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Dark Recesses in the House of Hammer

by Mélanie Boissonneau (Volume editor) Gilles Menegaldo (Volume editor) Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris (Volume editor)
©2022 Monographs XXIV, 352 Pages
Series: Film Cultures, Volume 11

Summary

Twenty years after Universal horror movies, the Hammer studio brought back to life the great mythical figures inspired from British literature as well as French and European folklore (Dracula, Frankenstein, the Werewolf, the Phantom of the Opera, etc.). It invented new incarnations rooted in a precise historical context and revisited according to the evolution of British society. This independent studio constitutes a notable stage in the history of the genre between the Gothic horror of the 1930s and the more radical productions of the 1970s, which eventually contributed to its demise. Focusing on the peculiar balance between Hammer’s inventiveness and classicism, this volume mainly explores the lesser-known productions, examining as well its contradictions, paradoxes and limitations.
The book raises the question of the paradoxical modernity of films that are innovative in various respects (themes, modes of representation challenging censorship, aesthetics), but are also trying to resurrect a dying tradition, mostly offering a rather surprisingly conservative discourse despite their efforts to comply with the expectations of new audiences. The films born from the recent Hammer renaissance are still referring to this bygone Golden Age of the horror film. One may wonder whether the Hammer studio was a mere factory churning out mostly conventional horror films now buried in the dust of a gothic dungeon, or a true laboratory of modern cinematic horror whose past glory still inspires contemporary filmmakers. This volume will provide some answers and raise quite a few questions.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the editors
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Table of Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Notes on Contributors
  • Preface: The Need for Hammer Films (Antonio Sanna)
  • Introduction: Dark Recesses in the House of Hammer (Mélanie Boissonneau, Gilles Menegaldo, Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris)
  • Part I Iconic Monsters and Actors
  • Intermediality as a Way to Debunk Tradition: New Perspectives on Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) (Isabelle Labrouillère)
  • The Phantom of the Opera Goes Victorian (Dorota Babilas)
  • Acting Hammer Style: About Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (Hélène Valmary)
  • Part II Genre and Gender
  • Hammer Motel: Twisted Nerves and Twisted Plots in the Post-Psycho British Psycho-Thriller (Jean-François Baillon)
  • Hammer Science-Fiction Horror and the Decline of the British Male Hero: The Quatermass Trilogy (Gaïd Girard)
  • The Political Complications of Revamping the Horror Canon: The Vampire Lovers (Baker, 1970), Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (Baker, 1971), Dracula A.D. 1972 (Gibson, 1972) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (Gibson, 1973) (David Roche)
  • Why Does Sherlock Holmes Capture the Black Rook of Dr. Mortimer in Terence Fisher’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)? (Jean-Pierre Naugrette)
  • Part III Aesthetics of Horror
  • The Vampire Figure: Recurring Principles in Hammer’s Symphonic Film Music until Twilight: New Moon (Cécile Carayol)
  • Terence Fisher with a Lake Scenery (Jean-Michel Durafour)
  • Jack Asher (1916–1991) and the Creation of an Original ‘Eastman Color’ Hammer: Between Hollywood Color Tropes and Aesthetic Innovation (Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard)
  • The Sonic Realm in The Quatermass Experiment: Medium and Genre and Sound (Robynn J. Stilwell)
  • Hammer’s Children, Between Visuality and Aurality (Philippe Met)
  • Part IV Post-Colonial Gothic and Imperial Politics
  • Beauty is the Beast: Horror According to John Gilling (Christian Chelebourg)
  • Unmasking the Other: Danger and Difference in Hammer’s Colonial Horrors (Rehan Hyder)
  • Postcolonial Anxieties in Hammer’s Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein (Vicky Walden)
  • Epistemology and Power Politics in The Abominable Snowmen (1957) and Lesser-Known Hammer Gothics (Jean-Marie Lecomte)
  • Part V Mutations, Unmade Projects and Resurrection
  • Hammer Hybrids, Genre Mutation and 1970s Horror Cinema (Ian Conrich)
  • Reigniting the Blaze: Hammer’s Unmade Remake of The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Matt Jones)
  • Mapping Cult Topographies and Transgressive Space: Hammer’s Legacy in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Marisa C. Hayes)
  • A New Old Hammer? The Woman in Black (James Watkins, 2012) (Sophie Mantrant)
  • General Bibliography
  • Index
  • Series index

←viii | ix→

List of Illustrations

Intermediality as a Way to Debunk Tradition: New Perspectives on Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

Figure 1:Frankenstein shows the anatomy lesson to Bernstein

Figure 2:Eye of Frankenstein

The Phantom of the Opera Goes Victorian

Figure 1:The Phantom (Herbert Lom) and Christine (Heather Sears)

Figure 2:The rat-catcher (Patrick Troughton)

Acting Hammer Style: About Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee

