 A young woman in a flowing nightgown running for her life through a copse of trees. A pale blue night sky and shadows cast in the dark. Bright red Kensington Gore the consistency of anything from apple juice to oatmeal. These are just a few of the images that make the original Hammer horror films instantly recognizable. Hammer was one of the originators of schlock horror, and no other production company was more prolific. From the 1950s to the ʼ70s, the “house that horror built” pumped out one gothic shocker after another, often releasing four or five in any given year. And while these movies might have been cheap and often cheesy, they never failed please their audience or to prod at and reshape the boundaries of what was allowable, if not acceptable, in cinema at the time. From drafting multiple scripts to get past the censor board to shooting extra, more risqué footage for more lenient markets than their home audience in Britain, Hammer never stopped pushing the envelope when it came to showing violence, gore, nudity, and sex on the screen. And for their efforts they were, and still are, beloved across generations of horror fans. But watching some of these movies today—with their rudimentary storylines, their shoddy production value, and their at times questionable, if sincere, acting—a person might be tempted to wonder what it was that made them so successful. What is it that makes people love Hammer horrors so much? What is it that makes us, even now—half a century later—stop flipping through channels or scrolling through our options and settle in for The Brides of Dracula, or Dr. Jekyll, Sister Hyde, or Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed? Curious, I dug in. I watched all 54 original Hammer horrors in chronological order, those I’d seen before as well as the many I hadn’t. And I read a number of histories and filmographies. I spent half a year tracking down hard-to-find films and deciphering their allure. Here’s what I came up with, my theory about why we love Hammer horror movies: they’re comforting. Hammers are the hot chocolate of horror, with maybe a splash of brandy added to make it a little more grown up. Okay, you might be saying, but these are movies that set out to shock and titillate and scare us; that influenced multiple generations of horror fans and filmmakers; that reshaped cultural and industry standards so the genre could become what it is today. Wouldn’t it be paradoxical for these horror movies to have the same effect as a warm blanket on a cold night? Maybe, but it’s true nonetheless. In fact, I would go even further and say this soothing effect was intentional. Hammer set out to cradle the audience, telling them everything was fine, there’s nothing to worry about, while simultaneously building the suspense and therefore tension and ratcheting up the viscera at the pay off. (This is true not only over the course of individual movies, but over the whole of their filmography.) And these two objectives, to comfort and horrify the audience, worked hand in hand. The rudiments of this process come to light when we look at the three main mechanisms through which Hammer soothed their audience into becoming, as we will see, co-conspirators. Long Ago and Far Away The first of these mechanisms, and perhaps the most intentional, was to set their films in places removed from the audience in time and space, creating what might be considered fairy tale worlds. Only 15 of the more than 50 Hammer horrors were based in contemporary England. The rest are plucked from history and legend wherever they occurred (or were most convenient to film), from 19th century Egypt for the Mummies, to medieval Spain for a werewolf, to Tsarist Russia for Rasputin, and so on. Importantly, Dracula and Frankenstein, Hammer’s two most successful franchises by far, were both also set long ago and far away, in a temporal-cultural hodgepodge that might best be described as a gothic Victorian central Europe. Why is this important? Telling stories that take place at a remove in time and space creates a comforting distance between the audience and the action. “You can relax,” it says. “This will never happen to you.” Monsters and Other Villains The second way Hammer horrors lull their audience is by leaving no doubt at all about who the villain is. Of 54 films, 15 are about vampires (16 if you include Countess Dracula which doesn’t actually have any vampires, but does have Ingrid Pitt as Countess Bathory bathing in the blood of virgins), and 7 are about Frankenstein and his monsters. Then there are 4 mummies, 3 aliens, and 1 each of a gorgon, a snake woman, a yeti, and a werewolf. All told, 34 of the movies are creature features. The rest of them have human monsters. There are people driven to evil by greed, there are Satanists, and there are psychopaths. There are two Jekyll and Hydes, and there are two Jack the Rippers (of which one is also a Jekyll and Hyde). There are people who abuse their authority and, in the very memorable Fanatic (known in its American release as Die! Die! My Darling), a woman who is beyond obsessed with