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(OMINOUS MUSIC)

(VOICEOVER MONTAGE)Hammer Films
set what I consider to be...

the modern tone of the horror genre.

Hammer was successful
because of...

a certain alchemy
and a certain magic.

They were very...

lurid, shocking, Technicolor.

You know, they were the opposite of
the old Universal horror pictures.

When Hammer came round, it
took it to a whole different level.

It just felt different
from everything else.

Hammer Films
gave us this amazing brand of...

spooky castles and vampires.

And suddenly, this small British
studio was gonna become a force.

It was something people wanted...
they wanted to see more of.

CHARLES DANCE: A small
British film studio,

born in the early 1930s,

came to define the entire genre
of horror cinema.

From humble beginnings,
it rose to legendary status,

becoming a cultural touchstone...

that still entertains audiences
and creators alike.

We're about to embark on a voyage

through the chronicles
of Hammer Films,

exploring the lives of
the visionaries behind the scenes,

how and why they created
such groundbreaking films...

..and the lasting impact
they've had on cinema and culture.

This is the story of the heroes,
legends and monsters...

of Hammer.

Oh, where did it all begin?

Hammer was my father,
surprisingly enough.

KINSEY: Hammer Film started
as the production arm of...

a film distribution company
called Exclusive Films.

Nineteen, take one.

It was a family-run unit,
run by two families.

MICHAEL: My grandfather,
Enrique Carreras...

..and a man called Will Hammer,
or Hinds.

He was a...

successful businessman
and a failed comedian.

He failed because
he wasn't really very funny.

He and another chap
did a double act years ago,

comic double act, and...

cos his...my father's business
was centred in Hammersmith,

they called themselves
Hammer and Smith,

and the name Hammer
started from that.

William Hinds worked
in his family business,

which was FW Hinds the jewellers.

He was someone who...

combined his hobbies
and his business skills.

In other words, if you like
racing bicycles, then, oh,
maybe we'll do some of that.

He had a bicycle shop,
but he also had a particular
interest in the theatre.

He had his own booking agency,

used to book his own shows,
had his own theatres.

Gradually,
his theatrical interest...

started to take
a different direction

when the motion picture
company started.

He was very passionate
about filmmaking at that time,

which is why it was his idea

to start the production company,
use his name.

Will Hinds gave his stage name
to the fledgling company.

But what of the other man
responsible for Hammer's creation?

Enrique Carreras was Spanish.

Then he came over here in 1909,

and it seems to have
been a fairly bold,

entrepreneurial kind of figure.

He had a chain of cinemas,
which was called the Blue Halls,

which he'd sold to ABC.

And it was him
that had formed Exclusive Films,

which was now distributing movies.

Will Hinds joined with him.

And that was in 1929.

Hammer became two families -

the Hinds and the Carreras -
all the way through its career.

Interesting family.
Very.

They made five films
between 1934 and 1936.

The two notable ones was...

The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste,
with Bela Lugosi...

I didn't forget you.

..and Song Of Freedom,
with Paul Robeson.

Paul Robeson was a massive artist.

I'd like to sing you
a fragment of a song,

which I've never sung
in public before.

So it was a real coup to have
those headlining their films.

Unfortunately, they didn't
do particularly well.

(SINGS) I hear the voice of my...

And the Hammer company was,
at that point, allowed to lapse.

They continued running Exclusive,
which did quite well during the war.

And after the war,
Enrique's son...

Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Carreras,
came back and joined the firm.

This is where the...

Hammer film company proper comes in.

PIRIE: It's often said...

that no-one succeeds
like a son who saw his father fail.

And I often think of that phrase
when I think of James Carreras.

Who is he?
I don't know!

James went
to Manchester Grammar School...

..where he left at 16 without
any qualifications of any kind.

He was a salesman...
absolutely personified.

There is even a story that
he sold a car without an engine.

He could sell
the proverbial ice cubes to Eskimos.

Well, James Carreras
was exactly the kind of man

who had what you call 'a good war'.

He was successful.
He was greatly loved by his people.

You couldn't have a nicer person
work for than Jimmy Carreras.

What a distinguished,
beautiful-looking man he was.

He wasn't a skirt-chaser.

He became a colonel
in a fairly short space of time...

and liked to be called the Colonel
for a time after the war too.

And then he came back,
and he took over the company.

The power is mine,

and I shall use it as I please.

Well, he was your typical sort of...

old colonel...type,
very well-spoken,

upright man - quite a nice guy.

And that's when Hammer began...

to accelerate
its commercial activities.

The idea of Hammer
was to make money.

And James Carreras was obviously
into the idea of making money.

Which is... Who can blame him?

My father was a businessman,
a salesman. He wasn't a film maker.

He was really good
at schmoozing people.

Our efforts...would be
considerably less effective...

without the cooperation
of you gentlemen.

Through his social life
and his work for the Variety Club,

which he loved, he made contact
with American producers.

Who needed what you might call
half-arsed British product

with fading American stars...

to produce what were called
'quota quickies'.

There's no question
that Jimmy Carreras,

in his backslapping, glad-handing,

Variety Club way...

was a genius of promotion.

Through James Carreras'
networking abilities...

he was able to take advantage
of the first key opportunity

that arose
for his new production company.

In a post-war move
to grow the economy,

the UK Government aimed to boost
the British film business

by taxing American movies,

creating greater demand
for home-grown features.

You're lucky it all worked.

Lucky? This is only the beginning.

So James Carreras...

reintroduced the Hammer brand,
Hammer Films was made again,

and they started making
little stocking fillers.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Dick Barton was,
in fact, a radio serial...

on the BBC Light Programme,

which pre-dated The Archers.

And from there, in a very small way,

we started to make a series
of radio-orientated characters

and bringing them to life
in the cinemas for the first time.

We actually had a production
programme of six pictures a year,

all based on the radio series.

And from that, slowly,
whatever the company policies were,

in changing names, but Exclusive
seguewayed into Hammer Films.

And we were then...

the first British company to have
a permanent American relationship

and actually get American release

for what were, really,
some very small British pictures.

Oh, we've done it!
(LAUGHTER)

The Hammer set up at that time
is that, really,

James Carreras
is leading the company.

And Will Hinds' son Tony,
who's now joined, Tony Hinds,

is Hammer's primary producer.

(GONG CLANGS)

TONY: I went to see Jim Carreras.
We seemed to get on alright.

And he said why didn't I join.

I'd just come out of the air force,
and I really hadn't anything to do.

So we got together,
and I joined the firm.

On the production side,
and later, screenwriting side,

Anthony Hinds was...

extraordinarily important force
at Hammer.

He was born in 1922, in London.

When he came out of the RAF
after the war,

they were making a film
called Death In High Heels,

and the Producer disappeared,
went AWOL.

