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Scream
Queens of the House That Dripped Blood By Bill Harry
Hammer
Films became the most famous studio in the world for their production
of Horror films in the Sixties…but apart from the gore they
presented the glamour.
Vampire Vamps
Hammer
Films revived the Gothic horror film in a spectacular manner. Their
first major horror production ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ brought
a success in America unprecedented for a British film and was screened
over there 24 hours a day from coast to coat and resulted in Hammer
receiving a three-pictures-a-year deal from Warner Brothers.
The
Hammer hallmark included attention to the Gothic atmosphere,
authentic-looking costumes and sets, tight dialogue, lots of gore,
colour, fine acting from a regular Hammer ensemble – and glamour.
One
of the studio’s most memorable and vivacious visual images was that
of Raquel Welch in Hammer’s 100th film ‘One Million
Years B.C.’ – in 1965. The company spent a larger budget than
usual on this production, filmed on location in the Canary Islands. It
was a remake of a Victor Mature film and was the American actress’s
second billed screen appearance (the previous year she had made her
debut in the sci-fi thriller ‘Fantastic Voyage’) and the massive
publicity featuring her in the world’s first bikini brought her
international stardom. She portrayed Leoni, a member of a prehistoric
tribe and one scene, in which she was carried away by a pterodactyl,
mirrored a similar moment in ‘King Kong.’
Prehistoric Pretties
SHE
The accent was also on glamour when Hammer promoted ‘She’ in
1964 with Ursula Andress in the title role. The Swiss actress had
already made quite an impact in another British film, ‘Dr No’, the
first in the James Bond series, in which she portrayed Honeychile
Rider and made a stunning screen entrance as she emerged from the sea
in a bikini. Ursula portrayed Ayesha, she-who-must-be-obeyed, an
immortal queen of an ancient civilisation.
The
two stars only appeared in a single Hammer movie, but there were
several actresses who made regular appearances in the studio
productions.
In
1958, Hazel Court, the titian-haired British actress, provided a
glimpse of cleavage in ‘The Curse of Frankenstein.’ The following
year she appeared in ‘The Man Who Could Cheat Death’, in a very
similar role: that of the ill-fated fiancée. These were Hazel’s
only Hammer appearances, although she appeared in several other horror
movies, including ‘Ghost Ship’, ‘Dr Blood’s Coffin’, ‘The
Terror’ and ‘The Masque of the Red Death.’
Also
in ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ was Valerie Gaunt who portrayed the
saucy maid Justine, who the Baron callously allows the creature to
murder. Valerie donned some fangs and a diaphanous nightgown to appear
as one of Dracula’s sensuous vampire brides in Hammer’s classic
‘Dracula’ (known in America as ‘The Horror of Dracula’).
Yvonne Furneaux
The
heaving bosom in ‘The Revenge of Frankenstein’ was provided by
Eunice Gayson and Yvonne Furneaux sported the décolletage in ‘The
Mummy.’ A bosom which attained almost cult status, however, belonged
to Marie Devereaux in ‘The Stranglers of Bombay. She portrayed a
handmaiden of the Goddess Kali, a mute creature who tortures and
mutilates several victims. The film was particularly popular in
Continental Europe.
During
their heyday, Hammer did, in fact, use a number of minor foreign
actresses, or starlets with foreign-sounding names. They included
Marla Landi in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’; Yvonne Romain and
Catherine Feeler in ‘The Curse of the Werewolf; Yvonne Monlaur in
‘The Bride of Dracula’ and ‘The Terror of the Tongs’ (she also
appeared in the Independent Artists film ‘Circus of Horrors’);
Viveca Lindfors in ‘The Damned’; Jennifer Daniel in ‘Kiss of the
Vampire’; Jeanne Roland in ‘The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb’ and
Nike Arrighi in ‘The Devil Rides Out.’
SHELLEY
Auburn-haired Barbara Shelley portrayed Carla Hoffman and the
title character in ‘The Gorgon’, an original Hammer script
transposing the creature of Greek legend to a Transylvania setting.
Barbara also appeared in Hammer’s tales of a sadistic Japanese
prisoner-of-war camp in ‘The Camp on Blood Island’ and ‘Secret
of Blood Island.’ She returned to the horror genre in ‘Dracula,
Prince of Darkness’ as Helen, the young wife who succumbs to
Dracula’s kiss and has to be staked by Father Sandor. In
‘Rasputin, the Mad Monk’, she portrayed Sonia, an aristocrat who
is mesmerised by the Georgian mystic. In ‘Quatermass & the
Pit’ she was Barbara Judd, witness to a racial memory of a Martian
expedition to Earth. Barbara had originally appeared in four films
between 1957 and 1960: ‘Blood of the Vampire’, ‘Cat Girl’,
‘Shadow of the Cat’ and ‘Village of the Damned.’
Hammer’s
two films set in Cornwall, ‘Plague of the Zombies’ and ‘The
Reptile’ featured Jacqueline Pearce. In the zombie movie she
portrayed a victim of the cult of the undead who arises from her grave
and has to be decapitated. In ‘The Reptile’ she appeared as Anna
Franklyn, a young girl who is able to metamorphose into a reptilian
monster. Jacqueline was to appear as the villainess Servalan in the
‘Blake’s Seven’ series on BBC TV in the late Seventies and as an
evil foe of the Doctor in the ‘Doctor Who’ series in 1985.
