FS2: British Cinema: Hammer Productions Part 1:A Case Study

Read the information on Hammer Productions from "The Cinema Book"ed. Cook & Bernink and answer the questions to build up a studio casestudy.

Introduction:

Hammer Productions:

Hammer Productions Limited was first reg­

istered as a film company in 1934, but soon

after disappeared for almost a decade: In thewake of a short-lived exhibition quota

imposed by protectionist postwar legislation

(the Dalton Duty, 1947-8), Hammer's con­

trolling company, Exclusive Films was

'encouraged by the ARC cinema circuit tosupply low-budget supporting features

[and] this was the impetus for reformingHammer' (Evles, 1973, p. 22). Very rapidly it

became companv policy to produce films\>'hich could 'capitalise on subjects and char­

acters lh~l "'ere pre-sold to the public either

througn raJlu ~n...i tel.:vision or \'ia myth

and legend' (Pirie, 1973, p. 26). Adaptations

of recent BBC radio programmes proved a

particularly reliable and profitable source

and a cycle of low-budget B-feature quota

quickies was launched, featuring such fam­

iliar radio characters as Dick Barton. PC 9

and The Man in Black.

Between 1948 and 1950 Hammer moved

its production base several times from one

large country house to another. The decision

to use country houses rather than studios

was determined by cost factors, and itproved to be one of the company's most

important policy decisions, for it gave thefilms a distinctive style and put them in the

ideal position to recreate historical/mythical

subjects. In 1951 Hammer finally settled at

Bray in Berkshire, in a large building which

housed the company until 1968. Also in

1951 Hammer negotiated an agreementwith an independent American producer,

Robert Lipperr, which guaranteed a 20th

Century-Fox release for their product in

return, among other things. for Hammer's

agreement to emplov American stars inleading roles to ease their films into the US

market. For almost four years Hammer pro­

duced B-films starring American actors suchas Zachary Scott, Paul Henreid and Cesar

Romero. with the result that American stu­

dios began to see the benefits of lo\>,-budget

British production of supporting features.But when the Americans withdrew from thisarrangement aroul .. 1954, Hammer, like the

rest of the British film industry found them­

selves in a critical position:

An industry observer might very wellh~ve written Hammer off Bray

Studios lay miserably empty for twelvemmths apart from a series of fca·

lureltes and one particularly drear)" 'B'feature "If the 1954 film,S had failedor had had only a routine SUCcess it isnot impossible that the whole courseof British film hislory might have beenvery different. (Pirie, 1973, p, 27)

1. After its first demise, what became Hammer's company productionpolicy?

2. Hammer's country house base was a financial decision. Why did itbecome one of the company's most important policy decisions?

3.0utline Hammer's agreement with Robert Lippert at 20th CenturyFox.

The 1950s

Characteristically, Hammer negotiated

this crisis by changing their production

policy as the structure of the industry and

the expectations of the audiences changed.In the mid- I950s there were a number of

such changes for the company to exploit. Atthe beginning of the decade there existed

three main cinema circuits in Britain ­Odeon, Gaumont-British and ABe. Rankowned both Odeon and Gaumont-British

and had an agreement with Ealing. ABC,

who already had a Iongstanding agreementwith Hammer, may have decided that a

degree of differentiation from Rank's Ealing

comedy 'family audiences' policy was worthattempting (see Ealing studios, p. 83). Since

the relaxa tion of British film censorship and

the introduction of the X-certificate in 1951,

Rank had only very rarely exhibited 'adults­only' films. Indeed, only one X was screened

in Rank cinemas in 1956, and only fourteenin the entire decade. ABC, on the other

hand, showed more than fifty Xs in the

1950s, many of which came from Hammer.The mid-1950s also saw an expansion in the

black-and-white television industry, with

each new TV licence 'costing' approximately

100 cinema attendances a year (Limbacher,n.d., p. IS). Hammer's decision to exploit

colour and X-certificate material at this

point set them on the road to success. The

house at Bray provided the perfect location

for the period of intensive production and

expansion that foUowed. At Bray, Hammerbecame

a production company utterly unlikeanything that the British cinema had

previously known. There is a very slight

echo of Ealing in the structure that

emerged, but perhaps the most obviousanalogy is with one of the small

Hollywood studios of the 1930s and

40s like Republic or Monogram; for

almost overnight Hammer became a

highly efficient factory for a vast series

of exploitation pictures made on tight

budgets with a repertory company ofactors and a small, sometimes over­

exposed series of locations surround­

ing their tiny Buckinghamshire estate.IPirie. 1973, p. 42)

This set-up combined with a continuity

of personnel at all levels throughout the

company enabled Hammer to produce a dis­tinctive and professional product at low cost.