They got Tony Hinds in to do it.

He did a good job, and that
was the start of it. From then...

..something really extraordinary
happens - a creative flair...

I don't think anyone
had dreamt was there.

And in a sense,
that is where we identify, I think,

the uniqueness that was Hammer.

Tony Hinds was a filmmaker.

I mean, Tony Hinds,
was a better filmmaker than I was.

He was, you know,
a definitive filmmaker.

Tony only lived to make films.

Anthony, in particular,

is what you might call
a producer-auteur,

because his handprint
is definitely visible

on all of the films he worked on,

whether it was in a production
capacity, a producer role...

or whether he wrote the screenplay,

which he often did
under the pseudonym John Elder.

And it was a joke on an old
Art Director that worked for Hammer,

called James Elder Wills -
he took the name from that.

PIRIE: He was described by
the Daily Cinema as looking like

'a doctor of divinity
about to take his finals.'

There was one thing he did
which enraged everybody.

He decided to put a microphone...

on the stage...

linked to his office,

so at any time he could listen down
what was going on on the set.

And if he felt,
'Hang on, they're not filming,'

and there was a bit of a lapse
and things had slowed down a bit,

and he knew what the schedule was...

he would then race down onto the set
and get them to sort it out.

Nose to the grindstone.

(DOOR CLOSES)

It was often said that if
they were running behind schedule,

he would get the script
and tear a page out.

There you are.
You're back on schedule now.

And he was quite a revered producer
within the Hammer company.

And Michael Carreras
started off as his assistant.

I would say the monsters
of Hammer...

..like all monsters,
are good and bad.

And I'd say they're James Carreras
and Michael Carreras.

You know, men who created greatness.

And yet something within them...

kept them from communicating...

or achieving peace
within themselves.

And that's the essence
of what a monster is.

When I first reported for work
as an office boy in Wardour Street,

I soon, luckily with influence,

became Director of Publicity,

which entailed putting
six black-and-white stills,

and a poster,
into an envelope and...

sending it off to the cinema that
was going to show an Exclusive film.

And that...
As nobody else was doing it,

I was Director of Publicity within
minutes of joining the company.

The fastest promotion
you've ever heard of.

Michael Henry Carreras
was born in London,

on 21st December 1927.

His parents were James Carreras
and Vera Smart.

There seemed to be a very uneasy
relationship between father and son.

James Carreras was very much
the architect of Hammer from the...

business point of view.
Michael had...

..you know, multiple talents.
He wasn't his father.

I wasn't a businessman.

Michael was a creative force
at Hammer.

The different skills brought
by the father-and-son team

were initially of great benefit
to Hammer.

But in time, Michael's focus
on creativity over business

could well come back to bite him.

Michael was born
when James was only 21,

and I think it was
very much a surprise.

Their family history
is steeped in horrificness,

and in things
that are almost Gothic.

I'm not sure if James really
wanted to have a kid at that age.

Did James want to be a father?

I suspect he did, in fact,

but not at that time.

I don't know why
I put up with you at all.

I should have drowned you at birth.
Thank you, Father.

His father, James,

ended up putting his mother, Vera,
into a sanitorium for a while.

That's a Gothic trope.

And Michael had to come
and live with his grandparents.

I'm going to disown my son
and send him away to the country.

It's a Victorian-slash-Gothic
horror movie,

which is exactly
where they found their...

ironically,
their power and their strength.

The most curious family history.

Michael was a kind
and jovial character.

He got involved, stuck in,
with all the films,

and all the people
that worked on the films.

He was very good at bringing
creative people together.

He was a Producer
that was hands-on.

Michael Carreras
was doing everything - he was...

playing with electrics,
with sound, with casting.

He had the best sense of humour.

Oh, my God.
He made me laugh so much.

Michael Carreras' and Tony Hinds'
skill sets and personalities

turned out to be an unlikely...

but successful pairing.

We're totally opposites,
and that was great too, because...

certain types of films
that he enjoyed making, I didn't,

and certain types of films
I liked making, he didn't.

They kind of had
a sort of instinct for genre,

I think, adventure,
suspense, swashbuckling -

all that are ingredients of Gothic.

They made one film at a time,
and the same crew came back,

film after film after film.

And their crew were the envy
of the British film industry.

REYNOLDS: You realised you was
working at...a special company.

When we went to various offices,

you said you was from Hammer Films.

Then they all knew
who you were talking about.

The changing winds
of the media landscape

were about to blow
in Hammer's favour.

Although they didn't yet realise it,

Hammer's cottage industry approach,

utilising the same crew
again and again,

was starting to pay off.

It was about to allow them to take
advantage of another opportunity.

We are on the edge
of a new dimension of discovery.

It's a great chance
to leave our vices behind.

So, 1953 is really a pivotal year
for British television,

and historically,
radio had always been...

the medium that was
the sort of nation's favourite.

But the big thing
that happened in 1953

was that a lot more people
got television sets

because of the Coronation.

More people got hold of a television
in the two months

in the run up to the Coronation than
in any of the preceding two months.

In 1953, until...

for another few years after that,
television is BBC television.

There is nothing else in this
country, just the one channel.

And a lot of the plays
that were on were adaptations...

of stage works
or had a literary basis.

So there wasn't much
that was truly original.

And the BBC script unit
was two people -

Nigel Kneale and George Kerr.

Nigel Kneale was an enormously
talented writer. Enormously.

My name is Matthew Kneale,

and my dad was...

uh...Nigel Kneale.

WOMAN: Eleven, take one.

Nigel Kneale was a... Boy.

He had a falling out with...

famously, with John Carpenter
in Hollywood.

He was not a nice man.
Not a nice man at all.

HADOKE: I wish Nigel Kneale had
had a happier time of everything.

He created Quatermass, which is
one of the seminal sci-fi texts.

It's a landmark of television,

and then it's a landmark of film.

It spawns so much that came
after it.

(CACOPHONOUS CLANGING AND RINGING)

VOICEOVER: Three men went into outer
space. Only one of them came back...

came back a strange,
distorted creature,

haunted and possessed by something
beyond human understanding.

And it doesn't seem
to have made him...

particularly happy,
and I think that's a shame.

Don't cry, please.

Probably The Curse Of Frankenstein
would never have been made

had not Nigel Kneale done
the Quatermass series on television.

My father was actually
born in Barrow-in-Furness,

and both his parents
were from the Isle of Man.

The Isle of Man
is steeped in legend,

and steeped in folklore,
and steeped...

if we're thinking about how
he writes dialogue for people,

steeped in the oral tradition.

MURRAY: He actually developed a form
of skin sensitivity to sunlight.

Which he regarded almost
in a Manx way as a kind of curse.

For the whole of his life, really,
he had to stay out of the sun.

