|
|
|
Quatermass Xperiment
|
|
|
Abominable Snowman
: :Made the same year as the gory gothic hit The Curse of Frankenstein, this smartly written, philosophically grounded Hammer studios adventure written by Nigel Kneale (who also wrote the excellent science fiction thriller Quatermass and its two sequels) was lost in the flesh and blood of Hammer's new vein of horror. Peter Cushing, best known for his ruthless portrayals of Dr. Frankenstein and his more tempered rationalist skew on vampire hunter Van Helsing, plays another scientist driven to prove ...
|
|
|
Quatermass & The Pit (Ws Spec)
: :We have met the enemy, and it is us: when a Martian spacecraft with a terrifying link to the origins of humanity is unearthed beneath a London tube station, only the esteemed Professor Bernard Quatermass (a very British--and possibly mad--precursor to Mulder and Scully) can save London's suddenly murderous population from itself. One of the most intelligently paranoid science fiction films ever produced, this pessimistic masterpiece functions as a dark flip side to the relatively optimistic alien-induced evolution theory ...
|
|
|
Horror of Dracula
: :After Hammer Studios' tremendous success with The Curse of Frankenstein, they struck a deal to adapt Universal's catalog of classics and set their sights first on Dracula. Christopher Lee removes the monstrous makeup from the earlier film and makes his entrance as an elegant, confident, altogether seductive Dracula, a frightening figure of flashing eyes and erotic allure. Peter Cushing, with his hawklike profile and piercing eyes, turns his rationalist intensity to Van Helsing: man of science as crusading vampire ...
|
|
|
Brides of Dracula
: :When Christopher Lee declined to reprise his role as Count Dracula in a sequel to the enormously popular The Horror of Dracula, Hammer went another direction and instead followed the investigations of vampire hunter Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). He doesn't actually appear until the second act, after French schoolteacher Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur, a big eyed, thick-lipped, curvy young beauty in the Bardot mold) inadvertently releases Baron Meinster (David Peel), a young disciple of Dracula, from his castle prison in ...
|
|
|
Phantom of the Opera (1962)
: :This 1962 version of the horror story comes from Britain's Hammer Films, and is unusually ornate for that studio. Herbert Lom gives an affecting performance as the disfigured composer who wreaks vengeance beneath an opera house. The film is low on violence and strong on the character's psychological state, and the Phantom's lair is very haunting in its own way. A subplot involving a police investigation is mere (and distracting) padding, but otherwise there is a lot of merit ...
|
|
|
Maniac, the
: :This 1962 version of the horror story comes from Britain's Hammer Films, and is unusually ornate for that studio. Herbert Lom gives an affecting performance as the disfigured composer who wreaks vengeance beneath an opera house. The film is low on violence and strong on the character's psychological state, and the Phantom's lair is very haunting in its own way. A subplot involving a police investigation is mere (and distracting) padding, but otherwise there is a lot of merit ...
|
|
|
Curse of Werewolf
: :After Hammer Studios rewrote the histories of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy it was only natural to take on the howling hirsute one. Discarding the cursed gypsies, blooming wolfsbane, and chanted legends that swirl through Universal's The Wolf Man, director Terence Fisher and screenwriter John Elder (a pseudonym for producer Anthony Hinds) returned to Guy Endore's novel The Werewolf of Paris for inspiration. Switching locations to 18th-century Spain (to make use of standing sets from a canceled production about ...
|
|
|
Quatermass 2
: :Considered by many critics to be the finest in the series, Hammer's second Quatermass feature (adapted from the television serial by Nigel Kneale) is a subversive alien invasion story. Professor Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) stumbles onto a top-secret government base near a rural location that has been inundated by a steady stream of meteors. His investigations, which are met with distrust by suspicious townspeople and outright hostility by the base guards, uncover a conspiracy originating in the highest reaches of ...
|
|
|
Frankenstein & The Monster From Hell
: :Though it wasn't Hammer Studios' final film, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell can be considered its swan song, an intelligent, inventive, stylized reworking of the themes that had sustained the series for almost two decades. Dr. Frankenstein has buried his old identity and reigns over an insane asylum as Dr. Victor (Peter Cushing under a flamboyant blond wig in his sixth and final turn as the mad scientist) as if it were a live-parts yard for his continuing ...
|
|