Anthony Hinds, a producer and prolific

screenwriter at Hammer, has summarisedthe studio's aesthetic/economic polic\' with

the slogan 'Put the money on the screen'(quoted in l.irtlr Shop!,,' o{ H"m>r5 n,>. 4.

p. 40). Certainly. in the 1960s. when

Hammer's budgets averaged around£120,000 per film, £15,000 or even £20,000

would be spent on sets and decor. with

additional amounts spent on lighting.

Technicolor and occasionally widescreens.Scripts, on the other hand, were much less

expensive, deriving as they did almostentirely from radio, television, theatre, pub­

lished works, myth, legend and, of course,

other films.Hammer's move into the horror cycle for

which they became famous was by no means

simple, though it was certainly facilitated

both by the economic and industrial con­

ditions just described, and by the social cli­

mate of Britain in the 1950s (Pirie, 1980).

The decision was helped by the peculiar

attributes of the company's set-up at Bray:

.:he studio was a partial anachronism,

out of time and out of place, All the

other small self-contained British stu­dios run by production companies were

in the process of dosing down or seUing

out to television ... But in a way, it was

the very old fashioned nature of the

production set-up at Bray which made

it so ideal as a focal point for Hammer'srecreation of its own horrific version of

nineteenth-century Europe. Bray could

present the past because it was the past.(Pirie, 1980, p.l3)

4.What 2 areas did Hammer decide to exploit in the mid 1950s as aresponse to their next crisis?

5. How did this address current shifts in the film industry climate?

6. What were the main features of Hammer Productions at BrayStudios and what did it become?

More U.S Finance

And, paradoxically, American financial

interests in the British film industry alsocontributed to the success of Hammer's

choice of the British Gothic novel tradition

as a source of inspiration. Pirie has

described how

By the 19505 production in Hollywood

had become so costly that Britainbecame a viable filmmaking centre for

low-cost production. One of the advan·

tages for American producers was that

they could in this way spend some ofthe money earned from distribution in

Britain which the Anglo-American

Agreement of 1948 prohibited themfrom converting from pounds into dol·

lars, .. (Pirie, 1980, p. 4)

According to this agreement, American

companies could only take an annual

amount of £.li million out of Britain. Therewere, however. ways round this prohibition,

co-production of films or co-ownership of

facilities among them. It was, for instance.

the loan capital of the National Film FinanceCorporation which paid for the production

of The Curse of Frankensrein (1957) but the

film was distributed by Warner Bros.

Similarly, the Eady Levy, which returned a

proportion of box-office takings to the pro­duction companies of the respective best-

grossing British films. was so slack in defin.

ing nationality that :~merican subsidiaries Or

partnerships could easily profit from it. The

'Britishness' of fi:m' set in the \'ictorianperiod and featuring a decadent aristocraC\'

made Hammer an attractive investment fo;

American companies and allowed the

American film industry to secure an econ.

omic foothold in Britain. For a whileHammer profited enormously from this

kind of arrangement, but the bubble Was to

burst when the Americans eventually Pulledout, leaving the British film industry in agreat many difficulties (see British SOCialrealism 1959-63, p. 88). But perhaps the

most influential factor was the company'sability to capitalise on the situation whentheir luck broke with the success of ~Quatermass Xperimenr. In 1954, like Ealingten years before, Hammer were being forced

to experiment to find a ne..... product and anew market. One 1954 production Was the

studio's first film in Technicolor, Men ofSherwood Forest. Another film, much mOresuccessful, was an experiment with a new

genre - horror: The Quarermass Xperirnenr(1955) combined the then unfamiliar terri.

tory of horror with the science fictionelements which Hammer had already

explored in films like Spaceways (1953).Moreover, the eccentric spelling of the Word'experiment' in the title capitalised upon thefilm's X-certificate while also functioning asready·made publicity. Furthermore, it wasan adaptation of an already very sucCtSSful

B~C serial, first broadcast in July and August

of 1953.

'The film opened at the LondoD

Pavilion on Friday 26 August 1955 withHammer's fortunes at their lowest ebb and

immediately began breaking box oflietrecords both here and subsequmtly inAmerica' (Pirie, 19i3, p. 28).

H()

R.R.()

R.7. How did American financial interest in the British Film Industry

contribute to Hammer's success?

8, In '1954 Hammer faced yet another crisis, similar to that of Ealing10 years before. How did they respond?