His brother gave me
a wonderful phrase -

'Nigel was always walking
in the shadows.'

(SCREAMS)

I think it's fairly easy
to make the link

that somebody has to stay out
of the sunlight - what do you do?

In those days, you sit and read.

What does that do
to your imagination?

Kneale was always writing stories,

a lot of which are embedded in
the Manx folklore of his childhood.

He was a very interesting writer...

and forward thinker.

He went to London
and trained as an actor at RADA,

and around the time he finished,

his short stories
were published as a volume.

I think he was interested
in the meeting point

of the rational and the irrational.

And he won
the Somerset Maugham prize

and thought he was set as a writer -
a book writer, a prose writer.

He went travelling around Europe
with the money he got from...

the Somerset Maugham prize.

Came back expecting to be...

rich with royalties -
found there was nothing.

Where's my money, then? Where is it?

He looked around for a job
and found something in the BBC.

And he became a scriptwriter.

In 1953, there was a gap
in the schedules...

of six weeks, where he needed to...

provide them with something,
and it was to be an original work.

He had a relatively free hand
and...

came up with the idea for a science
fiction series called Quatermass.

And...that was
the beginning of it all.

It might be significant.

The original Quatermass Xperiment
was the most modern...

present-day science fiction thriller
that had been put on television.

Kneale was definitely
kind of influenced by...

by what was going on
in the real world.

1953 is the time when...

that kind of idea of the Space Race
was just starting to come along.

That idea of, 'OK,
we're sending rockets into space.

What happens if we do that?

What will they bring back?
What will they encounter?'

When Kneale first wrote
the synopsis for the story,

it was a character
called Professor Charlton.

As he fleshed it out, he wanted
to give the character a better name.

When he looked in the phone
directory, and in the Isle of Man,

a lot of the names -
in fact, almost all the surnames -

begin with a K or a Q-U,
and he found Quatermass.

He had a good eye for the name,

and I suppose 'mass'
sounded slightly scientific.

And it's a dramatic name,
so it was a good choice.

The original TV series
of The Quatermass Xperiment

was a real success.

Viewing figures were good,
the reviews were very good.

Even before it finished going out,
there was conversations going on

about...can we turn this
into a film?

Tony Hinds and others at Hammer
pricked up their ears,

and then Hammer put in an offer,

which was way over what
they should have, perhaps, put in.

I've seen people refer to it as
a bad business decision. It wasn't.

So at that point,

Nigel Kneale is very happy
that his television series...

is being looked at to be made
by a film company.

He is delighted by that.

History tells us that Nigel Kneale
didn't remain delighted for long,

and he remained undelighted...

for the rest of his days.

When my dad wrote the first
Quatermass television series,

for the BBC, he asked, 'Well, what
would happen if it was sold on?'

And he was told, 'Oh,
of course you'll be recompensed.'

And then after Quatermass
became such a hit,

the BBC rather...
changed their minds about this.

And my dad felt
that he'd been mistreated.

Hammer's newly acquired rights
to create films based on Quatermass

could be a turning point
for the company.

But how should they approach
this sci-fi feature?

Violence, gore and nudity...

would mean an X certificate,

restricting a film's
potential audience.

This could certainly
present a challenge

for Hammer's debut horror
sci-fi feature.

But where lesser men
saw only problems...

Tony Hinds saw opportunity...

..an opportunity
that could define Hammer forever.

The Censors, basically,
were a huge help to Hammer,

because it gave something
to push against.

It forced them to be creative.

The Quatermass Xperiment was called
The Quatermass 'Xperiment',

because they were
exploiting the X rating.

The X thing was still relatively
new, so now it's a thing of,

'This cannot be shown
in the presence of anyone under 16.'

HADOKE: The X certificate
was a very powerful thing

in terms of making people
come to see those films.

And marketing-wise, it was huge.

A young man died of a heart attack
during that movie,

but the whole thing...

was bathed in the music
of James Bernard.

I thought he was
an unbelievable composer.

The score for Quatermass...

is like a precursor to Psycho.

James Bernard is certainly a hero,

because the music is...

is often phenomenal.

His music is, like...

it's as important as the direction,
the setting, the actors.

James Bernard did actually have
some musical lineage in his family.

One of those was Thomas Arne...

..who was the composer
of Rule Britannia.

James Bernard was born
in the Himalayas.

He then went to
the Wellington College in England.

Eventually, he would actually
end up at Bletchley Park,

and he was part of the team
that were helping

to try and crack the codes
of the Enigma machine.

He worked with Christopher Lee,

who was actually stationed
at the same place as James.

And this is where he first ever
encountered Dracula.

I'd just become an officer,
and I was billeted...

in a sort of...in an old rectory...

adjoining an old church in
a remote village in Buckinghamshire.

It was a full Hammer set,
the whole thing,

and it was a terribly cold winter.

And I was reading Dracula,

Bram Stoker's original,
for the first time.

And I tucked myself up into bed
with Dracula...

with the book, I mean. (CHUCKLES)

And I was really enjoying it
enormously and totally engrossed.

I suddenly realised
I was freezing cold.

So I got out of bed and went
to the kitchen of this old rectory,

and made myself a hot water bottle.

And I filled this
with almost boiling water,

took it back to bed,
clutched it to my chest,

went on reading Dracula,
thoroughly absorbed...

fell asleep
with the book on my nose,

woke up in the morning and
the bottle was clutched to my chest.

So I removed it.

And underneath it
was a huge, angry, white blister.

And the blister went,

but the scar remained
for years and years and years.

And I think
it only finally vanished...

when I'd written the score
for The Scars Of Dracula,

which was my last Dracula film.

VOICEOVER: There is no escape
from...(BAT SCREECHES)

James first started working
in music for Benjamin Britten.

He would copy the sketches for...

Billy Budd the opera,
but after that...

Benjamin Britten told him
that he should make his own way,

because if he stayed with him,

he would just swamp him,

and he would not be able to,

you know, make his own way
as a composer.

James was very keen
to work in film.

He had to find a way in.

Television hadn't really started up
again properly since the war.

His way in was radio plays.

Now, he did a bunch of those

for what is effectively now
BBC Radio 3.

I think it was
The Death Of Hector...

was the first, which was...

directed by
Sir John Gielgud's brother.

One of the next ones he did
was called The Duchess Of Malfy.

It's basically a horror.

Everybody pretty much
ends up dead by the end.

And the Duchess Of Malfy
was actually recorded to tape.

The Quatermass Xperiment
was originally...

assigned to John Hotchkis,

and unfortunately, John fell ill...

and couldn't continue.

Tony Hinds, at Hammer, said to a man
called John Hollingsworth...

'We're in a real pickle here,

and we need a composer
as soon as possible.'

