Hammer Playing Cards

 I haven't updated this blog all that much. Truth be told I don't think I have even watched that many Hammer movies this year. (Shock, gasp, I hear you say.) 

Whatever little blogging energy I can muster nowadays I primarily spend on my Krimi related blog. There's just so much Hammer related info out there, I feel I can contribute more to the less reported sub-genre of the German Krimi.

Still, this blog will stay up and every once in a while I may still add to it.

Just the other day came across my old set of Hammer Horror playing cards that were published in 1996 by the Heritage Toy and Game Company.

Once upon a time there were some decent scans of them around in a long deleted blog. So here are some less than decent scans to give an idea of what those cards look like.

Strictly Ink's Hammer Horror 2 set of trading cards

When Strictly Ink released their first set of Hammer Horror trading cards I was seriously impressed. Now it looks like they're on the verge of releasing a second set that promises to be equally worth having. Will write more about this, when/if I get my own set and would in the meantime appreciate comments from folks who may already have seen it.

It looks like a good number of Hammer Glamour stars have signed their cards for the series and that some of the cards have been designed by well known artists such as my good buddy Neil Vokes.

Still around, guys, still around

Yes, I know, two months without a single blog post. Don’t know where the time has gone. I am not going to become the kind of person I hate most, the apologetic absentee blogger, so suffice it to say that life got in the way and I lost quite a bit of my writing mojo lately. I was never the most prolific writer anyway, but my only output over the last couple of weeks were just a small number of entirely non-Hammer related reviews that can be read here, here and here.

Given my little hiatus, where will this leave my own 999 Challenge?

I am absolutely in awe at the amount of writing that other bloggers have managed to create inspired by the format. Needless to say I am also likewise a bit pissed about how far behind I have been with it at this stage. It’s not as if I hadn’t seen all those films. In actual fact if all I did was to tick off the categories once I view a movie, then I’d have definitely finished some of those already, but of course the idea was to watch those films and then WRITE about it. And that’s where I am lagging behind.

The bizarre thing is that at the start of the year having this format got my mind nicely in focus with regards to future blog posts, however, once I stopped writing for a while it ended up somewhat less liberating. I am the kind of anal guy (I believe the technical term is “German”) who likes to stick to rules once established. So there I was watching some new (for me anyway) Hammer movies and then tracking my backlog of unwritten 999 reviews. In order not to let that backlog move on further, what did I do? Yep, stop watching films in some of those categories which is of course the polar opposite of what I wanted to achieve with the project.

So I guess I better remember that I had started this blog for FUN, to post some of my thoughts, share some of my passions and shoot the breeze with fellow fans. And if I end up not watching films I love just because I feel obliged to also write about them, then something went amiss. In other words I’ll do 999 when I have the time and inclination; I’ll ignore it if I can’t be bothered.

Will I swear that I’ll be back to normal writing mode from now on? Dunno, but I’ll try my best to get back into a regular writing habit especially as there are a number of exciting Hammer releases on the way.

As just about everybody who reads this blog knows, the book I am most looking forward to over the coming weeks is Marcus Hearn’s Hammer Glamour book.

Can. Not. Wait.

I am giddy with excitement over it.

Also check out this Barbara Shelley interview that the Daily Express published the other day prior to the September 25 release of the book.

Other interesting stuff coming our way over the next couple of weeks (courtesy of my buddies on the Yahoo Hammer Group, the Isle of the Dead and the Bloody Hell of Brit Horror):

September 21 will mark the release of three previously rare Hammer pictures: The Damned, The Camp on Blood Island and Yesterday’s Enemy. It appears that these releases are exclusive to UK’s Moviemail service. The Sword of Sherwood Forest has previously also been made available by Sony this year. Looks like there are less and less reasons these days to hang on to the bootlegs anymore and there are very few major Hammer movies still waiting for a proper DVD release.

Region 2 releases for Sony’s The Gorgon, Taste of Fear and The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll may also be on the horizon.

And speaking of Sony: October 20 marks the date of the Region 1 release of the new William Castle Collection that includes Hammer’s The Old Dark House together with some of Castle’s other classic and not so classic oeuvres like 13 Frightened Girls, 13 Ghosts, Homicidal, Strait-Jacket, Mr. Sardonicus, The Tingler and Zotz!

Something that up till now had completely escaped my attention was the fact that one of the recent Forgotten Noir volumes features Hammer Noir Scotland Yard Inspector aka Lady in the Fog with Lois Maxwell and Cesar Romero.

So all in all this is going to be a very interesting couple of weeks for Hammer Fans.

Oh, and check out the UK channel Men & Motors. Each night at 23:00 they are now showing the classic TV series Hammer House of Horror. I had previously only ever watched a single one of those shows all those years ago and recall that it didn’t impress me much. Now that I have started viewing the episodes properly I still can’t say that I am very impressed. Don’t expect a show by show recount here, but overall this is a very pedestrian affair and probably my least favourite entry in Hammer’s filmography, not because it is so bad (it really isn’t), but because it is so very very average.

Long story short: It’s good to be back.

Hammer Playing Cards @ Deadlicious

I just read this post over at the Frankensteinia blog referring me to an older entry on the Deadlicious blog with scans of Hammer playing cards from 1996. I have owned this set of cards for quite some time myself, but so far failed to get decent scans made of them, so it's great to see that the images are around courtesy of Deadlicious.