Bye Bye B-Movies

After the unexpected success of ThtQuarermass Xperiment, Hammer com­missioned another science fiction script aswell as a Quatermass sequel. Pirie points tothe relationship between the themes thatHammer (and in due course many otb~

film companies) began to approach in 1956,and the political events in the countryduring those crucial twelve months (Pirie.1973, p_ 31). On the very day that the gmt­est British anxiety movie of all, QualU1/llUl

Il (1957), followed X - The Unknown (19;6)into production at Bray, a headline in ThtTimes read 'Giant H-Bomb Dropped~ Bothfilms received X-certificates in Britain andwere distributed as adult entertainmentonce again the title X- The Unknown simul·taneously exploited and re-emphasised Ul

certificate. In the same year, 1956, theProduction Code of the Motion PietWtAssociation of America was revised wdrelaxed, which widened the market forHammer's product in the United Sutes.

urvive theNevertheless, for Hammer to sdemise of the double bill it was necessarYt\lIthe studio to shake off their B-feature rtpu­ution and explore entirely new genericII'mues in order to succeed in the AmericanmuUt. Hammer was thus encouraged torontinue employing American actors inleading roles: Dean Jagger as the Professor inX- Tht Unknown, for example, and BrianDonl~ as Quatermass.

Pirie argues in A Heritage of Horror thatit is asy to underestimate the aesthetic andteonomic risk Hammer were taking in 1956when the decision was made to elevatehorror to a privileged role in their produc­tion hkrarchy. 'By the time Quatermass Il6nished filming in July 1956 Hammer hadIIlOlt or less finalised plans for a completechange in their output No less than tenprojects were abandoned in 1956' and in!bar place 'Hammer embarked on theirmost significant and ambitious venrure so~, Tht Curse of Frankenstein which wentUUo production at Bray on 19 November'W·. me, 1973, p. 38), and enjoyed enormousUlternational success.

'Draeula went into production at Braylbout a year after the shooting of The CurseofFrankmsrein, in November 1957 ... Whilethe frankenstein film had been made onbehatf of Warners, the new Dracula was~nsored by UnIversal, the same Americanstudio which had fathered the whole horrormovie tradition in Hollywood during the1930s with Karloff and Lugosi . The finalseaJ Was set on Hammer's new status in thelun-Uller of 1958 when Dracula began to reg­ISter its enormous success all over the world.Universal announced at this point that they....ould turn over to Hammer the remakerights of their entire library of horrorl1loVies' (Pirie, 1973, p. 43).

Sir J .H ames Carreras, then head 01

. al1l111er, has explained the '!\1dio', initialInler~", , .

'n t.le horror I(enre \rather thJ.n Ink~fi . •ha )a. the result of a realisation that there. d never been a FrankenSlein or a Dracula~ colOur. Colour certainlY differentiated'lal1l . .

lller s remakes from Universal's mono-

chrome horror films, but this in itself wasnot enough. At this time, Universal's copy­right expressly forbade imitatioll of themake-up and the neck bolts of the earlierFrankensrein, and for similar reasons onDracula (1957) (retitled HOrTorof Dracula inthe US to avoid confusion with the original)Hammer's sets were designed so as to be asunlike those in the American version aspossible.

It has been estimated that between themDracula and The Curse of Frankensteingrossed more than $4 million. That two suchinexpensive films could be such a giganticsuccess was due in part to the interest of theAmerican ma~ket. It also meant that sequels,spin-offs and so on were bound to follow.Eventually, having received the rights toremake Universal's e~tire horror library, andfinally released from the copyright problemsthat had plagued the productions of Draculaand Frankensrein, Hammer embarked on aseries of adaptations of Universal's 19305tales of the supernatural. The proven successof previous entries in the series promptedRank to reconsider its virtual embargo onHammer horror films, and The Mummy(1959) was released in Britain not by ABCbut by Rank's Odeon circuit. The Mummyreunited Peter Cushing and Christopher Leefor the first time since Dracula and proved aconsiderable success.

9. What does Pirie's study of Hammer reveal about its production in1956?

IO,How did Hammer make the transfer from B movie production to Amovie production after the demise of the double bill?

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The 1960s and 70s

Another Rank release, The Brides ofDracula (1960), was Hammer's response toChristopher Lee's unwillingness to be type­cast as Dracula. a role which he had playedin 1957 but was not to repeat until 1965.Thus, according to Pirie, Hammer wereforced into the position of having to findsome way of making a Dracula movie with­out Dracula. The absence of Count Draculaencouraged Hammer to compensate byadding ingredients to the fonnula: the bridesthemselves, for instance, provided anincreased sexual component. However. evenbefore 1960 Hammer were obviously aware

of the need to vary the fonnula of the vam­pire myth. Once an audience has grasped thebasic elements of the vampire hunters'artillery - stake, crucifix, strong daylight.communion host - the plot could all tooeasily subside into a succession of shoppinglists. So Hammer carefully elaborated theparaphernalia and in doing so were able topersuade the audiences of the late 1950s thatthis time evil might just triumph (see Thehorror film, p. 194).