‘The
Viking Queen’ provided another vehicle for scantily clad actresses
and Carlita starred as Salina, a Boadicea-type character. Also in the
cast was Adrienne Corrie as Beatrice. The red-haired actress was also
to appear as a space agent in Hammer’s sci-fi movie ‘Moon Zero
Two.’ Adrienne, who had appeared in New World’s ‘The Hellfire
Club’ and the Danziger’s ‘Tell Tale Heart’, returned to the
Hammer fold in ‘Vampire Circus’. She also portrayed the Cat Woman
in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange.’
Stunning
blonde-tressed Susan Denberg made a single Hammer appearance as
Christina in ‘Frankenstein Created Woman’, portraying a crippled
girl who is transformed into a beautiful young woman in
Frankenstein’s laboratory. And then sets out on a mission of
vengeance.
In
‘The Vengeance of She’, the sequel to ‘She’, Olinka Berova
appeared as Carol, a contemporary girl who is mistaken for Ayesha,
she-who-must-be-obeyed.
Martine Beswick
The
girls were out in force in ‘Slave Girls’, a 1968 movie which
provided the studio with an opportunity to bring out scores of tiny
fur bikinis in a story of two tribes of women, with the dark haired
lasses capturing and using the blonde tribe as slaves – a situation
which is altered when a male hunter appears. Female goose flesh was
amply displayed in the film (which was called ‘Prehistoric Women’
in America) by Martine Beswick, Edina Roney, Stephanie Randall and
Carol White. Martine had originally appeared as Nupondi in ‘One
Million Years B.C.’ and was to share the title role as Sister Hyde
in ‘Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde.’
The
blonde looks of Veronica Carlson must have appealed to the casting
department of Hammer house of horror because they placed her as the
female lead in a trio of films. She appeared as Maria in ‘Dracula
Has Risen From the Grave’, Anne in ‘Frankenstein Must Be
Destroyed’ and Elizabeth in ‘The House of Frankenstein.’
Providing
the glamour for the 1968 movie ‘The Lost Continent, the first Hammer
treatment of a Dennis Wheatley novel, was Suzannah Leigh who was also
to turn up in the role of Janet in ‘Lust For a Vampire.’ She’d
previously appeared in a horror movie for Amicus called ‘The Deadly
Bees.’
Making
her debut in ‘The Lost Continent’ was Dana Gillespie, the singer
and David Bowie protégé who was also to appear in the non-Hammer
fantasy film ‘The People That Time Forgot.’
Ingrid Pitt
NUDITY
Linda Hayden was the voluptuous victim of the vampire in ‘Taste the
Blood of Dracula’ and Jenny Hanley provided the screams in ‘Scars
of Dracula.’ Hammer next produced another prehistoric movie, this
time with a more titillating treatment than in ‘One Million Years
B.C.’ with Victoria Vetri of the Rock Tribe appearing nude in
several scenes. Since nudity was no longer automatically clipped by
the censor’s scissors, Hammer became bolder still and introduced an
element of eroticism into their films, beginning with ‘The Vampire
Lovers’ in 1970, which starred Ingrid Pitt as the seductive vampire
whose large-bosomed victims included Madeline Smith and Kate O’Mara.
Ingrid proved such a success in the part that she was immediately
given the title role in ‘Countess Dracula’ the following year, a
film based on the true story of Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian
Countess who bathed in blood, and the script provided more
opportunities for her to appear 'au natural' Ingrid also appeared in
Amicus’ ‘The House That Dripped Blood’ and the cult classic
‘The Wicker Man.’
Madeline
Smith seemed fated to be cast as the naïve innocent with the
hourglass figure and appeared as the mute beauty Angel in 1973’s
‘Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell,’ while Kate O’ Mara
starred in ‘The Horror of Frankenstein.
Yutte
Stensgaard took over the Pitt role in ‘Lust For a Vampire’, with
Pippa Steel as her nude victim and the third film of the series, which
was loosely based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’, was ‘Twins
of Evil’ which featured the twins Madeline and Mary Collinson, who
not only appeared nude in the Hammer epic, but also in a Playboy
centrefold.
In
contrast to the bosom-heaving nightgown-shredding actresses of the
previous films, Angharad Rees seemed quite demure in ‘Hands of the
Ripper’, in which she was possessed by the soul of Jack the Ripper.
Then
it was a return to glamour with the Amazonesque Valerie Leon in
‘Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb’, based on Bram Stoker’s novel
‘Jewel of the Seven Stars’ and the fulsome Stephanie Beacham in
‘Dracula AD 1972.’ Stephanie appeared in the role of Jessica van
Helsing, grand-daughter of the famous vampire hunter and in the
sequel, ‘The Satanic Rites of Dracula’, the part was taken by
Joanna Lumley. Also in ‘Rites’ was Caroline Munro, who was to
become the leading pin up of fantasy film fans. After her role in
another Hammer movie ‘Captain Kronos’, she appeared in several
fantasy films including ‘The Golden Voyage of Sinbad’, ‘Star
Crash’, ‘At the Earth’s Core’ and the James Bond spectacular
‘The Spy Who Loved Me.’
Julie Ege
Swedish
actress Julie Ege brought her stunning looks to bear in 1971’s
‘Creatures the World Forgot’, Hammer’s third venture into
prehistory which displayed more acres of nude female flesh than the
previous two. Julie also appeared in the final Hammer Dracula movie
‘The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires’ as Vanessa Buren.
The
last Hammer heroine turned out to be a 14-year-old German actress. In
the 1976 adaptation of Dennis Wheatley’s ‘To the Devil a
Daughter’, Nastassia Kinski portrayed Catherine, a young victim of a
group of Satanists.
The golden age of hammer Films
was over, but the name continued into the TV age with several Hammer
Horror series featuring a new host of glamorous actresses.
Many thanks to
Bill Harry for this article
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