“Almost Psychopathic”: British Working Class Realism and the Horror Film in the late 1950s and early 1960s (original) (raw)
Studying Hammer Horror, 2016
This chapter evaluates Hammer horror as genre films. Hammer is renowned for its horror films, despite its breadth of productions including comedies, war films, action-adventures, and thrillers. Its specific brand of horror has often been considered to be a particularly English Gothic, Gothicism with its interest in the liminal, transcending traditional genre categories. It is poignant, then, that Hammer's Gothic style can be seen in some of its non-horror productions. One might question the usefulness of genre for understanding a range of the studio's films, despite the label 'Hammer horror'. Hammer brought something incredibly new to the 1950s cinema screen and it was the studio's juxtaposition of traditional fairy-tale storytelling and a return to a primitive cinema of attraction interested in spectacle and experience which has arguably earned the studio such a prominent place in the history of British film.
Classic Hammer Beyond Frankenstein
Studying Hammer Horror, 2016
This chapter addresses how the success of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) encouraged a succession of Hammer horror productions, the most profitable of which were produced between 1957 and 1966. There is much dispute about what constitutes Hammer's 'classical period'. Some argue that it starts with The Quatermass Xperiment in 1955 and ends with the flop The Phantom of the Opera in 1962. Others believe it ends with the move from Bray in 1966. This latter definition is more inclusive and recognises the diversity of Hammer's film-making during the Bray Studios years, when the majority of the team were regulars and came to define a particular Hammer style, which began to disintegrate as productions moved to Elstree and sex and nudity became more prominent themes. The chapter then presents case-study readings which focus on particular traits of the classic films, including the Gothic doppelgänger, the representation of women, and Hammer's vampire mythology.
Studying Hammer Horror, 2016
This chapter examines the relationship between Hammer Films and British cinema. The history of British cinema has been characterised by a strong dedication to realism, in its many forms. From the documentaries of the 1930s with a focus on social responsibility to the gritty kitchen sink dramas of the 1960s, and even the naturalistic aesthetic of television police dramas, the British moving-image industries have a strong heritage of realism. If this is the case, Hammer horror, despite its international fame as a specifically British brand of filmmaking, does not seem characteristic of British national cinema at all. On one hand, Hammer's horrors are clearly fantastical; on the other hand, they amalgamate infrequent and abrupt moments of gore with a 'neat unpretentious realism'. Moreover, the films were lambasted in the press for not exhibiting 'good taste' or restraint. The chapter then assesses to what extent Hammer horror can be understood as British.
Beyond Hammer: the first run market and the prestige horror film in the early 1960s
Palgrave Communications, 2017
Although 1960s horror was supposedly dominated by Hammer, Heffernan has pointed out that Hammer (and AIP) were both trying hard to break out of the low bracket market and into the middle bracket. This article focuses on the prestige horror films of the early 1960s, and not only looks at them as a coherent production trend (rather than as a series of individual or anomalous films) but in the process, offers a new context for an understanding of 1960s horror; that is, it demonstrates that the 1960s horror film was not simply low budget cinema but that it operated in almost all the key American film marketsthe first run cinema, the low budget and the art cinema. Consequently, we cannot only see that Hammer and AIP, rather than simply the dominant form, were actually defined by their attempt to steer a course between different sectors of the market (they were from the low budget end but trying to move into the first run market, whilst also drawing on some of the distinction associated with the art cinema); but also that the prestige horror films had their own very specific problems to negotiate. These negotiations would also lay the foundations for the industry-wide transformations of the late 1960s. This article is published as part of a collection on gothic and horror.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2013
This article is an examination of the ways in which Englishness was associated with horror long before the success of Hammer. During the 1930s and 1940s, many key horror stars were English or signified Englishness; and the article explores the ways in which this was due to a preoccupation with themes of psychological dominance and dependence during the period. In other words, the threat of psychological dominance and dependence that preoccupied horror films of the period associated the horror villain was associated with the spectre of old-world despotism from which the United States understood itself as a rejection. Furthermore, these psychological themes also demonstrate that, during this period, the horror film either included or was intimately related to the gangster film and spy thriller so that most horror stars played a range of horror villains, gangsters and spies. However, rather than focusing of figures such as Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Lionel Atwill or George Zucco, the article will concentrate on a series of actors closely associated with horror in the period, but who are not remembered in this way today -Claude Rains, Charles Laughton, Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price -stars who demonstrate the ways in which psychological themes not only connected the horror villain, gangster and spy but were also related to the spectre of old-world despotism.
Gothic Horror Film, 1960-Present (2013)
The Gothic World, ed. by Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend , 2013
A consideration of the filmic trajectories taken by Gothic cinema since Hitchcock’s 'Psycho' (1960), including an overview of some of the most influential films and sub-genres within horror cinema in post-war British and American culture.
Studying Hammer Horror, 2016
This chapter describes how Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) set a new precedent for horror which eventually posed a serious threat to Hammer Films. It was set in modern times and featured a human killer. While a spate of companies created Hammer imitations, fantasy horror was gradually to be replaced by a gritty, modern variation. Hammer tried several strategies to compete with the emerging modern horror style, but sadly failed as they gradually lost American backing. These techniques can be seen in The Devil Rides Out (1968), which gives horror a human face with an occult setting in the 1920s; Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) set in contemporary London and Hammer's first (and only) film to focus on a group of modern teenagers; and finally The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires , a transnational production which hybridises the then-popular kung fu craze with classic Hammer horror.
Old Horror, New Hollywood and the 1960s True Crime Cycle
Film Studies, 2018
This article focuses on a cycle of late 1960s true crime films depicting topical mass/serial murders. It argues that the conjoined ethical and aesthetic approaches of these films were shaped within and by a complex climate of contestation as they moved from newspaper headlines to best-sellers lists to cinema screens. While this cycle was central to critical debates about screen violence during this key moment of institutional, regulatory and aesthetic transition, they have been almost entirely neglected or, at best, misunderstood. Meeting at the intersection of, and therefore falling between the gaps, of scholarship on the Gothic horror revival and New Hollywood’s violent revisionism, this cycle reversed the generational critical divisions that instigated a new era in filmmaking and criticism. Adopting a historical reception studies approach, this article challenges dominant understandings of the depiction and reception of violence and horror in this defining period.