Fifty years ago, Hammer Films released their first horror movie, The Curse of Frankenstein, beginning a series of flicks which changed the face of cinema.

Over the years Hammer has been the subject of loadsa books, essays and documentaries. Now, Hammer has given active backing to a fully-authorised history of the company.

Compiled with unlimited access to the Hammer archives The Hammer Story, released through Titan Books, provides a film-by-film dissection of the history of Hammer Films, dripping with rare promotional material and previously unpublished photographs.

To celebrate the release of the book, here are 10 Hammer facts.

1. 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the release of Hammer’s first gothic horror movie, The Curse of Frankenstein.

2. Hammer films influenced a whole generation of film directors, including Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton and George Lucas. Burton and Lucas have even cast Hammer stalwart Christopher Lee in several of their films.

3. Though best known for their horror films, Hammer also made thrillers, swashbucklers, war movies, and comedies. In fact their comedy On the Buses was the British box office champion of 1971. Now that really is scary. Shiver.

4. Hammer was also responsible for sticking Raquel Welch in a fur bikini, in their historically inaccurate but hugely entertaining dinosaurs versus humans epic One Million Years B.C.

5. Hammer’s films were exported around the world, and benefited the British economy to such an extent that the company was presented with The Queen’s Award to Industry in 1968.

6. The ‘vampire bats’ which menaced the cast in Kiss Of The Vampire were actually toys bought from Woolworths.

7. Hammer were masters of the poster tagline. One of their best was for The Mummy’s Shroud: ‘Beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet!’. Sounds like a Justin Timberlake lyric.

8. The legendary Bette Davis starred in two Hammer films, The Nanny and The Anniversary.

9. The even more legendary Oliver Reed scored his first leading role in Hammer’s Curse Of The Werewolf.

10. Hammer Films Limited was recently bought by a company owned by John de Mol (the Dutch media giant behind Big Brother). The first Hammer Film production since 1979’s The Lady Vanishes is called Beyond The Rave and is currently shooting in London.

Rave music, eh?! Yup, that old thing. All sounds a bit dodgy to us, but let’s give Hammer the benefit of the doubt, shall we? In the meantime, here’s the trailer for The Curse Of Frankenstein. Mwah-ha-ha-ha!

Posted by Thin White Duke

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 9:25 am and is filed under National, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.