So John Hollingsworth
remembered James Bernard,

who had conducted the score
for The Duchess Of Malfy.

Now, because they had the tapes
to The Duchess Of Malfy,

He rushed to go retrieve these
and play them to Tony Hinds.

Tony Hinds loved it,
and immediately, on the spot,

James Bernard was hired and paid
the princely sum of £100

to write the score
for The Quatermass Xperiment.

If you listen
to The Duchess Of Malfy,

and you listen to
The Quatermass Xperiment,

you're gonna see
a lot of similarities.

Because James Bernard
was basically touching upon

what he already knew how to do,

and that was
writing for strings and percussion.

So they basically have
almost the same instrumentation.

When he then went on to do
The Curse Of Frankenstein,

he would actually quote, musically,
some of his themes and motifs

from The Duchess Of Malfy.

Hammer's Quatermass Xperiment
was successful across the board.

Pushing the boundaries
of what was acceptable in cinema

became one of
Hammer's driving forces.

The X certificate
was nothing to be feared...

but something to bear with pride.

James Carreras felt, instinctively,

that this was
the route to success for Hammer,

but were this band of British
creatives charting the right course?

After the success
of The Quatermass Xperiment film,

they speak to audiences, and they
speak to distributors, and they say,

'This horror thing, this is great.
This is what we want.'

So the obvious thing is
to try and do a Quatermass sequel.

INTERVIEWER: You tackled your first
feature, which was X The Unknown.

Right.
How do you feel about that?

We were sort of sitting around
the office one day

trying to come up with a story.

I was Production Manager
at the time, and...

..it was Tony Hinds
and Mike Carreras,

and we were batting around ideas.

And it seemed
at the end of a session,

I'd come up with the most ideas, so
Tony said, 'Go away and write it.'

I said, 'I'm not a writer,
I'm a production manager.'

And he said, 'Well, write it.
If we like it, we'll buy it.'

So I wrote it. And he liked it.
And he bought it.

Jimmy Sangster started
with Hammer in 1948,

on a film called
Dick Barton Strikes Back,

as a Second Assistant Director.

He later becomes First Assistant,

and he's the youngest First
Assistant Director in the country.

And in 1954, he becomes a
Production Manager with the company.

Around this time...

..Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg
come to Hammer

with an old-fashioned
Frankenstein script.

It was called
Frankenstein And The Monster.

And it was recommended that they
make a film...along those lines,

probably just another
of their black-and-white quickies.

Studying the script, they realised
that it was actionably similar...

to the old Universal
Frankenstein films.

Anthony Hinds reads it and says,

'We can't use it, but this
is an idea - to do Frankenstein.'

So they paid off...

Rosenberg and Subotsky...

and launched with their own script.

Which was written by...

Jimmy Sangster.

I don't think I read
the Mary Shelley book, actually.

I mean, one knew
the Frankenstein story.

I don't think I read it.
I'd just seen all the...

all the old Frankenstein movies.

In the wake
of Hammer's newfound success,

Tony Hinds would need
to find the right director

to deliver his frightening Gothic
vision for their next picture,

particularly if they were
to unlock its financial potential.

Hinds needed a safe but creative
pair of hands for this vital role.

His solution was to turn to his
longtime collaborator Terence Fisher.

Terence Fisher being the Director
who's given us most of the classics.

I remember that he always
wore a jumper and a shirt.

RIGBY: Terence Fisher kickstarted
the Gothic trend at Hammer.

Probably a sort
of crimson-colour jumper.

And he was a really good director.

Possibly with a jacket.

I understand, originally,
Hammer wanted to...

knock The Curse Of Frankenstein out
in three weeks.

They offered it to my father, and...

he said, 'I can't possibly
do it in three weeks.'

He said, 'It's got to be six.'

He took a while to go away
and think about it, a long while,

and then came back and agreed.

But it wouldn't have
been the innovative,

extraordinary film that it was...

if someone hadn't said to Hammer,
'No, I can't do it in three weeks.

Give me six.' (CHUCKLES)

We don't want to be
over-hasty, do we?

He's the Director,
whether you know it or not,

you think about
when you think of Hammer, I think.

He went to boarding schools
at a very early age,

went to prep school
and then to Christ Hospital.

I think of the two results
that boarding school can have...

with pupils is that they either
get this arrogance and confidence,

or else they're...
just completely cowed.

He was such a dear...

kind, cuddly little man.

Very shy.

(WHISPERS) He was very quiet.
He talked like that.

So he gave direction.
'Would you mind very much if you...

moved over here...
moved over to there.

Thank you very much.
And then he would disappear.

A quiet one, are we?

You've hardly said a word.

My father joined the merchant navy,

and he travelled
all round the world...

but never talked about it
unless you particularly asked him.

After the merchant navy,

he went back to London...and
hadn't a clue what he wanted to do,

but...there was a shop
round the corner.

It was Peter Jones -
a big department store -

and he became
a window dresser there.

And he always said it was
quite a good introduction

into setting stuff into a frame.

Terence Fisher began
in the film industry in...

various different capacities, but...

I think he really
found his footing as an editor.

And I think it was his experience
as an editor or a cutter,

as he preferred to call it,

that really is the key to his work,

really, because he edited
the films in his head,

and this made him
a very prized collaborator,

because Hammer
liked to keep costs down.

You know, they were
a smallish operation,

and they were making
very lavish looking films...

but on a budget.

Their budgets were minuscule -
The Curse Of Frankenstein,

in 1956, made for £80,000.

Dracula, in 1957, made for £90,000.

Yet you look at those films,

and they look like
they have bigger budgets.

Anthony Hinds made
another huge jump here,

where he said
it should be in colour.

It was pretty amazing when you
consider James said yes to colour,

when colour would have cost 10%
of the entire budget,

just changing from monochrome
to colour, but he did.

Now you can see the blood,
and the blood is gonna be red.

And from a marketing point of view,
it's pretty genius.

This was an enormous breakthrough -
not a single person was thinking
of making horror films in colour.

The Americans
weren't doing it either.

The critics went mad, you know?
They thought this was vile.

But the public absolutely loved it.

And from there on,
I think you could say...

the Hammer brand is born.

It was the Gothic cycle
in colour for the first time.

World audiences were waiting.

And there's another wrinkle here,
which is very interesting -

by a strange, quixotic turn of fate,

colour was what allowed them
to evade the censorship,

which would otherwise
have prevailed.

Terence Fisher said, 'Oh, we never
had any problem with the Censors,'

which was the most ridiculously
disingenuous thing to say.

Because Hammer had titanic problems
with the Censors.

Hinds worked out if he showed the
Censor the films in black-and-white,

but he would say to them, 'Yeah,
of course it's in colour,' early on.

Then he'd show them
the black-and-white.

