The British production company Hammer Film Productions has entered the history of cinema for having given birth to English science fiction cinema and above all for having, from 1957, resuscitated the great figures of Gothic terror. A genre that Hollywood had, for two decades, demonetized through comedy and parody. Vampires, Baron Frankenstein, werewolves and mummies thus resurfaced in blood red color, imbued with a very particular historical vision, placed in the context of an XIXe century which saw the affirmation of the bourgeoisie as well as the triumph of the industrial revolution and the English colonial empire.
Founded in the early 1930s by William Hinds and Enrique Carreras, the company mainly specialized in low-budget genre films before becoming, under the authority of Anthony Hinds and James Carreras, sons of the creators, a reference in the field. of horror after the success of Frankenstein escaped (1957) and Dracula’s Nightmare (1958), both signed Terence Fisher (1904-1980). The Gothic fantasy quickly met with popular success and, around the world, many production companies rushed into the open breach by offering imitations or variations on the same patterns.
At the end of the 1960s, mythologies began to falter. Terror takes on a more trivial face in cinema
The Hammer, however, was an economically modest and fragile structure that had to rely on sales of its films abroad, and particularly in the American market, thus leaning, for distribution, on the Hollywood majors.
At the end of the 1960s, mythologies began to falter. Terror takes on a more trivial, more familiar face in cinema, taking root in the contemporary world after the success of titles like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), by Roman Polanski, or Night of the Living Dead (1968), by George A. Romero (1940-2017). The public loses its innocence. The Hammer now struggles to find funding, in 1970 joined forces with another British company, EMI, for certain titles, and hoped to continue along the path of what had made its success and its reputation.
Sarcastic derision
The box set edited by Tamasa and StudioCanal, Hammer, volume 2, facetiously subtitled 1970-1976, Sex & Blood, offers seven titles representative of this late production. These are films that have the charm of “end of race” productions, witnesses to the breathlessness of mythologies in baroque overbidding (which is often gratifying) or disillusioned irony (which is less so). Because, to maintain an audience in theaters by telling them the same stories, they must be boosted with more violence and eroticism, a strategy then favored by the decline in traditional censorship.
You have 45.02% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.