Where to Start with Hammer Horror

Gothic horror in lurid color. Vampires with bloodshot eyes, bearing fangs smeared with gore. Precut wooden stakes. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Oakley Court. Plunging décolletage. I’m referring to the classic films of Hammer Film Productions, a British film-production company that needs no introduction to horror fans, but may be less well known to a general audience in the United States.

Hammer’s heyday lasted from the 1950s to the 1970s. During this period, the studio produced science-fiction films such as The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), Quatermass 2 (1957), and Quatermass and the Pit (1967), mystery-suspense films and psychological thrillers (“mini-Hitchcocks”) such as Paranoiac (1963), Nightmare (1964), and Hysteria (1965), and, most famously, a cycle of monster-based Gothic horror films that began with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958). At this time in the United States, Dracula, Frankenstein’s Creature, and The Wolf Man, among the monsters of Universal Pictures horror who dominated the box-office in the 1930s and 1940s, had retreated into the night as a new generation of monsters—extra-terrestrials, mutants, and giant, irradiated bugs—took over theater screens. Hammer horror was no mere retread of familiar ground, though. The films were bloodier (recall that we never saw any fangs, bloodied or otherwise, in Universal’s vampire films). They were more sexually suggestive. And they took markedly different approaches to their subjects. For example, Hammer’s seven Frankenstein films focused more on the creator, Dr. Frankenstein, than any one creature.

Although Hammer horror continued at a steady pace until 1974, the studio produced its finest films between 1957 and 1967 while shooting at Bray Studios (formerly Down Place) in Berkshire. Pay attention to the films’ credits and you start to notice a consistent quality-control team at work: producer Anthony Hinds (son of William Hinds, who co-founded Hammer with James Carreras), director Terence Fisher, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, cinematographer Jack Asher, production designer Bernard Robinson, and, of course, stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. If these names are new to you, let this videographic listicle be your guide through Hammerland this Halloween. Here are my top ten favorite horror films from Hammer Film Productions.