Hammer Horror Official Trading Card Collection

Back in the 1990s I missed the boat with Cornerstone's set of four volumes of Hammer Horror trading cards which soon became collector’s items and are now mainly available through Ebay.

As such I was quite excited to hear that Hammer has teamed up with Strictly Ink to commission a new set of officially sanctioned Hammer Horror trading cards.

Strictly Ink are around since 1999 and have created a nice little niche for themselves by publishing a range of trading cards covering diverse areas such as the CSI Franchise, Dr Who, The New Avengers and 2000 AD.

The only thing that put a damper on my initial expectations was when I saw some of the reproductions on their official website. Let’s just say that the artist’s sketches left me seriously unimpressed, however, some comments on Yahoo’s Hammer discussion board convinced me that their actual base set was indeed superior to the cards they had advertised.

These trading cards are released in single packs of five that I seem to recall being sold individually in the likes of London’s Cinema Store. Most people, however, will probably avail of the offer to purchase at least one sealed box directly from the company’s website.

Each box contains 30 packs of 5 cards that will leave you with a guaranteed complete base set of collector cards 1-72. (Cards 71 and 72 actually constitute a check list of all the cards available.)

Doing the maths you will notice that with 150 cards sold in the box and a basic set only containing an initial 72 cards that this will leave you with a good number of duplicates. Of course, on top of the basic set a properly full collection of these cards would also constitute a handful of rarer special cards: 10 autographed cards by a predominantly female group of Hammer stars (Caroline Munro, Valerie Leon, Ingrid Pitt x 2, Jenny Hanley, David Prowse, Hazel Court, Madeline Smith, Veronica Carlson and Martine Beswicke), 9 foil cards of often rare publicity material as well as a number of even rarer hand drawn artist sketch cards.

It was these sketch cards that initially had me highly sceptical about this set as for the most part these look God awful and very amateurish, definitely not like a high class collector’s item you’d be dying to have in your possession.

I needn’t have worried, though, as these cards indeed only make up a fleetingly unimportant part of the set. In actual fact I find that Strictly Ink should have probably put more of an emphasis on their base cards in their advertising as opposed to these very special but dodgy looking sketch cards. The odds of finding one of these are one in every 2 or 3 boxes. (The odds of finding an autograph card were one per box and for the foil cards 1:12 packs.) For my own box I received an autographed card by Martine Beswicke as well as foil cards with promotional material for Hands of the Ripper, The Devil Rides Out, She and Scars of Dracula.

What is in the main set is a wonderful collection of often very rare photos covering the whole history of Hammer movies and stars. The pictures were compiled with the assistance of none other than Hammer historians extraordinaires Stephen Jones and Wayne Kinsey and cover the following areas: Early Science Fiction Thrills, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, Bloodsuckers & Other Monsters, Hammer Glamour and Behind the Screams (featuring production photos).

The reproduction of those cards is much superior than my inferior scans are suggesting. Overall this set of Hammer Trading Cards comes highly recommended and is anticipated to become a collector’s item over time. Some of Strictly Ink’s offers appear to already be sold out or down to the last few items, so I would recommend that anyone even remotely interested in this set get around to ordering soon before the only options left will be inflated prices on Ebay.

I notice that the Strictly Ink advertises this to be the “first in [a] series of incredible trading card collections exploring the horrific history of Hammer Films featuring many rare colour and black and white images”. I guess that means that the company will have some goodies in store for us Hammer fans. Definitely something to look forward to!

Now, where will I find the remaining autograph and foil cards for my set...?

Some notable links

Looks like I don't get around to much these days. Well, nothing much Hammer blog or website related, so let's post a couple of more links of interest to get the ball rolling again.

In What I Owe to Hammer Horror John Potts, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Media, Macquarie University, Sydney, revisists his favourite childhood movies after 35 years to figure out whether they still hold up what they had promised in his memory and contrasts their imagery with teenage life in a small town in New South Wales.

Strictly ink Media have just released a set of new Hammer related Trading Cards. I don't own those yet, but from I have heard they actually are quite nice looking. It is just a pity that they advertise them with some very amateurish looking pictures on their website that from what I understand are not representative of the entire set. If anyone out there has seen the complete set, please let me know.

Say what you want about Beyond the Rave, but from a merchandise perspective New Hammer has made a couple of shweet decisions. Top of the list of every Hammerhead's Xmas wish list this year should be a new Hammer calendar that won't be released until the end of October, though is already available on pre-order.

OK, I admit it: I can't believe I have mentioned Christmas in July!

Hammer stamps to be released in the UK

merFor those of you living in the UK, mark the calendars: According to the Nordic Philatelic site June 10 will see the release of a number of Hammer (and Carry On) related stamps! The designs look smashing and it is wonderful to see those classic movies being celebrated by the Royal Mail. I just wish the German Bundespost would come up with similar ideas to celebrate the classic Edgar Wallace Krimis.

This year is actually quite a good year for some of my heroes being celebrated on stamps. On January 8 Royal Mail had already released a set of Bond related stamps with wonderful reprints of some of the classic paperback designs. I don't own them yet, but will purchase them on my next trip to London or else order them from a philatelic store.

Hammer Scratch Cards

New Hammer is certainly busy putting their company logo on a variety of different products. Courtesy of the Isle of Dead Yahoo Group I can now present a scan of a scratch card that is currently being sold in the UK.