Figure 1:Peter Cushing: hand and face

Figure 2:Christopher Lee: hand and face

Hammer Motel: Twisted Nerves and Twisted Plots in the Post-Psycho British Psycho-Thriller

Figure 1:American stars in Hammer psycho-thrillers: Joan Fontaine in The Witches (Cyril Frankel, 1966)

Figure 2:Quoting Psycho: Paranoiac! (Freddie Francis, 1963)

Figure 3:Evolution of Hammer production in the 1960s in terms of genre, based on Wayne Kinsey, Hammer: The Bray Studio Years (London: Reynolds & Hearn, 2005) and Hammer: The Elstree Studio Years (Sheffield: Tomahawk Press, 2007)

←ix | x→

Hammer Science-Fiction Horror and the Decline of the British Male Hero: The Quatermass Trilogy

Figure 1:Monstrous Carroon in Westminster after his electrocution

Figure 2:Last shot of the film: Quatermass and Judd slumped against a wall

The Political Complications of Revamping the Horror Canon: The Vampire Lovers (Baker, 1970), Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (Baker, 1971), Dracula A.D. 1972 (Gibson, 1972) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (Gibson, 1973)

Figure 1:The Gothicness of Swinging London

Figure 2:Dr. Jekyll’s face seen through a stained glass window seconds before falling to his death

Why Does Sherlock Holmes Capture the Black Rook of Dr. Mortimer in Terence Fisher’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)?

Figure 1:Holmes ponders upon his next move. Diegetic variations

Figure 2:Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2015)

The Vampire Figure: Recurring Principles in Hammer’s Symphonic Film Music until Twilight: New Moon

Figure 1:1a – Fisher, Horror of Dracula (Tania and Lucy)/VG. 1b – Coppola, Dracula (Lucy, “The Storm”)

Terence Fisher with a Lake Scenery

Figure 1:The Mummy

Figure 2:Frankenstein must be destroyed

Jack Asher (1916–1991) and the Creation of an Original “Eastman Color” Hammer: Between Hollywood Color Tropes and Aesthetic Innovation

Figure 1:Red, green, yellow: the primary colours of the laboratory

Figure 2:Kharis rises from the pond

←x | xi→

The Sonic Realm in The Quatermass Experiment: Medium and Genre and Sound

Figure 1:Futuristic (a) and retrograde (b) technologies

Figure 2:Prof. Quatermass and the Man from the Ministry, blocking and framing (a) a BBC television production and (b) a Hammer film

Hammer’s Children, Between Visuality and Aurality

Figure 1:Demons of the Mind

Figure 2:The Nanny

Beauty is the Beast. Horror According to John Gilling

Figure 1:The prey and her predators

Figure 2:Under the bun, the monster

Unmasking the Other: Danger and Difference in Hammer’s Colonial Horrors

Figure 1:The Stranglers of Bombay

Figure 2:The Mummy

Postcolonial Anxieties in Hammer’s Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein

Figure 1:Van Helsing leaps over the table on the attack

Figure 2:Victor, a dishevelled creature locked-up in his cell

Epistemology and Power Politics in The Abominable Snowmen (1957) of Lesser-Known Hammer Gothics

Figure 1:Epiphanic encounter

Figure 2:Tears in his eyes (werewolf)

Hammer Hybrids, Genre Mutation and 1970s Horror Cinema

Figure 1:The Orientalising of Hammer in the British poster for The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

Figure 2:Orientalism Americanized in the American release poster for The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula (1979; aka The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires)

←xi | xii→

Mapping Cult Topographies and Transgressive Space: Hammer’s Legacy in The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Figure 1:Oakley Court, featured in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and numerous Hammer films

Figure 2:Birth of a monster

A New Old Hammer? The Woman in Black (James Watkins, 2012)

Figure 1:Kipps shares a frame with the ghost

Figure 2:The face of screaming Jennet

Images for central insert

Figure 1:The Curse of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher, 1957. Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein

Figure 2:The Curse of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher, 1957. Christopher Lee as creature

Figure 3:The Hound of the Baskervilles, Terence Fisher, 1959. Chess game

Figure 4:Taste of Fear, Seth Holt, 1961

Figure 5:The Curse of the Werewolf (1961). Oliver Reed as werewolf

Figure 6:The Curse of the Werewolf (1961). Woman victim

Figure 7:The Phantom of the Opera, Terence Fisher, 1962. Phantom mask

Figure 8:Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966). Blood Pact

Figure 9:The Reptile, John Gilling, 1966. Visit to the larder

Figure 10:Quatermass and the Pit, Roy Ward Baker, 1967. Alien figure looming over buildings

Figure 11:Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Terence Fisher, 1969. Laboratory

Figure 12:The Vampire Lovers, Roy Ward Baker, 1970. Carmilla declares her love to Emma

Figure 13:Hands of the Ripper, Peter Sasdy, 1971. Little girl watching

Figure 14:The Woman in Black, James Watkins, 2012. Carriage in the mist

←xii | xiii→

Notes on Contributors

Dorota Babilas (dr hab.) is an assistant professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw. Her academic interests include Victorian, Gothic, and Film Studies. She wrote two monographic books: Wiktoria znaczy Zwycięstwo (Warsaw 2012) and Opera Paryska Palais Garnier: Historia, sztuka, mit (Warsaw 2018) and coedited two volumes of essays on English-language literatures and cultures, and editor of the new translation of Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra into Polish (Czerwonak 2019).

