Hammer Films | Cagey Films

2022 reading

Posted on January 7, 2023January 4, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Tony Dalton's biography of Terence Fisher from FAB Press

Three books which I read last year connect with my love of genre film, particularly horror: Tony Dalton’s hefty biography Terence Fisher: Master of Gothic Cinema from FAB Press; Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin, edited by Samm Deighan and now available as an e-book from Spectacular Optical; and – somewhat more esoteric – Powers of Darkness, an alternate version of Dracula first published in a Swedish newspaper from 1899 to 1900 and recently unearthed and translated back into English, published in an impressive limited edition by Centipede Press.

The Pemini Organisation on Blu-ray from Indicator

Posted on October 5, 2022October 4, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

John Drummond (Edward Woodward) expresses his grief through violence in Peter Crane's Hunted (1972)

Indicator unearth an obscure corner of ’70s British cinema with a box set of the three movies made by recent filmschool graduates who formed a production company called The Pemini Organisation. Despite extremely low budgets, director Peter Crane and writer Michael Sloan benefited from skilled technicians and high-profile casts who give the films professional polish; but the vagaries of commercial distribution made them disappear until this revival on disk fifty years later.

Hammer Vol. 6: Night Shadows from Indicator

Posted on October 20, 2021October 17, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Catherine Lacey appears briefly as wealthy, reclusive murder victim Ella Venable in John Gilling's The Shadow of the Cat (1961)

Indicator’s sixth box set of Hammer movies, Night Shadows, is a bit of a mixed bag, with a silly but entertaining Old Dark House throwback in John Gilling’s The Shadow of the Cat (1961), an overwrought psycho thriller in Freddie Francis’ Nightmare (1964), a historical adventure in Peter Graham Scott’s Captain Clegg (1962), and a pseudo-Gothic horror in Terence Fisher’s The Phantom of the Opera (1962).

Hammer adventures from Indicator

Posted on June 3, 2020December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Oliver Reed as Captain Tom Sylvester, a Roundhead with conflicted loyalties in John Gilling's The Scarlet Blade (1963)

Indicator’s fifth box set of Hammer movies moves away from the famous horrors to the fringes of the studio’s production, gathering a mediocre contemporary thriller by Michael Carreras and three entertaining historical adventures by John Gilling.

Indicator’s Hammer Vol. 4: Faces of Fear

Posted on January 22, 2020December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

... at the perfect body (Michael Gwynn) the Baron (Peter Cushing) has fashioned for him in Terence Fisher's The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)

With Hammer Vol. 4: Faces of Fear, Indicator continue to prove themselves one of the finest companies producing exceptional Blu-ray editions of a wide variety of genres. This new set includes three of the studio’s finest features, each very different from the others, plus an interesting misfire. As always, there’s an almost overwhelming quantity of supplementary material to provide background and critical assessments for each film.

Speed reviewing, Nov. 2019

Posted on November 13, 2019December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Saya (Ji-hyun Jun) confronts the demon Onigen (Koyuki) in Chris Nahon's Blood: the Last Vampire (2009)

Horror, westerns science fiction, crime, magic, demons, vampires, zombies, witches, a one-legged detective, people trapped in a deadly house, a damsel in distress and a film editor driven mad by cheap exploitation movies …

Recent Brit disks

Posted on June 12, 2019December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Barrister John Sawyer (James Mason), not so subtly dominated by drink in Pierre Jouve's Stranger in the House (1967)

Recent viewing includes an obscure arty film by the producer of Blow-Up and a pair of lesser known horrors from the heyday of British Gothic.

Hammer thrillers on Blu-ray from Indicator

Posted on March 20, 2019March 26, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Val Guest's The Full Treatment (1960) opens with the dramatic aftermath of a car crash

Indicator lavish attention on four less well-known, non-Gothic Hammer Films productions in their second box set devoted to the company: Criminal Intent focuses on a range of bad behaviour from murder to bank robbery and child molestation in four films which, while not all entirely successful, illuminate the studio’s versatility.

Recent viewing, May-June 2016, part two

Posted on July 13, 2016March 23, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Peter Cushing as the sadistic witch hunter Gustav Weil in John Hough's Twins of Evil (1971)

Nazis and vampires have been popular subjects for exploitation for decades in a range of genres from the Gothic to epic SF and paranoid b-movie thriller.

Genre On Disk, part one

Posted on December 18, 2013December 28, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

My genre viewing on disk over the past couple of months ranges from classics to crap, and I have to admit that I’ve enjoyed it all. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) From England, I’ve obtained impressive Blu-rays of three key movies from the period when “modern” horror was born: Hammer’s first two colour Gothic features, […]

Tag: Hammer Films