The Hammer Vault Book Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 12.27.2011

Marcus Hearn delves into the history of the legendary Hammer Film Studios with this expansive coffee table book. But does it take a proper bite out of the material or just scratch the surface? 411's Jeremy Thomas checks in with his full review!

Written by: Marcus Hearn
Published by: Titan Books
176 pages



Anyone who considers themselves a horror afficianado knows the name of Hammer Films. The UK-based film studio was one of the, if not the leading studio for genre films from the 1950s through the 1970s. The studio made some of the most enduring horror, sci-fi and thriller films of the era and gained success both internationally and in the United States, the latter due to its distribution partnership with major Hollywood studios. Such esteemed names as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing became international stars thanks to their work on the studios films like The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy, The influence of the studio on modern genre film-making and exploitation films cannot be discounted, and even now after almost thirty years of inactivity is back in the business, producing such films as Let Me In and the upcoming The Woman in Black starring Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe. How Marcus Hearn, Hammer and Titan Books has collected the visual history of this incredibly influential studio in The Hammer Vault, a coffee table book detailing the studio's prolific history during the height of its success.

The book begins its look at the story of Hammer Films starting with the studio's first significant venture into genre filmmaking with their 1955 adaptation of the BBC sci-fi serial titled The Quartermass Experiment. From there it moves into the studio's sci-fi horror flick X the Unknown and Quartermass 2 before delving into the studio's true breakthrough hit, the influential and groundbreaking The Curse of Frankenstein. As the book progresses it doesn't seek to offer a blow-by-blow history of Hammer; rather, it focuses on the studio's body of work, examining each of their greatest films in what are generally two-page spreads with a few one-page exceptions. Such films as the studio's many Frankenstein and Dracula sequels (with such lurid titles as Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and Taste the Blood of Dracula), their successful Mummy-related films, their psychological thrillers like Maniac and Crescendo and their "cave girl" films kicked off by One Million Years B.C., which features Racquel Welch's iconic "fur bikini" that is a hallmark of the fantasy prehistoric films of the era. It continues on through the studio's decline due to shifting audience tastes in the 1970s and it's television series in the 1980s, Hammer House of Horror and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, which were the studio's last productions in the twentieth century. Finally, it looks at the return of Hammer starting with the horror serial Beyond the Rave and the feature film Wake Wood, then continuing through 2009's The Resident and 2010's Let Me In.

Hearn as laid the book out very well, with the two page spreads making it easy to find individual films. Each film gets paragraphs about their conception, financing, making and release with occasional quotes from cast and crew. The key attractions however, as with many coffee table books, are the graphic representations. Hearn and Hammer have dug up recovered items from the marketing of the films, promotional stills, script pages and even old props, the pictures of which tell a remarkable visual history. This gives an insight not only into the films, but into Hammer as a whole. It's fascinating to see how the studio marketed their films to both theater owners and movie-goers. In today's combination of the Hollywood studio system and grassroots internet projects, everything seems ephemeral and akin to a sanitized smoke and mirrors routine. Looking through the pages of this book you can see the more visceral and enduring marketing that even these days could be an effective way to sell a film, if only the cost of printing elaborate publicity manuals and Phantom of the Opera mask-shaped promotional items were comparable to posting a one-sheet teaser poster online and uploading clips to YouTube.



At 176 pages, the book is impressive in length for a coffee table book and contains a vast amount of information. It bears noting that this is probably not a book to lay out if your kids have a habit of flipping through; although the violence is quaint by today's Hostel and Saw-raised standards, there is a very good reason why the studio garnered controversy in their time and there is a certain amount of color gore in the promotional stills. There is also some topless nudity in the 1970s photos and posters, when the studio found itself falling behind in the horror game and transitioned its content more toward the sexualized route that European films were taking at the time. It's all relatively tame considering what's available now but still obviously not for children.

As an added bonus, late in the book it covers "Unamde Hammer," those films that Hammer conceptualized but never made due to budgetary reasons or too out there even for Hammer. Included among these projects was an attempted adaptation of Forrest J. Ackerman's iconic comic book heroine Vampirella, which would have starred Playboy Playmate Barbara Leigh, and Nessie, a film about the Loch Ness Monster rampaging through New York City. The latter was killed after Universal's remake of King Kong became a box office bomb, a sad casualty if ever there was.

The overriding thing that carries through the book is a remarkable insight into Hammer that it provides as well as the studio's love for what it was doing. Only a studio with that level of love could suggest to theaters that they recreate scenes in their lobbies to get people to join in the fun (complete with papier mache chandeliers and scary dwarves) or conceptualize films with titles like Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls, a title and concept so brilliantly off-the-wall that SyFy and The Asylum only wish that their attempts to copy such a formula were half as creative. It is that very love of genre filmmaking that made Hammer such a beloved studio, then and now, and it is the documentation of such a love that makes The Hammer Vault a great buy for any hardcore horror fan.

The 411: Marcus Hearn, Hammer Films and Titan Books have partnered to create something truly special for horror fans in The Hammer Vault. Full of fantastic promotional material, previously-unseen correspondance, script notes, and more, this is a treat for both longtime and new fans of Hammer. For those horror hounds with a little Christmas spending money that they're looking to unload, this is a great way to spend it.

Final Score:  9.5   [  Amazing ]