No-one remembered that in a letter,
six months earlier,

he said,
'By the way, it's in colour.'

And then the Censor
realises the film is in colour,
and they immediately say,

'You've got to show it to us.'
And there's a real problem.

Because the Censor
has a terrible reaction to the film.

That really was like, 'Argh!'

They nearly had a heart attack. At
that point, the real battle started.

And then they were able
to force through a few more things

than they would ever
have got before.

Hammer were really good at,
in the end,

getting what they wanted onscreen,

because Hammer would always...
they'd build in stuff they knew...

was gonna get cut out, and
they'd put a little extra in too.

So they'd go,
'Well, if we cut out...

the bit that you don't like,
can we have this in?'

And it'd become a bargaining point -
one of the examples you hear about

is the disintegration of Dracula.

There was a much longer version
that, for many years, was hidden,

because the Censors at the time
thought it was too much.

And they wanted to cut
some stuff out.

And so they did, but they
still got a lot of stuff in

because they'd piled
so much into that disintegration.

(DRACULA SCREAMS, GASPS)

(GRUNTS)

Phil Leakey was
a remarkably talented make-up man.

A very mild-mannered guy,

very much in the background,
very quiet.

Very skilled, though.

So, of course, what they did
was they hung onto him...

and hung on to him
for as long as possible.

And they were very lucky
he was still around

when the colour Gothic started up.

All make-up artists study anatomy,

and they study cuts and wounds.

But with Phil Leakey,
I expect that he had...

a more kind of
first-hand knowledge of it,

because of his parents,
who were in the sciences.

He knew exactly what to do...

when he had to create a wound
on someone's face or a bruise.

He'd know the bruise
doesn't stay the same colour.

It can change colours.

And I imagine that
that kind of medical background

would have helped him no end.

Though you think of him
as being a make-up artist,

in fact, he was the very first
make-up effects artist.

I think he was the first person ever
to get that title on film.

What are you going to do?

Take the head off.
It's no use to me, anyway.

He crossed a lot of boundaries -

for instance,
on Curse Of Frankenstein,

he had to make a head that could
be dissolved in a tank of acid.

Most make-up artists
would never be able to do this

or be able to think about
it in the right way. But...

that was Phil's job, and he said,
'OK, I can take that on.'

Using a cast of somebody's head,

he created it out of gelatine,

and he put some kind
of latex film over the top of it.

It had a skull in it,
a plastic skull,

that was buried beneath layers of
gelatine muscles and gelatine veins,

and even had a brain in the skull.

And because it was gelatine,
they heated the tank up...

so that it was basically
boiling water.

And of course,
what happens to the gelatine

when you put it
in boiling water is it melts.

So they did this great effect
where they put the head in,

and it looks like acid,
because the head just dissolves,

and everything
starts to come apart,

and the skin starts to melt.

It's so good...
that it's not in the film. (LAUGHS)

But to be able to think in that way,

sort of lateral thinking
about how these things could work,

and how the chemical compounds
of various things

can be put together to achieve
an effect is very, very clever.

The Curse Of Frankenstein
gave me nightmares,

because of the...

Phil Leakey's make-up.
Argh!

A lot of people up until that point,
if they thought of Frankenstein,

thought of
the Boris Karloff Frankenstein

and the Jack Pierce make-up.

We couldn't use the idea of a...

the Boris Karloff-type monster
with a bolt through his neck.

They had a copyright on the monster.

In the tiny bit
of pre-production that they had,

you had Phil Leakey
and Roy Ashton...

tried just about everything
they could think of

to make that creature -
you know, latex noses,

and scars in different looks
and things.

I did about three tests,
if I remember right,

but they were quite dreadful - I
mean, one of them made look like...

a combination between
a wolf and a pig.

And the other...

was actually, surprisingly,
quite close to the Elephant Man.

Part of me, you know,
definitely does sympathise...

with what Christopher Lee
was going through with those.

And then I think it was I,

or perhaps it was Phil Leakey,
the make-up man...

We put our heads together, and...

I think I said, 'Look.

It's bits and pieces
of other people, so...

it should be patched together.'

So there were lumps and these scars,
and the one dead eye,

and the stitch marks and everything,

uh...which was pretty unpleasant.

And the blind lens that he wore
over one eye as Frankenstein...

..would have made him blind.

Can't see anything!

Remarkably,
on The Curse Of Frankenstein,

Hammer, in one coup,
cast their two biggest male stars,

who were going to see the studio
through all their great horror days.

The simple pairing of Peter Cushing
and Christopher Lee was phenomenal.

They were blessed with those guys.

It's the kind of thing you dream
about. It's like RKO saying...

'OK, we have this tap dancer
named Fred Astaire.

He's sort of OK.
What are we gonna do with him?

We have this ingenue, named Ginger
Rogers, who can kind of dance.

What would happen
if we put them together?'

You know, and what happens is magic.

Peter Cushing, potentially
one of the greatest British actors.

REYNOLDS: He was a lovely guy,
very approachable.

Peter Cushing was the star.
He'd come from...

1984 on the BBC.

He was celebrated. He was handsome.

(STAMMERS) You know,
he was the guy at Hammer.

I think Christopher Lee
is a real legend.

When I first met Christopher,
I was just hypnotised by Dracula.

Like, he had such a beautiful,
amazing presence.

Christopher Lee in terms
of charisma and...

..sheer presence and...

behaviour onstage was unbeatable.

And Jimmy Carreras
needs to be very thankful...

the day that someone looked over
and said, 'There's this tall guy,

named Christopher Lee -
you think he could be our creature?'

All they were looking for
was a big guy.

It was nearly Bernard Bresslaw,
wasn't it?

But they lucked out and got somebody
who was not only a big guy,

a very impressive guy, but somebody
with great presence, who could act.

They gave these solid performances.

I tried to get...

both Christopher Lee
and Peter Cushing in my movies.

In Halloween, I wanted Peter Cushing
to be the Psychiatrist.

Christopher Lee complained
he didn't have any lines

in Curse Of Frankenstein,
and Cushing said,

'Well, you're lucky.
I've read the script.'

You're quiet. Cat got your tongue?

I think Jimmy Sangster
was of the opinion...

that the success of a screenplay
was down to 85% construction.

Construction, it's 85%.

Dialogue's not important.

I think he may have said that
because he was well aware

actors tended to rewrite
his dialogue.

The actors kind of change
the dialogue, anyway.

Peter Cushing in particular
did not like...

Jimmy Sangster's dialogue...at all.

At my early film classes at school,

we were given a script that had
Peter Cushing's annotations on it,

where he corrected the script.

I think he was
looking at lines, going,

'I wouldn't say it that way.
I wouldn't...

This needs changing round.'