Jean-François Baillon is a Professor in English and Film Studies at Bordeaux Montaigne University. He is an Honorary member of the SERCIA Board (Société d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Cinéma Anglophone) and has published extensively on British cinema, British film stars and British horror and Gothic cinema in various film journals (CinémAction, Éclipses, Mise au Point, Film Journal, Positif). He has recently edited E. M. Forster’s Howards End (1910) and James Ivory’s Howards End (1992), Paris, Ellipses, 2019 and coedited “Stanley Kubrick : new horizons,” Essais, n° 4, Pessac, 2018 and “Intermedial Frankensteins,” Leaves n° 10, January 2020, online.

Mélanie Boissonneau received her Ph.D. in film studies. She is the author of Pin-up au temps du Pré-Code : 1930-1934 (2019) and co-editor of Tim Burton, horreurs enfantines (2016) and Cinéphilies/sériphilies 2.0, Les nouvelles formes d’attachement aux images (Peter Lang, 2019).

Cécile Carayol is a musicology lecturer at the University of Rouen. Her teaching and research focus on film music and she’s a member of CEREdI Laboratory. She started a group which focuses on Musical Screen Studies ←xiii | xiv→(ELMEC: Etude des Langages Musicaux à l’ECran). She also co-published a book on music in TV series (Musiques de séries télévisées, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, « Le Spectaculaire », 2015) in which she wrote a paper on the music of Bernard Herrmann for Twilight Zone and a paper on the music of Nathan Barr for True Blood. She also wrote a book entitled Une musique pour l’image, vers un symphonisme intimiste dans le cinéma français, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012. She’s currently writing a book on horror film music (Rouge Profond, 2021).

Christian Chelebourg is a Professor in French literature and youth literature at Lorraine University. A specialist of the imaginary, he started with research on French 19th century literature before focusing on youth and mass culture. His latest books are: Le Surnaturel – Poétique et écriture (Paris, Armand Colin, « U », 2006), Les Écofictions: Mythologies de la fin du monde (Les Impressions Nouvelles, « Réflexions faites », 2012), Les Fictions de jeunesse (PUF, « Les Littéraires », 2013) et Walt Disney ou l’avenir en couleur (Les Impressions Nouvelles, « Réflexions faites », 2018).

Ian Conrich is a Professor at the University of Vienna. The author of Studies in New Zealand Cinema (2009), and The Cinema of Sri Lanka: South Asian Film in Texts and Contexts (2021) and co-author of Gothic Dissections in Film and Literature: The Body in Parts (2017), he is an author or editor of a further fourteen books, including The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror (2004), Film’s Musical Moments (2006), Contemporary New Zealand Cinema (2008), Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema (2009), and Rapa Nui –- Easter Island: Cultural and Historical Perspectives (2016). He has contributed to more than sixty books and journals, and his work has been translated into French, Danish, Persian, Polish, Hungarian, and Hebrew.

Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard is a Emeritus Professor, Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès. She specializes in English and American Studies, Literature, Art and Film. She started the Cinema Studies association SERCIA (Société d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Cinéma Anglosaxon) in 1993 and is the author of Nicholas Hilliard et l’imaginaire élisabéthain (Paris: CNRS, 1992), Elizabethans-The Language of Colour of two Miniaturists (Montpellier: CERRA, 2000), and a number of papers in both Early Modern English and Film Journals. She also edited Le Cinéma (Poitiers: La Licorne, 1997), Le Cinéma et ses objets-Objects in Film, Poitiers: La Licorne; Cinéma et Couleur-Film and Colour (Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2009). Her current research focuses on phenomenology and film in early cinema. ←xiv | xv→

Jean-Michel Durafour is a philosopher, a poet and a professor of Film theory and aesthetics at Aix-Marseille University. He is also the head of the Studies in Sciences of the Art research group (EA 3274). He is the author of numerous articles on the cinema and of several books, recently: Cinéma et cristaux. Traité d’éconologie (Mimésis, 2018) and L’Étrange Créature du lac noir de Jack Arnold. Aubades pour une zoologie des images (Rouge profond, 2017). He will soon publish Tchernobyliana. Esthétique et cosmologique de l’âge radioactif (Vrin) and Gene Tierney. Une irradiation blême (Circé).

