The future of Hammer as a company

Well, Beyond the frigging Rave has now come to an end. Though neither I nor most of the other old Hammer fans have been remotely impressed, the comments on the website seem to indicate that new Hammer did manage to create a number of young (read: right demographic) fans, so the experiment seems to have worked at least on a raising the awareness level.

Two news items have lately come in about the direction the company is going to take. On the one hand it appears that they indeed keep on producing new films and have plans for at least three more. On the other hand Hammer seems to be again changing hands. These news items can in full be found here and here.

Icons of Adventure, Icons of Horror

The latest Hammer movie set, Icons of Adventure, has recently been released and covers the following four productions: The Pirates of Blood River, The Devil-Ship Pirates, The Stranglers of Bombay and The Terror of the Tongs. Most of those up until now have been virtually impossible to get a hold of.

Hard on the heals of this boxset we now also have the announcement of a new boxset of four other movies, this time dedicated to four classic (and up till now again rather rare) horror classics: Icons of Horror - Hammer Films will feature The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, Scream of Fear and The Gorgon. Go to Amazon and you will even be able to have a say as to what the cover may look like.

Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires documentary excerpt

Looks like my updates these days consist primarily of links to YouTube clips, but some really rare stuff appears to be surfacing lately. This one was pointed out to me throught the BloodyHellofBritHorror Yahoo group and is an excerpt from BBC Shaw Brothers documentary with behind the scenes footage starting after the 4 minute mark. To the best of my knowledge this was never before included as an extra in a DVD release and is exclusive to YouTube.

The actual documentary consists of 3 parts on YouTube. The other two parts can also be accessed through there.

Unfortunately video embedding is not possible for this video so just follow the link.

Manikin Cigars commercial with Caroline Munro

Rudyard Kipling may have famously stipulated that a woman was only a woman, but a good cigar was a smoke, but for Manikin Cigars a cigar is only a phallic symbol that needs to sensually be lit by an unidentified smoker, but the woman is a very young Caroline Munro running around with machete in what appears to be a tropical jungle scene in skimpy clothes that she gradually removes before jumping into a little lake.

In a lot of ways this little 25 second clip shows her at her most revealing. Though of course advertising standards had to be adhered to, it is still clear that she really discards off her top even though we only get to see her topless from behind or the side. She also shows off the tiniest crack of her bum when jumping into the pool.

Sheer enjoyment indeed!

(I would like to thank Chrissy and Mike from my Caroline Munro Yahoo group who discovered this previously ultra rare video and made it more easily accessible for me before I had a chance to put in on YouTube.)

Trailers from Hell - Curse of the Werewolf (John Landis)

Trailers from Hell is a seriously addictive website featuring a large number of classic horror and cult movie trailers with commentary by "gurus" such as Stuart Gordon, Larry Cohen, Jack Hill or Eli Roth. Great idea! Have a look at this Curse of the Werewolf commentary by none other than American Werewolf director John Landis.