities of the British film industry, which has often struggled to compete with Hollywood. Though Hammer had a difficult start, it flourished into an internationally renowned horror brand. However, even the success of Hammer's horrors wore thin eventually. Its demise as a film production house in the 1970s, short-lived shift to television in the 1980s, and rebirth in the 2000s expresses the turbulent nature of British film production. The history of Hammer's production practices also raises interesting questions about what constitutes a 'British film industry', for like many studios its success has relied heavily on American backing and distribution.

This chapter provides an overview of Hammer Films. When Enrique Carreras and Will Hinds (stage name: Will Hammer) formed the distribution company Exclusive Films in 1935, they had no plans to become horror film producers. After a wartime hiatus, in 1947 they re-established their small independent production company Hammer Films, bringing their sons James Carreras and Anthony Hinds on board. In the immediate post-war period, it was inconceivable to consider a slate of horror films. In these early years, Hammer adapted renowned radio plays, mostly crime dramas, for the screen, tapping into pre-established markets. In 1951, Hammer moved into a large Gothic house in Bray, Berkshire, to save on production costs. With the introduction of the new X certificate, and the popularity of their science-fiction films, they soon turned to Gothic literature for inspiration.

This chapter describes how Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) set a new precedent for horror which eventually posed a serious threat to Hammer Films. It was set in modern times and featured a human killer. While a spate of companies created Hammer imitations, fantasy horror was gradually to be replaced by a gritty, modern variation. Hammer tried several strategies to compete with the emerging modern horror style, but sadly failed as they gradually lost American backing. These techniques can be seen in The Devil Rides Out (1968), which gives horror a human face with an occult setting in the 1920s; Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) set in contemporary London and Hammer's first (and only) film to focus on a group of modern teenagers; and finally The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a transnational production which hybridises the then-popular kung fu craze with classic Hammer horror.

This chapter evaluates the British horror film industry. Given the country's input in the success of the Hollywood horror films of the 1930s, in terms of source material as well as technicians and actors, horror film production in Britain was remarkably slow to emerge. This was due in no small part to the stringent censorship rules of the British Board of Film Censorship/Classification (BBFC), who did their best to dissuade British studios from making such films. The chapter investigates how one studio took up the reins of the genre and went on to dominate it for almost two decades. Matched only by the golden age of Universal in the 1930s and 1940s, Hammer Films produced some of the genre's most iconic images and characters through dozens of productions, while breaking box-office records around the world. The chapter looks at Terence Fisher's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), the company's first foray into the genre, one which would lay the foundations for their success and set the template for the English Gothic horror film as it flourished into the 1960s and 1970s.

This chapter examines the relationship between Hammer Films and British cinema. The history of British cinema has been characterised by a strong dedication to realism, in its many forms. From the documentaries of the 1930s with a focus on social responsibility to the gritty kitchen sink dramas of the 1960s, and even the naturalistic aesthetic of television police dramas, the British moving-image industries have a strong heritage of realism. If this is the case, Hammer horror, despite its international fame as a specifically British brand of filmmaking, does not seem characteristic of British national cinema at all. On one hand, Hammer's horrors are clearly fantastical; on the other hand, they amalgamate infrequent and abrupt moments of gore with a 'neat unpretentious realism'. Moreover, the films were lambasted in the press for not exhibiting 'good taste' or restraint. The chapter then assesses to what extent Hammer horror can be understood as British.

This concluding chapter explains that Hammer Films is a true icon of cinema, not only in Britain, but internationally. While the great 'family' studio of the past has gone, Hammer CEO Simon Oakes states that he and his team 'have a family growing here, that's just starting', and there are clearly thematic repetitions across the twenty-first century oeuvre. However, while the old films stuck to very particular conventions, eventually to the point of unoriginality for the sake of profit, Oakes's team have produced a series of individually distinct films, aside from their generic similarity. These new Hammer horrors may not yet have attained the same cult status, and they are clearly products of the contemporary globalised industry, but this certainly does not make them lesser films, and in The Woman in Black (2012) the company scored a bona fide international hit. With much larger budgets, Hammer is now able to indulge in more sophisticated projects.