Christopher Lee's scripts
are hysterical.

They're like,
'No! I will not speak! Absurd!'

And Peter Cushing was...

did, indeed,
rewrite the majority of it...

and the results were great.
So, the sort of...

Sangster-Cushing collaboration,
if you like,

you know, was a good one.

But, yes, Sangster was well aware
that Cushing didn't like his work.

Despite the creative differences,
tensions and challenges,

the Hammer team
managed to make one of

the most financially successful films
of all time.

The success of The Curse
Of Frankenstein led to a...

an explosion of period pictures
that were inexplicably...

accepted by kids,

who, ordinarily,
would be watching hot-rod movies.

And obviously, they...

realised that they had found
lightning in a bottle

and decided that they'll go
through the old Universal catalogue

and revisit all the monsters...

except all gussied up
with great photography,

and classy looking sets,
and good actors.

And, of course,
the even bigger hit...

came the next year,
which was Dracula.

I remember seeing Dracula,
or The Horror Of Dracula,

as we called it America,
for the first time,

and it's this lurid colour...

that even the title
has this Kensington Gore blood

splattering all over Dracula's name.

It was a very, very shocking moment.
It seems so hokey now.

But in that moment,
it was just genius.

Dracula was like...

..it sort of became
a sort of thing with me.

Because I just thought it
was rather fabulous,

except that it was a bit bloody.

It...pretty much cemented
the entire run

of what the studio was
gonna be doing for the next decade.

RIGBY: Jimmy Sangster was given
Dracula to adapt.

What I remembered the most
about Dracula,

there's no wasted time.

It's smart.

And over the years, Jimmy was always
saying that people would ask him,

'Why did I write Dracula
in that way?

Why did I adapt the novels
in the way I did?'

And it was all down to money.

And he knew exactly
what he was typing...

..would cost.

If you read the novel,
if you see the Lugosi film,

it all starts in Transylvania.

And they jump on a ship,
and they come to England.

Sangster was well aware that Hammer
couldn't possibly afford that,

and that if they used stock footage,
it would look rubbish.

So he cut it all together.
Hammer's version of Dracula is...

to me, getting on
for the definitive one.

And yet it takes huge liberties.

I am Dracula,
and I welcome you to my house.

At this point,
the Censor was waiting.

They knew what to expect.

And Audrey Field, the implacable
opponent of Hammer, says,

'Right. We've seen this
in black-and-white.

There are six scenes missing, and
it's in colour. Show it to us now.'

So they did.

And there was, again,
horrific reaction.

Argh!The Censors
definitely asking for cuts.

Hinds putting things in
that he could then take out.

And it all boils down
to this moment...

when the Censor
says they cannot have Mina Harker...

looking at Dracula in this immensely
sexual way. We just can't have it.

And, basically,
it comes down to two shots -

Dracula approaching...
and her looking.

And Hinds and Carreras
desperately wanted it.

They desperately wanted
these shots in there,

because they knew
this would change everything.

I've seen some of
those Censor notes, going

'He can't lean over that way.
This is outrageous,'

and they push it and go,
'Well, no, he's a vampire -

he's gonna bite her neck.
Nothing else is going on.'

But to the audience member,

of course they're feeling
the sexual power of those moments,

and that's what
makes the film so strong.

And then Hinds sprang his surprise.
He said...

'When you saw this
in black-and-white,

you gave me to understand that
maybe you'd be able to pass this.

I can't see
it's any worse in colour.

And I'm sorry - I scored it.

I've set up an orchestra,
I've edited it, I've dubbed it.

It's gonna cost me
a fortune to change.'

There was a panicky meeting.

Hinds stuck to his guns. He said,
'It's gonna cost me a lot of money.

Censor was set up to protect them

from local authorities
banning films.

It was meant to save the industry
money, not create costs.

And he said, 'In this instance,
we're gonna let it go.

But don't do it again.' (LAUGHS)

And so Hinds had his shot.

And the extraordinary thing is,
you might say,

'Well, it was just an accident,
the looks.'

No. Fisher, on the set,
actually said to her,

'I want you to look at this...
this guy coming towards you

as if he's the greatest love
of your life.

You can't wait for him to be back.'
And he got a performance.

He was very pleased
with the performance
he got from Melissa Stribling.

It's gone down
in movie history, actually.

This is a really crucial moment,

because this was the point
at which the vampire becomes erotic.

There is no going back after that -
the floodgates had opened.

Three hits in a row had led Hammer
to concoct a winning formula,

a specific blend of the Gothic,

the violent and the teasingly erotic.

But while the discovery
of this formula

may have been somewhat accidental,

this serendipity would
never have happened

without the right people...

in the right place at the right time.

Their creative achievements
were the result of collective effort

and hard work.

The success of Hammer's
early Gothic horror films

was very much founded on the team...

..that Hammer had got together.

They were...
like minds, if you like.

You had Terence Fisher directing,
Jimmy Sangster writing,

Tony Hinds producing.

Very often, James Bernard scoring.

The thing that I know
about the Dracula score,

and how the Dracula theme
came about.

It was James Bernard,
and Paul Dehn the Writer...

who suggested to James,
who was stuck on a theme,

'Why don't you just say...
"Dra-cu-la" musically?'

(SINGS) Dracula.

I mean, those big chords
would come in.

(BOMBASTIC MUSIC)

(SINGS) Dun-da-da.

That's the score.
I can still hear it in my head.

And then he builds
the rest of the theme on that.

And that went all the way through
a lot of his scores.

You could always hear the name
of the film being stamped out.

(DRAMATIC CHORDS FOLLOWING VISUALS)

The film scores were just
one of the creative facets

that Hammer was becoming famous for.

The visual and design aspects
were also drawing in audiences

ever more deeply.

Other members of the team
were making their mark.

The real stars of Hammer,
in my opinion...

..were people like Bernard Robinson,
the Art Director.

Bernard was
quite a thrifty person at heart.

Hammer loved that
because it meant he didn't
squander the art direction budget.

But I guess some of that thrift
was a hangover from the war days.

You've got to remember
that a lot of people...

working for Hammer
had just come out of the war

and had brought their experiences
with them.

The Camera Operator Len Harris
was filming the beaches of D-Day

the day after the landing.

Harry Oakes the Focus Puller
was one of the first person

to go into Auschwitz
when the doors opened.

One classic example is Les Bowie,
special effects pioneer.

Now, Les was a POW during the war.

He could draw like life.
He used to forge passports.

So in Dracula, Hammer built
the downstairs of Castle Dracula.

When you see those turrets
and the mountains in the background,

that's a glass painting, which
has been produced by Les Bowie.

Bernard Robertson started
in the film industry in 1935.

During the war, he became
a camouflage and deco expert

at Shepperton Studios.

