Hammer's Best

 Probably one of my all time favorite Hammer Studios horror film is also one of their very first,  1957's The Curse of Frankenstien (Warner Home Entertainment). This is the one I like to watch around Halloween time and throughout the year Brilliantly directed by Terence Fisher, this one was photographed in vibrant color  and with style to spare. To avoid conflict with Universal who had made the original films with Boris Karloff, Fisher had to re-invent the whole Frankenstein legend. The monster's make-up had to be changed to avoid violating Jack Pierce's the copyright for the look of the original monster.  The results come much closer to the creature described in Mary Shelley's novel. Unlike James Whales campy Frankenstein films, Fisher choose to keep the whole thing fairly strait. There is one part when the olf blind man asks the creature if the cat had his tongue? That's about it with the humor. The lab scenes were also changed with the creature's lifeless form being housed in a huge aquarium  and the lab being powered with a huge roulette wheel.  And then there's the splendid technicolor photography. Probably the major difference between the Universal films and Hammer was that Universal had the monster carrying the story from film to film. Hammer handed the dear Baron the responsiblity for the films. Hammer made sure it really was Frankenstein's films throughout. Frankenstein (well played by Peter Cushing) is not crazy, not the proverbial mad scientist, just so driven that he cannot see the obvious dangers. Christopher Lee has very little to do as the monster, (He supposedly hated the part). Even so I still love it. I can see Curse of Farnkenstein as an antecedent  to more recent horror films. At one point the monster is hung on a meat hook that would have it's echoes in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The monster's ghoulish green visage bears a similar look to the many zombies that would stagger across the screen in later horrors.  And the red gore make's it a near proto-type for the splatter films of the Seventies  and Eighties. But the most obvious one can be seen in a little gem of a movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show (l975, 20th Century Fox). When production began the filmakers were forced to film it  on very limited means.. to cut corners many of Hammer's props were recycled for Rocky Horror's birth. The huge aguarium and the bandaged body inside were hold overs from Hammer Studios. Ofcourse Fran-N-Furter's lab had to be given a glam rock look with hot pink tiles and statutes of David in place.  Never the less Hammer Studios influence is felt through out Rocky Horror. And this Halloween I know that I'll be dusting off  the DVD for Curse of Frankenstein. I can certainly suggest the same.