A bit old, but still worth mentioning...

Just stumpled upon some older blog entries from the near-defunct Reel Cinema Blog featuring some beautiful glamour galleries of Linda Haden and Caroline Munro. Worth checking out.

Listmania: How many Hammer film series are there?

Well, here I was the other day, sitting on a sofa, staring into space and reminiscing about Hammer movies… as one does. About the Dracula flicks, and the Frankenstein series, the Dennis Wheatley adaptations. And all of a sudden I was wondering just how many different film series Hammer has actually been involved in. The longer I thought about it, the longer the list became until I finally picked up my trusted copy of Tom Johnson’s and Deborah DelVecchio’s HAMMER FILMS – AN EXHAUSTIVE FILMOGRAPHY and went through the list of their films one by one and started jotting down which of these belonged to a series.

This may sound obvious, but for me to constitute a Hammer series, Hammer would have needed to at least have shot two movies on that subject. The reason why I highlight this is because I excluded all one-shots the company filmed that were based on an otherwise popular subject such as e.g. the Sherlock Holmes movie The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Phantom of the Opera.

Some of the suggested inclusions for what constitutes a Hammer series are debatable. So please: Debate!

Without further ado, please find my list of Hammer movie series.

Dick Barton

Dick Barton, Special Agent (1947)
Dick Barton at Bay (1948)
Dick Barton Strikes Back (1948)

P.C. 49

The Adventures of PC 49 (1948)
A Case for P.C. 49 (1951)

Jack the Ripper

Room to Let (1949)
Hands of the Ripper (1971)
Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)

The Lyons

Life with the Lyons (1953)
The Lyons in Paris (1954)

Robin Hood

Men of Sherwood Forest (1954)
Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)
A Challenge for Robin Hood (1967)
Wolfshead: The Legend of Robin Hood (1969)

Quatermass

The Quatermass Xperiment (1954)
Quatermass 2 (1956)
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Blood Island/World War II

The Camp on Blood Island (1957)
The Secret of Blood Island (1964)

On top of those two Blood Island movies, Hammer also shot the following WW2 dramas:

The Steel Bayonet (1956)
Ten Seconds to Hell (1958)
Yesterday’s Enemy (1959)

Frankenstein

The Curse of Frankenstein (1956)
The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
The Evil of Frankenstein (1963)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1966)
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
Horror of Frankenstein (1970)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1972)

Psychothrillers

This is the series I fought over most about as to whether I should even include it as there are no common threads as such among them other than that they were all written by Jimmy Sangster, however, the Psychothrillers are often discussed as a separate chapter in Hammer’s history.

The Snorkel (1957)
Taste of Fear (1960)
Maniac (1962)
Paranoiac (1962)
Nightmare (1962)
Hysteria (1964)
Fanatic (1964)
The Nanny (1965)
Crescendo (1969)
Fear in the Night (1971)

Up the Creek

Up the Creek (1957)
Further Up the Creek (1958)

Dracula

(Horror of) Dracula (1957)
Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1965)
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969)
Scars of Dracula (1970)
Dracula A.D. 1972 (1971)
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1972)

The films above are of course all the traditional Dracula movies featuring Christopher Lee. Dracula, however, also receives a mention or even appeared (though played by a different actor) in the following two movies:

The Brides of Dracula (1960)
The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1973)

And should I wish to widen the field even further into general Hammer Vampire movies I should also include:

Kiss of the Vampire (1962)
Vampire Circus (1971)
Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (1972)

Mummy

The Mummy (1959)
The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964)
The Mummy’s Shroud (1966)
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

The Ugly Duckling (1959)
The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1959)
Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)

Pirates

Not too sure whether it actually makes sense to highlight the Pirate movies as a separate series as they do not have an otherwise recurring central theme or character:

The Pirates of Blood River (1961)
Captain Clegg (1961)
Devil-Ship Pirates (1963)

She

She (1964)
The Vengeance of She (1967)

Cavemen and Dinosaurs

One Million Years B.C. (1965)
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1968)
Creatures the World Forgot (1970)

Dennis Wheatley

The Devil Rides Out (1967)
The Lost Continent (1967)
To the Devil…. A Daughter (1975)

Karnstein

The Vampire Lovers (1970)
Lust for a Vampire (1970)
Twins of Evil (1971)

The name Karnstein (or a subtle variation of it) is also mentioned in:

Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (1972)

On the Buses

On the Buses (1971)
Mutiny on the Buses (1972)
Holiday on the Buses (1972)

So, there we are. A little list of all the different series Hammer has been involved in. Have I forgotten something? What are your thoughts about it? And most of all: What to do next with it?

I am contemplating approaching those series bit by bit at some stage. In actual fact that could make a nice subject for a Blogathon with different bloggers approaching different series all at the same time. If any of you bloggers reading this is interested in taking part in such a project, then please let me know.

Beyond the Rave trailer... update

Looks like the official Beyond the Rave website now has a link for their teaser trailer... that links to a MySpace account for the film.... that is set to private and can only be viewed by their MySpace friends.

Is it just me or is that by far the daftest way to try and promote your new venture???

Peter Cushing calendar

I had recently phoned in my order for the 2008 calendar by the Pilgrims Hospice in Kent featuring 12 postcard views of watercolour paintings by Peter Cushing.

When I called a very pleasant lady answered and queried where I had heard about this calendar. I mentioned the newsgroups and she said that she was only new in her job, but was already surprised how well these were selling. I advised that Cushing fans may not be legion, but sure were a dedicated bunch.