This chapter focuses on Terence Fisher, Hammer Films' most celebrated director. Fisher directed twenty-eight Hammer films between 1952 and 1974 and vehemently refused to be considered an auteur for his work at the studio. Despite his distaste for the idea, and the disputed relevance of auteur theory, auteurism offers a useful framework for interrogating the impact of this particular director within a studio which was renowned for its collaborative family-like team. The foregrounding of moral ambiguity and the human condition, and panache for suspenseful editing distinguish Fisher's work from that of many of Hammer's other directors. While some of his techniques were adopted in later films, Fisher was much responsible for creating this specific, colourful style of Gothic film-making. While Fisher worked as part of a close-knit collaborative, his style was clearly recognised by Anthony Hinds as appropriate for the Hammer brand and his involvement with the studio identifies him as one of the most important directors in the history of British horror.

This chapter highlights the legacy of The Mummy (1932). Ever since the 1930s, the plot elements and iconography of the film have been re-used, re-interpreted, and re-worked in myriad forms. Universal Pictures' follow-ups to The Mummy began eight years after the original film came out, by which time the studio's horror output had lost some of its spark from the early half of the 1930s. First came The Mummy's Hand in 1940, then The Mummy's Tomb in 1942 and The Mummy's Ghost and The Mummy's Curse in 1944. Eventually, Britain's Hammer Films obtained full remake rights to the Universal horror filmography. The chapter then looks at other mummy films made outside Universal and Hammer. In the era of franchise blockbusters, The Mummy remains a viable cinematic brand. While the original Universal Mummy series ended in 1955 and the Hammer revival in 1971, the 1990s saw Universal attempt to recreate The Mummy for a new generation.

This chapter assesses how the success of The Quatermass Xperiment (1953), despite, or because of its X rating, enabled Hammer Films to test the British Board of Film Censors' (BBFC) boundaries of taste. Correspondence between the censor and Hammer illustrate the studio's desire to shock audiences, while still ensuring films received a certificate. Their move into colour enhanced the shock appeal and distinguished Hammer's works from earlier cinematic reincarnations of gothic characters. The chapter presents readings of X the Unknown (1956) and The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), considering the impact of the X certificate and colour on production. It examines how these two films represent a transitional period in the studio's history, establishing many of the tropes that would appear in the studio's classic films.

Peter Collinson's The Penthouse (1967), a key British noir film of the 1960s, followed in the tradition of Joseph Losey's more restrained dramas of claustrophobic domesticity gone horribly wrong in The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). London in the early 1960s was typically depicted as a zone of carefree abandon in such films as Richard Lester's Help! (1965), A Hard Day's Night (1964), and his sex comedy The Knack...and How to Get It (1965). But beneath the gloss and the electricity of the era, an undercurrent was readily detectable. Pop stardom proved to be utterly transient, and as drugs and disillusion set in, the mood became more somber. Perhaps the most nihilist film of the 1960s British new wave is Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup. No consideration of film noir in the 1960s would be complete without a few thoughts on Hammer Films, most famous for their color gothic horror films, many directed by Terence Fisher.

This chapter illustrates the antecedents of Dead of Night and charts its line of influence. In many respects, Dead of Night was more a cinematic pinnacle of a storytelling tradition than a forebear of a new form. Fundamentally, the frame narrative is a device that dates back to some of the earliest known examples of recorded storytelling, which were frequently collections of even earlier tales originating in oral storytelling cultures. Beyond these early ancestral highpoints of the frame story form, there are more direct forerunners to Dead of Night to be found in nineteenth-century literature, particularly Victorian Gothic literature. The chapter then looks at the anthology format. During the decade after Dead of Night, British cinema may have been dark at times — there were numerous British noir films made in that period, several of which were produced by Ealing Studios — but it rarely delivered full-blown scares. It would take Hammer Films' move into the horror genre for this to recommence.

A brief historical overview of the discourses by which in Britain, until the late 1990s, popular genres were excluded from accounts of national cinemas, and of the gradual but very slow recognition, from the late 1990s, of these genres as worthy objects of film studies.