Hammer Films
Hammer Films was a British motion picture company, best known for its Hammer Horror line of horror films. One of the keys to the success of the company was the genre of their films but the financial success was due to their re-use of sets being used by other film producers and as such were early contributors to low budget films.Hammer films were not well regarded by critics when they first came out. The Curse of Frankenstein, which was the studio's first major hit, was called by several critics as overly violent. Critical response to The Horror of Dracula was about the same. Besides the violence, Hammer films were known for their colors. The colors were very bright for that time.
Hammer films made several Dracula movies and several Frankenstein movies. Christopher Lee starred as Dracula and Peter Cushing starred as Baron Frankenstein. (In the Hammer Frankenstein movies, the main character was Baron Frankenstein; different monsters came and went throughout the series.) Cushing was also Van Helsing in the Dracula series and Lee and Cushing teamed again in The Mummy (Lee was the mummy) and The Gorgon. Most people think the first five years were the best years in the company's history. The best remembered of Hammer Films are probably The Curse of Frankenstein and The Horror of Dracula.
There were rumors in the 1990s of a series of remakes of Hammer films. Nothing came of these rumors. These rumors seem to pop up every few years but always seem to fade away.
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