religion. The only film that might give a person pause when it comes to isolating the “bad guy” is Captain Clegg (Night Creatures in the States). Is the villain the brute of a man Clegg tortured years before and who now seeks revenge? Is it the authority figure bent on disrupting the townsfolk’s illegal smuggling operation? In the end, in my estimation, it is Clegg’s own past that has come back to haunt him. And that is as nuanced as it gets with Hammer. Defining the antagonist in stark terms removes another possible source of discomfort. We are not on the alert for clues about who to root for. We are not wondering what the big twist will be. (Even when there is a twist, it’s unmistakably foreshadowed.) Hammer horror films present good and evil in black and white with no gray in between, and that makes Hammers easy to watch. Bats on Strings In the same way that Hammer villains are predictable, Hammer sets have a distinctive look. Besides the obvious matte paintings and the pub that looks remarkably similar across a number of different titles, there are the expansive rooms of the castle or the manor that are furnished with lush jewel tone velvets and golden candlesticks and picture frames. But the candlesticks, when hefted, never look very heavy. And the big wooden doors, when broken down, either give way too easily or shake the walls around them. Add the obvious wigs and period-incorrect hairstyles; the reused, mix-and-match props and character actors; and the day-for-night lens filters to the sketchy sets, and we begin to get a feel for the third and most powerful mechanism through which Hammer won the hearts of so many: complicity. Hammer horrors, like other low budget B-movies, require the viewer to be actively involved. We have to hitch up our suspenders of disbelief and conspire with the filmmakers to create the experience. We don’t expect realism from Hammer. Sinclair MacKay, in A Thing of Unspeakable Horror, called Hammer a “gothic repertory company.” In a way, it’s like dinner theater. It’s their job to play it straight and our job to buy it. This complicity is why we forgive, and even enjoy, the many flubs: the stilted lines, the wobbly knife blades, the dead women’s chests heaving with breath. We see them, but we give it all a pass because we’re in on it, we’re accomplices. And because it’s more fun that way. Trust + Complicity = Kensington Gore in Eastman Color Certainly, there are bigger discussions to be had about Hammer films. In particular, an investigation into how their blatant sexism and racism have influenced the genre would be both fascinating and important. But I do think there’s merit in discussing these mechanisms through which Hammer horrors create a sense of comfort in their viewers. When the movies were new, the effect of these practices—of creating distance, delineating good and evil, and provoking audience complicity—was to gain the viewers’ trust, a trust which made it possible to progress from shocking the world with bright red blood on Dracula’s fangs in 1958 (two years before Hitchcock poured chocolate syrup down the drain in Psycho) to delighting their audience by showing Dr. Frankenstein saw off the top of a man’s skull in the early 1970s. In our time, they evoke a fondness, an amused delight that beckons us to stop scrolling through our options and settle in, looking forward to seeing a young Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in a movie that won’t be too challenging and that’s okay, because it’s the middle of the night and nothing is better than a Hammer for filling the insomnia hours. In the end, people creating horror stories in any medium can learn something important from these movies. What Hammer knew is that the audience is savvy and is not to be manipulated against their will. But earn their trust, and they’ll become your co-conspirators. Then you can get away with murder. Amy M. Vaughn Amy M. Vaughn is a writer who lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her books include Freak Night at the Slee-Z Motel (Grindhouse Press, coming fall 2019) and Skull Nuggets (Bizarro Pulp Press, 2018). Before writing weird little books, Amy wrote normal, nonfiction books, including the informal textbook From the Vedas to Vinyasa: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Yoga. SKULL NUGGETS BY Amy M. Vaughn Forato House is looking for test subjects: Are you between the ages of 21 and 61? Are you depressed, anxious, unfulfilled? Join us at our state of the art residential testing facility where we have perfected trepanation, the ancient art of drilling a hole in the skull to achieve a permanently higher state of consciousness! But that’s not all! We are currently seeking individuals who wish to eradicate their neurophages. Through our proprietary process of injecting hallucinogens directly into the frontal lobe, you can rid yourself of brain mites and experience lasting bliss. Do it for science! Do it for peace of mind! Do it for the people you love! Read our review of Skull Nuggets here   Comments are closed.
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