And after the war, he met...

a chap called Tony Keys.

And Tony Nelson Keys later became
an Associate Producer at Hammer.

I think he started
on a Tod Slaughter film in 1939,

called Crimes At The Dark House.

And if you watch that film, you can
see the sort of nascent Hammer sets,

you know, nearly 20 years too soon,
as it were.

Hammer learnt very early on
that it was cheaper...

to rent a country house...

and shoot the films in the rooms,
and in the gardens,

than renting out expensive space
at the established film studios.

And the most famous one
was Oakley Court in Bray.

MAN: Oakfield Tower...

Right next door to Oakley Court...

was another country house
called Down Place.

And in January 1951,
Hammer move into Down Place

and convert it into Bray Studios.

COURT: There was
a terrible thunderstorm.

Oh, God.
The rain came down in sheets.

The roof's leaking,
everything's leaking.

And Terry Fisher says, 'Carry on!'

I feel, already, this is my home.

The first proper home of my life.

Bernard Robinson was able
to revamp a lot of his sets,

both in a production
and between productions.

They had that studio to themselves.

So he could build things,
leave them up,

and that's what saved them money.

Bernard Robinson's genius...

in so many Hammer films,
was to reuse elements,

to redress them, reposition them,

redesign them, but nevertheless,

very cost effectively use the same
stuff again and again and again.

When you look at Hammer films...

in, like, a series...

you see it's all Bray. And...

you see how cleverly
they keep using the same rooms.

The classic example of this
is in Dracula.

There was one particular set,

and they used it six times
just by redressing it.

It started as a graveyard,
and they redress it as a garden.

They then redressed it into the hall
and stairs of Castle Dracula.

Mr Harker.
I'm glad that you've arrived safely.

And by shooting
from a slightly different angle,

they manage to get an entrance lobby
and the second flight of stairs.

And then after that,
they redressed it totally, again,

to the library
where Dracula dies at the end.

And then, believe it or not,
that library turns up,

practically the same,

in The Revenge Of Frankenstein.

..was sentenced to death
on the guillotine.

It's impressive, actually.

There's a funny story of Bernard,
about his thrift.

Sometimes, he would...
he would be a bit cheeky

and order
an extra roll of wallpaper.

And at the end of the production, he
would take that home and use it...

in his own house.

He got busted when he made a film
called The Two Faces Of Dr Jekyll.

He went to the premiere with his
wife, and his wife was not happy,

and wanted to know
why the new lounge wallpaper...

was deemed fit to be
the prostitute's bedroom wallpaper

in The Two Faces Of Dr Jekyll.

A lot of the success
of those early Hammer films

is down to the way
his sets were lit by Jack Asher.

And it was often said
that Asher painted with light.

And the films look gorgeous.

When you look at even a still from
the pictures that Jack Asher shot,

the lighting is so subtle
and so colourful.

He was a perfectionist.

The dreadful shame about it
is that, eventually,

they felt he was too slow -

or, rather,
he wasn't quick enough for Hammer.

And behind the scenes, the Hammer
bean counters didn't like that.

Eventually, unfortunately,
they brought in another chap
called Arthur Grant.

He was a lot more commercial.

Still very good results,
but he was faster than Jack Asher.

Which is a shame because the only
time that Hammer ever got...

a BAFTA nomination
for colour photography

was in a film called The Scarlet
Blade that Asher did for Hammer,

which was his second-from-last film.

At the end of the day, time mattered
and the schedules mattered.

Even in the face
of financial constraints,

Tony Hinds and Michael Carreras
had sculpted the perfect team,

which was working
like a well-oiled machine.

Now the studio's challenge
was to continue turning out films

that had the Hammer magic...

while keeping up with
a global audience's shifting tastes.

Success was not guaranteed.

The right choices needed to be made,

or all Hammer had worked for
could quickly come crashing down.

The notion of sequels
was going to be...

terribly important for Hammer
down the road,

and that was what, actually,
James Carreras loved.

He loved a pipeline. That's what
he wanted - a pipeline of product.

And he would just roll it out.

And then we can do more,
and we can do more,

and let's saturate the world
with it.

And, obviously, that is
the law of diminishing returns.

It was, ultimately,
very, very positive,

and it was ultimately the beginning
of the creation of the brand.

But that was, perhaps, in there,
a slight harbinger of doom.

(NOISY CLATTERING)
I'm sorry, something's wrong here.

Not all of the Hammer team
believed in James Carreras' strategy

of creating a succession of sequels.

James's own son was questioning
some of his father's choices.

I think Michael had a difficult
relationship with horror films.

Michael Carreras was very keen
to get beyond the Gothic,

or when he was making a Gothic film,

he wanted to add other...
other spices, other elements.

PIRIE: And he really,
desperately, wanted to create.

He wanted to be an artist,
and he never quite succeeded

on the level
that he would have liked, I think.

I liked to diversify.

If I couldn't diversify the company,

I certainly liked
to diversify my own...

participations where possible.

But James wasn't interested
in that at all.

Sadly, some of the other streams
that I tried to instil...

into the company's product line
just didn't work.

And some of those
were just dreadful.

Oh, Lord, they hurt.

They hurt to watch.

(EXAGGERATED SCREAMING)

Oh, can't you leave me alone?!
I'm doing the best I can!

Then I went off and did my thing
for a couple of years -

made a...I did a musical.

ALL: (SINGING) ..crazy world
we're living in.

Things I would never have
been able to do at Hammer.

ALL: (SINGING) ..we're living...

And that would be...

Things were beginning to go a little
bit pear-shaped for the company.

Bray was shut down for a short time
in the early '60s,

and people had to go off
and get other jobs.

And then, of course, Hammer actually
moves out of Bray Studios...

in September 1966, I think it was.

A very particular feature
of that Bray flavour...

..is lost at that moment.

Once they left Bray, you're making
films like any other company does

at Pinewood, Elstree
or anywhere else.

The last film at Bray
was The Mummy's Shroud in 1966,

and the films they made afterwards
at Elstree...

don't look a patch
on the Bray films.

The reason they had to move
to Elstree was a lot of their films

were being released
by the ABC Cinema company.

And ABC owned and ran Elstree,

and they were saying,
'If we're gonna release your films,

you've got to make
the films at our studio.'

They were starting to make
exterior sets on interior stages,

with a painted backlot
outside Castle Dracula,

which just looked fake
and looks awful,

and they started to look cheap.

External forces
began to affect Hammer.

With its move from Bray,

the iconic production company
had lost its spiritual home.

The things that imbued Hammer with
its magic were starting to erode.

Its previously confident steps...

were now beginning to become
stumbles in the dark -

stumbles that only worsened

as key crew members
began to move on as well.

The team that's headed
into the depths of the 1960s

was a little bit different.

