HAMMER HORROR: THE MOVIE FANS HAVE THEIR SAY by Ian Carroll
I have been a fan of the horror genre since I was three years old, which means my fandom stretches back almost forty years at this point. I have watched a whole lot of horror movies over the decades... but somehow, the genre movies put out by Hammer have largely remained in my blind spot. Hammer Films had already been around for several years by the time 1955 rolled around – in fact, the company was founded in 1935, but it took an eleven year hiatus along the way to the ‘50s. But the sci-fi horror film The Quatermass Xperiment was the company’s first major international success and the beginning of Hammer starting to build toward becoming one of the most popular genre companies of all time. And despite their popularity, I haven’t seen many of their movies. Recently, I’ve been looking to fill this gap in my horror knowledge... and I figured I should have a book at hand to help me along the way.
The book I chose as my guide was Hammer Horror: The Movie Fans Have Their Say, which is basically like going through multiple tabs of a site like IMDb. It goes through Hammer’s genre movies in the order they were released, and there’s a synopsis provided for each one of them. These synopses aren’t always the most well written and sometimes they can be hard to follow, but they are there nonetheless. Then, following the synopsis, we get to read opinions on the movie that were sent in by Hammer fans (with author Ian Carroll also giving his thoughts on the movies). Some of the comments don’t bring much to the table, while others are interesting “film appreciation” write-ups that dig into the movie, with the fan(s) sharing their history with the film and the memories they associate with it.
Although the name of the book is Hammer Horror, it doesn’t stick strictly to the horror movies Hammer put out. Some of the thrillers are included, and so are a few of their dinosaur / caveman adventure films.
The movies covered in the book are The Quatermass Xperiment, X the Unknown, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Abominable Snowman, Quatermass II, Dracula, The Snorkel, The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Mummy, The Man Who Could Cheat Death, The Stranglers of Bombay, Brides of Dracula, Never Take Sweets from a Stranger, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, The Curse of the Werewolf, The Shadow of the Cat, The Taste of Fear, Captain Clegg, The Phantom of the Opera, The Damned, Kiss of the Vampire, The Old Dark House, The Evil of Frankenstein, The Gorgon, Nightmare, The Nanny, She, One Million Years B.C., Dracula: Prince of Darkness, The Plague of the Zombies, Rasputin: The Mad Monk, The Reptile, Frankenstein Created Woman, The Mummy’s Shroud, Quatermass and the Pit, The Viking Queen, Prehistoric Women, The Devil Rides Out, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, The Lost Continent, The Vengeance of She, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Moon Zero Two, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Crescendo, Scars of Dracula, Horror of Frankenstein, The Vampire Lovers, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Vampire Circus, Countess Dracula, Lust for a Vampire, Creatures the World Forgot, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, Twins of Evil, Hands of the Ripper, Demons of the Mind, Dracula A.D. 1972, Fear in the Night, Straight on Till Morning, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, and To the Devil a Daughter.
The book wraps up with chapters dedicated to comments sent in from fans around the world that aren’t focused on a specific movie – and this might be the most interesting segment for established fans of Hammer. For someone who doesn’t know much about Hammer, I found it interesting and helpful to have information on the movies gathered together in one place, in chronological order.
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