We had a pleasant chat and when she revealed that the calendars were only £3.75 (plus postage) I also advised her that they probably could have sold it for a slightly higher figure. She seemed amused to hear that and I promptly ordered two copies of what will no doubt become a bit of a collector’s item in the future.

She advised that she couldn’t off hand tell me how much postage to Ireland would be and promised to call me back with the info. I thought it would defeat the purpose to cheaply sell a charity calendar and then spend some of the proceedings in an International phone call, so – trusting that I would hardly be conned by a hospice – I told her to simply charge whatever it was going to be without the need to contact me back. And lo and behold I was only charged a fair £2.50 for p&p to Ireland, a total of £10 for those two calendars.

Below find the 12 motives depicted on the calendar.

The calendar is still on sale. You will need to order by phone by calling +44-1233-504102 and can pay by credit card. It’s a worthwhile cause and a truly original idea as those paintings have very rarely been exhibited before.

Beyond the Rave trailer... or not

I just received the following notice:

BEYOND THE RAVE!
Early in 2008 the world will watch as soldier Ed's nightmare unfolds in 20 terrifying episodes!
You can watch the teaser trailer NOW!
Hammer films presents a Pure Grass Films production 'Beyond the Rave'
Ed is flying to Iraq in the morning and he wants to have it large and boy, is he gonna get it!
After tracking his girlfriend, Jen down to a secret rave deep in the forest he realizes the terrible truth about the hard core party organizers too late..
Sex, death and bloodsucking rave tunes, 'Beyond the Rave' is a high-octane blend of kick-ass music and gruesomely enjoyable online terror.
ALL THEY WANTED WAS A NIGHT TO REMEMBER.
www.beyondtherave.net

Not too sure if I am doing something wrong, but for the life of me I can't see a trailer on the official website.

So I tried to google it and even though I still couldn't find a trailer I found this Behind the Scenes video from the guys at Movieweb.

Crumpet

A good while ago the BBC showed a documentary called CRUMPET about "a very British sex symbol". I was annoyed with myself that I didn't find a way to tape it the time it was on as this was a really fun little piece with some of my favourite actresses including of course lots of Hammer Glamour eye candy and also included interviews with them.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see some extracts posted on YouTube.

Enjoy!!!

The Mutations

I finally caught THE MUTATIONS on Sky Sci Fi/Horror the other day. It’s been eluding me for half an eternity, though it has been on repeatedly, but always late at night and as I don’t videotape stuff anymore, but also don’t own a DVD recorder and am still a bit more than a week away from getting Sky Plus installed I depended on being up at the time when the film was shown in order to watch it. Kind of gave it a 1970s viewing experience when you just had to view stuff when it was shown, not when you wanted it. A quick look at the program guides also shows that it was just as well I watched it this week as it doesn’t appear to be on again anytime in the foreseeable future and I may just have caught the last screening for the time being.

Also known as THE FREAKMAKER, this is a pretty notorious example of Brit Horror 70s style. It’s effectively a hodge podge of every good genre idea there ever was and contains mixtures of FRANKENSTEIN, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, FREAKS, THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, BURKE AND HARE, THE BODY SNATCHERS as well as FUN HOUSE (admittedly a later movie) and a bunch more.

It’s the kind of production that you would not see made in this day and age: Donald Pleasance plays a scientist who believes it is not only possible to clone entire species, but that you could produce a plant/human creature that would make the world a better place. (Yep, every home needs a guy who’s also a Venus Flytrap.) Pleasance’s character lovingly caresses rabbits before throwing them into the mouths of his giant meat eating plants. Future Dr Who Tom Baker - unrecognisable under tons of make up as the world’s ugliest man - assists Pleasance by providing him with new victims to experiment on. Unfortunately he has all of London at his disposal, yet the only victims he seems to catch are students from Pleasance’s college classes. Julie Ege - beautiful, but at times hard to understand with her Scandinavian accent (at least she wasn’t dubbed as usual) - is one of his students and enjoys lengthy baths. Bodybuilder and Peplum star as well as Kommissar X hero Brad Harris plays an American scientist visiting the Professor’s alma mater.

The reason for this film’s notoriety are neither the appalling plant/human monster effects nor the nudey operation scenes nor the occasional moments of gore, but the fact that one of the sub plots involves the members of a travelling “freak” show that involves dwarves as well as a number of real side show entertainers such as the Alligator Girl, Pretzel Boy, The Human Pincushion, Frog Boy and Popeye, a guy who can, well, pop out his eyes at will. The biggest gasps, however, will come when the Skinny Lady, a highly anorexic girl, puts her body on display. The word “exploitation” was created for those kinds of moments, however, the freak community is actually often shown in a very loving and caring light and, politically incorrect or not, those guys give the production a lot of memorable moments and some proper heart and soul.

Also watch out for lengthy scenes of macro photography of plant life that’ll make you want to become a mad scientist.

No idea whether this film really killed director Jack Cardiff’s career, but this would prove to be his last film in that capacity, though he is still very successfully working as a cinematographer up to this day. Not bad for a Nonagenarian.

Anyway, if you haven’t watched the film yet, go and check it out. It is oodles of fun and Julie Ege gets a lot of screentime to make it worth the while for every Hammer horror aficionado. Don’t listen to the naysayers: This is one of the best British Horror movies of the 1970s!