In 1968, Hammer received the Queen'sAward for industry for having brought in £1.5million from America over three successiveyears. However, 1968 was probably the lastyear in which Hammer could be certain ofobtaining American distribution for its films.The Devil Rides Out (1967) was in fact adver­tised under the name of Dennis Wheatley ­upon whose novel it was based - rather thanthat of Hammer Productions. By this time

. American finance had more or less aban­doned the British film industry to its fate.

Hammer, who were still in anextremely good box·office position.found it at once necessary to fix updeals with British. as opposed toAmerican companies, in order tosecure regular finance. Distribution inAmerica was still guaranteed, but inreturn the British companies who werethemselves in trouble began to insistthat Hammer use their own studiospace rather than Bray, to make thefilms. Consequently, after much delib·eration. Hammer were forced to sellBray to a property company in 1968.(Pirie, 1973, pp. 47-8)

Having finally been forced by 1969 intovacating Bray. some of the company's confi­dence in the horror genre was lost with thestudio. Taste the Blood ofDracula (1969) wasadvertised with the tongue· in-cheek slogan'Drink A Pint of Blood A Day' and its devia­tion from fonnula requirements provedunpopular at the box office. Once againHammer tried hard to differentiate theirproduct from television: the film opens withRoy Kinnear, a familiar TV comedian, beingconfronted with the horrific TechnicolorCount Dracula, an opening which illustratedthe complicated rituals Hammer utilised toreinvest their Count Dracula character withlife at the start of each film in the series. Thiswas the fourth Hammer Dracula film and, atthe end of the third, the Count had fallenhundreds of yards from the battlements ofhis own castle to be impaled on a sharpcross. The resurrection of the Count fromabsolute death to life is one of the key ingre­dients of the series. Indeed. one film.Dracula Prince of Darkness (1965) tookalmost half its length to effect the Count's

reappearance.Following the financial failure of Taste the

Blood ofDracula, which had compensated for

the absence of Peter Cushing with other box­office attractions such a.:. ~iolence and sexu­ality. H:unma were uncertain as to the futureof the horror genre. At the end of th, 1960sthe company vacillated between EMI-Elstreeand Rank-Pinewood. the exhibition circuitsABC and Odeon. and between straightfor­ward horror and self-parody. With a chanj!eof management at Hammer in the early 1970sand encouragement from Warners. Hammerdecided to brinj! the Dracula story up to datewith films such as Dracula AD 1972 and TheSatanic Rites of Dracula. The Satanic Rites ofDracula (1973) reunited Cushing and Lee,injected a number of controversial contem·porary issues - such as property speculationand political corruption - and included acharacteristic Hammer scene. with VanHelsing being interviewed by a televisionreporter. All these elements were unable togenerate an audience in the UK large enoughto convince American distributors that thefilm was worth releasing in the US. In thesame year American and British audienceswere watching The Exorcist, beside whichDracula was all too ordinary. Once theAmerican horror and sci-fi cycles were underway in the mid-1970s, films like The Omen(1976) and Star Wars (1977) were being pro­duced in the same studios and with the samefacilities that Hammer had employed. Mean­while, Hammer returned to the source oftheir original success - the television spin-off.In 1972/73, for instance, Hammer releasedMutiny on the Buses, That's Your Funeral. LoveThy Neighbourand Nearest and Dearest. Noneof these ever appeared on the American cir­cuits. Since the late 19705, Hammer's horrorfilm production has virtually ceased, confin­ing itself mainly to television series.

It.How did Hammer respond to Christopher Lee's reluctance to betypecast as Dracula and what added advantage, or new studiofeature did this provide for the studio?

12.What other changes did Hammer make to prolong its life as a filmproduction studio?

13.Produce a basic diagram (a time line/time chart or flow diagram) tooutline the crisis/response history of Hammer Productions.

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ESSAY QUESTIONS;

Using Hammer Productions as your starting point, examine the changesand challenges undertaken by British Cinema production in Hammer's40 year life span. (Remember to use case studies in your response).

Examine the use of the Studio System in Britain. (Use your own casestudies in your response).

Examine the systems of film production used in the UK. (Remember touse case studies in your answer).