Howard Maxford - Hammer Complete: The Films, the Personnel, the Company

Hammer Complete

Hammer Complete

The Films, the Personnel, the Company

Howard Maxford

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Je f ferson, North Carolina

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Names: Maxford, Howard, author.

Title: Hammer complete : the films, the personnel, the company / Howard Maxford.

Description: Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017046834 | ISBN 9781476670072 (illustrated case : acid free paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Hammer Film ProductionsEncyclopedias.

Classification: LCC PN1999.H3 M37 2018 | DDC 791.43/6164dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046834

British Library cataloguing data are available

ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-7007-2

ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-2914-8

2019 Howard Maxford. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover: Veronica Carlson and Christopher Lee in the 1968 film Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (Warner Bros./Photofest)

Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640

www.mcfarlandpub.com

For my friend and kindred spirit Ian Yeoman, the first person with whom I ever discussed Hammer way back when

Just going to the studio each morning was the highest of highs!

Michael Carreras, quoted in Dennis Meikle, A History of Horrors (Scarecrow, 1996), p. 295

Becoming part of Hammer Films was like being welcomed into a family. I was very aware of it as an institution and was honored to join the ranks of luminaries who had made their mark there.

Ingrid Pitt, Lifes a Scream (Heinemann, 1999), p. 208

I say this with as much modesty as possibleI made Hammer as much as Hammer made me.

Christopher Lee, quoted in Tom Johnson and Mark A. Miller, The Christopher Lee Filmography (McFarland, 2004), p. 64

Theyre very lurid, and very gutsy. Theres a certain emotional simplicity to them which is great.

Tim Burton, quoted in Mark Salisbury, ed., Burton on Burton (Faber, 2006), p. 170

Its all rather like a Hammer film, isnt it?

Ian McShane (as Anthony), The Last of Sheila (1973)

Table of Contents

Ive harmed nobodyjust robbed a few graves.

Baron Frankenstein, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

I am Dracula and I welcome you to my house.

Count Dracula, Dracula (1958)

I am She who must be obeyed.Ayesha, She (1965)

I shall not be back. But something will. Tonight.

Mocata, The Devil Rides Out (1968)

I hate you, Butler!Inspector Blake, Mutiny on the Buses (1972)

My Life with HammerA Rather Rambling Introduction *

* Warning: Contains shameless name-dropping that may be injurious to your health.

If youre a Hammer fan, you tend to remember the first horror film you ever saw by the studio. For me it was a late night screening of DraculaPrince of Darkness when I was just twelve years old (for the record, the time was 11:55 p.m., the date Saturday 14 August 1976, the channel BBC2). After a day of pleading, my parentsmuch to my amazementfinally relented and allowed me to stay up to watch the film on my own. So, surrounded by cushions for protection, I settled down on the sofa with a cer tain degree of trepidationand was immediately hooked, despite the fact that it was a pan and scan print watched on our old black and white telly. What drew me in more than anything was the films atmosphere, which was unlike any other I had encountered. I loved the sense of foreboding as the camera slowly crept about the castle corridorsand was simply astounded by the Counts bloody resurrection in the basement. And if youd told me then that later in life I would get to interview the films star and screenwriter, and befriend its composer, I would have stared at you in utter bewilderment as to how such encounters might come to pass.

After that fateful night, I kept an eye out for the name Hammer, and found that many of their other films also had that same otherworldly Grimms fairytale for adults quality, and did my best to catch them whenever they appeared on the box. This of course necessitated more begging and pleading to my parents until the age of thirteen, when they finally relented to my burgeoning passion. This had been further encouraged with the purchase from W.H. Smith (care of birthday money) of A Pictorial History of Horror Movies by Denis Gifford, and though he didnt seem to have much time for Hammer himself, his enthusiasm for the black and white classics of the thirties and forties spurred me on to a fuller exploration of the horror genre, somewhat conveniently aided and abetted by the showing of a series of horror double bills on BBC2 every Saturday night. This took in all the classic Universal Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy and Wolfman films, as well as several Hammers ( The Brides of Dracula , The Kiss of the Vampire , The Plague of the Zombies , The Reptile ), and for those who remember it, the season is recalled with great nostalgia and affection to this day.

Over the following years, my hunger for all things horrific also led to an interest in Italian horror and splatter films, both at the cinema and, thanks to its wider availability in the early-eighties, on home video. But it was always to Hammer that I was most drawn. As a teenager, I recall seeing schoolmates in the playground with bubble gum trading cards featuring scenes from the films, whilst one day, much to everyones fascination, someone brought in a copy of something called Monster Mag , the gory full-color pictures in which just astonished us (how did they get away printing such stuff, we wondered?). Yet, other than their shocks and gore, no one discussed the films themselves with any degree of seriousness. Until, that is, I joined my local amateur dramatic society, The Garrick in Stockport.

Here I met a chap called Ian Yeoman who, I discovered, also had a similar liking for movies in general and Hammer in particular. Although about fifteen years older than me, Ian spoke with like-minded enthusiasm, and we had many chats about the eye-catching sets, atmospheric photography and dramatic music to be found in Hammers films, and through him I became better acquainted with the behind the scenes folk responsible for their making. Consequently, names such as Terence Fisher, James Bernard, Jack Asher and Bernard Robinson soon became very familiar. Ian was a hairdresser by profession, and used his skills to great effect at The Garrick (he was a dab hand with make-up effects and hair pieces, as well as props and models). He also had a passion for set design, and when The Garrick staged a rather lavish production of Rebecca (in which I had a small role as a young under-butler), he designed the seta grey-stone baronial hall in the style of Bernard Robinson, complete with winged griffins on the balustrades, a la The Brides of Dracula . Needless to say, I was in awe of the guy for bringing Hammer to life on our little stage, and all with little more than chipboard, burlap and plaster at his disposal.

I was even more impressed when I discovered that Ian had actually met some of the folk at Hammer. So modest was he, however, that he never boasted about these encountersthey just casually emerged in our conversations. Thus I learned that he had met (and been photographed with) such legends as Roy Ashton, Terry Fisher and Michael Ripper, as well as the lovely Veronica Carlson. In fact, years later, when I had moved to London to study theater, and had lost contact with him, I was greatly surprised to come across a photo of Ian with Miss Carlson, taken outside the soundstages of The Ghoul , in an issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors . Much to my delight, Ive since managed to re-establish contact with Ian some thirty years after last speaking to him, and we now enjoy corresponding to each other on a regular basis (he is now an artist of some repute in the Bristol area). And yes, the topic is still mostly Hammer, whose films, especially when compared to many of todays offerings, we find as enthralling as ever. Indeed, as Ian astutely observed in one of his epic letters, Even Scars of Dracula , which at the time I didnt like, as in comparison to the previous films it looked very cheap, I now look upon as a classic movie!