Saturday, April 28, 2012

A History of Horrors: the Rise and Fall of the House of Hammer (2009), Denis Miekle.

James Carreras, Peter Cushing and William Hinds goofing around at the British Premiere of The Curse of Frankenstein on May 2, 1957.

A small post-war British film company manages to wrestle properties like Dracula and Frankenstein out of the hands of American goliath Universal Studios - what a great, still-relevant story in today's world of bloated, CGI-driven and completely dull blockbusters consisting of nothing but sequels, prequels, re-releases and remakes.  I keep wondering when the next Hammer-type evolutionary upstart is going to start making really fun junk that will draw moviegoers away from such not very tantalizing 2012 summer fare as a Matt Damon-less Bourne movie or yet another Spiderman.

Having found Denis Meikle's Vincent Price: The Art of Fear (2003) insightful and clever, I was looking forward to this history of the Hammer film company.  A History of Horrors tackles a larger cast of characters and a longer timeline but somehow Meikle's tone, one of constant disappointment, makes this book less enjoyable.  Appreciative of Peter Cushing (though he wags a finger at disappointing performances), Meikle does not seem to be much of a Christopher Lee fan.  He acknowledges Lee's contributions to the smash hit Horror of Dracula (1958) but reveals little sympathy for the actor's efforts to find more challenging roles beyond the caped seducer.  While he escaped some of the subsequent Hammer Draculas, Lee eventually played the character ad nauseum right up to Hammer's dying days.   

Meikle also casts a joyless eye at failed makeup efforts (I found counting these instances entertaining), from the distinctively un-Karloffian Frankenstein "resembling nothing more than the victim of a road accident," to the lacklustre appearance of Anton Diffring in the film The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) wherein a contemporary critic is quoted as saying "the Hammer make-up man missed a stupendous chance."  This is echoed in observations about costuming efforts for The Gorgon (1964) "The Gorgon head is a construct of stupefying ineptitude," Meikle writes.  "Roy Ashton's mask (with the help from Richard Mills on this occasion) contributes little enough to the mood, but the wig is worse than useless, showing all too clearly exactly what it was composed of:  toy snakes." Hammer's distinctive use of colour is lost on the reader (at least in the softcover version I had) because there are no colour plates within the book - surely a misstep.  I caught Quatermass and the Pit (1967) recently on TV and found the colour even in this lesser Hammer effort quite stunning; (Meikle calls this film "a Technicolor travesty"). 

Meikle must be credited for admirably documenting the rise of Hammer, its blood and guts beginnings and then "t-and-a" phase and final decline.  The book draws on invaluable conversations with those involved during the Hammer heyday as well as the Hammer archive.  But the overall lack of enthusiasm or appreciation even of campy touches (which can be very entertaining, at least in retrospect) does the history a slight disservice.

Variety Club dinner showing Christopher Lee and his gorgeous wife Birgit (L), as well as James Carreras (centre, seated), and other Hammer execs.

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