Frankenstein in Film: Hammer Film Productions
More graphic than its Universal predecessor, Hammer Films ushered in a new era for horror beginning with its adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel
The world of horror underwent some serious transformations in the decade between the final Universal Frankenstein film and the first in Hammer Film Productions line of monster movies. Where the Universal touch was to have the violence more imagined than shown on screen, Hammer dove right into the blood and gore, not afraid of graphic imagery.
The full color horror films Hammer thrust in front of eager movie goers in 1957 elevated the horror genre to a new level. The British film studio capitalized on the young Baby Boomers (who had just begun to view the Golden Age of horror on the popular new medium of television), and reimagine the horror movie monsters they had been enjoying in dreary black and white into a world of bloody color.
Real castles instead of studio sets, chilling musical scores, and modern cinematography elevated horror to a new peak, beginning with Hammer’s first Frankenstein film in the late 1950s. The studio’s versions of the mummy, the werewolf, and Count Dracula would soon follow suit. But none of the forthcoming cinematic masterpieces would have experienced the fan interest or the box office success had it not of been for the Terence Fisher classic “The Curse of Frankenstein.”