Gaïd Girard is a professor Emeritus at the University of Western Brittany in Brest (France). She works on the Fantastic and Science -Fiction, both in literature and cinema. She wrote on Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Conan Doyle, Eoin McNamee, William Gibson, Marge Piercy among others, and on films by Kubrick, Roeg, Epstein, Svankmajer. She has lately focused on Science Fiction films in the 70s and feminist SF.

Marisa C. Hayes is a Franco-American scholar and artist. Her interdisciplinary research explores is situated at the crossroads of the performing arts and moving images. In 2017, her monograph Ju-on: The Grudge was published by Auteur, Liverpool University Press in the Devil’s Advocates series. It focuses on how supernatural themes found in traditional Japanese dance-theater and butoh have been transposed in Takashi Shimizu’s 2002 J-horror classic. Hayes also edited Fan Phenomena: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Intellect, 2015), in addition to other printed and electronic publications. She is currently editor in chief of the dance research journal Repères, cahier de danse at the National Choreographic Development Center near Paris and co-directs the International Screendance Festival of Burgundy.

Rehan Hyder is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England and author of Brimful of Asia: Negotiating Ethnicity on the UK music scene He is co-founder of BLIMA (Bristol Live Independent Music Archive) focusing on the study of music, local identity and ethnicity. Current research is analysing portrayals of violence and otherness in colonial and post-colonial fiction with a particular focus on the representation of Thuggee in popular literature, film and television.

Matthew Jones is Reader in Cinema Audiences and Reception at De Montfort University, where he also curates the Hammer Scripts Archive. He is the author of Science Fiction Cinema in 1950s Britain (Bloomsbury, 2018) and is the co-editor of Time Travel Narratives in Popular Media (McFarland, 2015). ←xv | xvi→His research interests lie in early Cold War genre cinema, film audiences and cultural memory.

Isabelle Labrouillère is a lecturer in Performing Arts and Film Aesthetics at the ENSAV (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’AudioVisuel). She is the author of articles on fantasy and cinema, inter and transmediality and postmodernism (“The New Conditions of Post-classical Entertainment: Duplication, Repetition and the Loss of Authenticity in Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars”). Her recent work also includes articles on David Fincher (“Le récit « suspendu » ou le discours menacé par la puissance imageante dans Seven de David Fincher (1995)”, Crossways Journal, Canada, 2019). She is currently co-editing a new entry in Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna’s Critical Companion to Contemporary Directors series, with a focus on the cinematic work of Christopher Nolan.

Jean-Marie Lecomte is Associate Professor of English at the University of Lorraine (France). He specializes in Anglo-American literature and film studies. His cross-study of literature and film has mostly focused on 19th-century literature and its audio-visual metamorphoses in American and English cinema. He has a keen interest in the aesthetics of film dialog and sound (an area of research often neglected in film studies). He is the author of some thirty research articles on poetry, cinema and English literature and has co-directed, with Gilles Menegaldo, a book on American director King Vidor. He is also a videographer and is currently directing an archival documentary on Jack Kerouac.

Details

Pages
XXIV, 352
Year
2022
ISBN (PDF)
9781433186592
ISBN (ePUB)
9781433186608
ISBN (MOBI)
9781433186615
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433186585
DOI
10.3726/b18182
Language
English
Publication date
2021 (December)
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2022. XXIV, 352 pp., 36 b/w ill., 31 ill.

Biographical notes

Mélanie Boissonneau (Volume editor) Gilles Menegaldo (Volume editor) Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris (Volume editor)

Mélanie Boissonneau received her Ph.D. in film studies. She is the author of Pin-up au temps du Pré-Code : 1930-1934 (2019) and co-editor of Tim Burton, horreurs enfantines (2016) and Cinéphilies/sériphilies 2.0, Les nouvelles forms d’attachement aux images (Peter Lang, 2019). Gilles Menegaldo is Emeritus professor of literature and film (University of Poitiers). He is the author of Dracula, la Noirceur et la grâce (with A-M Paquet-Deyris), 130 articles on literature and cinema, and 35 edited collections of essays. His recent publications include Tim Burton, a Cinema of Transformations (2018) and Spectres of Poe with J. Dupont (2020). Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris is Professor of Film and TV Series Studies and (African) American Literature at University Paris Nanterre. She wrote over 80 articles and 21 books, among the latest, 3 co-edited collections of essays, Vérités et mensonges dans le cinéma hollywoodien (Truths and Lies in Hollywood Film) with D. Sipière (2021), Histoire, légende, imaginaire : Nouvelles études sur le Western (2018) on the history of the American West in the western film genre, and Combining Aesthetic and Psychological Approaches to TV Series Addiction (2018).

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