And the moment some of them
are moving on to doing other things,

and it starts being diluted,

it's easy to lose your identity
at that point.

It had such
a strong identity, and...

..I don't know
where it kind of went.

WOMAN: My father had
broken his leg just after...

Frankenstein Created Woman, I think
it was, and it became difficult,

for insurance purposes,
to be on the set.

And he was getting older.

When Phil Leakey
was asked to work for Hammer,

they put him on a retainer,

which I think was pretty much
unheard of at that time.

And then he discovered, one day,

that they'd taken it away,
and he didn't have it any more.

And so he decided
that he was gonna part company.

But Phil Leakey and Terence Fisher

were not the only ones
to depart from Hammer.

Over the next few years,

many more of the key members
of the team also moved on.

Each exit dealt a damaging blow
to the company,

but no departure shook the
foundations of the house Hammer built

as much as the one
that was still to come.

VOICEOVER: Prepare yourself
for the greatest shock of all.

The loss of Tony Hinds
was a blow to Hammer.

The reason he left Hammer
was because of two events.

In 1968,

Hammer has collaborated on...

a TV series
called Journey To The Unknown.

ABC decided they wanted
to have a named producer above him,

which was Joan Harrison, who was
Alfred Hitchcock's assistant.

And Tony Hinds nose
was put out of joint quite a lot,

because he found himself,
effectively,

working almost as her assistant.

And she took all control from him.

Now he had to make every decision
with her, and she had to agree.

And he found that very frustrating,
and it disenchanted him.

A year after that, in 1969,

he writes the script for
Taste The Blood Of Dracula.

The son of Freddie Francis
had submitted a script to Hammer

called Dracula's Feast Of Blood.

Now, there was some talk...

that Hinds had lifted two scenes

from someone else's script
and put it in.

If that ever happened,
I can only suppose he assumed...

that the script was fair game,
that they owned it.

Tony Hinds was obviously
quite upset, and he'd had enough.

And so he took retirement at the...

enviably early age of 48.

Creatively, that was a blow.

I think he left
at just the point when...

things were becoming
more permissive.

As Tony Hinds departed Hammer,

the wider world was changing,
particularly in the film industry.

The British film censors relaxed
their outlook on the horror genre,

drastically reducing the power

of Hammer's shock
and titillation armoury.

If Hammer wanted to keep
the proud badge

of an X certificate on their films,

they would need to step up
the levels of violence,

gore and sex on screen.

But doing so could threaten
to disrupt Hammer's magic formula.

Hammer had an elegance,

and no matter what kind
of bloodletting went on,

there was always backed up
by an elegance...

until they started ripping off all
the clothes and showing everything.

The mystery had gone.

Their films had
always been teasingly erotic

as far as the Censor would allow.

But now that
censorship barriers were collapsing,

the eroticism was stepped up.

GORE: You could put
a lot more nudity on screen.

A lot of the things that Hammer
were brilliant at suggesting,

and not having to say, almost like
existing within their own code,

suddenly became permissible
in everything.

And I think they started pursuing
that level of filmmaking,

and, probably,
they shouldn't have done that.

According to Tony Hinds,
Jimmy Carreras said to him,

'It's incredible, Tony,
you can do anything now.'

Tony Hinds said,
'I'm not sure that doing anything

is what it's all about.'

Their push to more nudity,
I think, was the demise of Hammer.

They wanted to keep
and X certificate on the film,

so they had to boost up
a bit more of the gore...

and a bit more
of the sex and violence generally,

to make it to get that certificate.

They're losing their identity
more in a quest to remain relevant

than in the quest
to remain shocking, I think.

The real monster that emerges

is the sexploitation nature
that the films turn to.

All these films,
the more nudity in it,

and more sex in general, I think -

they threw it in
whether the story needed it or not.

I mean, no, sorry. No.

Those lesbian vampire films.

Lust For A Vampire, Vampire Lovers.

It was Jimmy Carreras who...

..was keen to jump on that.

But at the same time, they were
bringing in independent producers.

And those were,
in fact, made by Harry Fine

and Michael Style of Fantail Films.

Just abominable.

VOICEOVER: Welcome
to the finishing school...

where they really do finish you.
(SCREAMS)

I was on set when Michael Styles
was walking around

with these short stockings, and
he's walking around pulling them.

The next minute,
the Assistant Director had them.

And I said, 'What's going on?'
And he says, 'Oh.

He wants one of the girls
to be pulling these on,

but she's got to be topless
in one of the bedrooms.'

I'm gonna mention one monster -
Michael Style...

imported from who knows where.

With his sausage on set.

His portfolio of pornography.

His whispering in my ear...

..all sorts of uh...obscenities.

His unkindness.

And so he disgusts me.

Michael Style, in particular...
had a very different approach

to the rather gentlemanly
Hammer approach of old.

I'm dying in the bed,

because the lesbian vampire
has bitten me.

And Michael Styles comes up to me
and he whispers in my ear,

'You better hot this up,

because everybody will be
falling asleep in the aisles.'

And Roy Ward Baker got hold of him

and pulled him off the set,
quite literally.

I mean, he was vicious to me,
and I didn't know what he meant.

But what it actually meant was I was
meant to writhe about in the bed,

have orgasm after orgasm.

Of course, I didn't know what
that was. I was so, so innocent.

Nobody can believe it.
Roy Wood Baker came up to me.

And he said,
'Maddy, forget all that.

Just pretend you're having
a nightmare.' And that's what I did.

(SCREAMS)

So that's Vampire Lovers.
MAN: Yes.

Which I think was
a smashing little film, actually.

We could have done without
the bare...

I th... In my personal view,
I think everybody would have

been quite happy without that,
but there we are.

Hammer didn't really
entertain these guys for very long.

But nevertheless, it's a...
that sort of reputation stuck.

While some within Hammer
were looking to exploit women,

others wanted to give female actors
more significant roles

that they could really
get their teeth into.

I think that
when they chased the certificate

and moved from blood to sex,

one of the things they did
that was really interesting is
they gave women a much bigger part.

BURTON: The female parts
all very striking, you know?

It's quite an amazing repertoire.

They allowed women to be villains,

and not just because
they're controlled by Dracula,

but they have their own agency.

It gave rise to characters
like Ingrid Pitt's characters,

you know,
villains who are in control.

And that's not something
you see very much,

those femme fatales,
in the history of cinema.

You have Barbara Shelley,
Caroline Monro.

I was a very shy girl.
I suffered a lot with um...

Well, I suppose, not...
Would you call it anxiety now?

But not very much confidence.

Martine Beswick, Ingrid Pitt.

My favourite was Ingrid Pitt.

Of course, she was lovely
on The Vampire Lovers.

I gave her a piggy back at one time
to get her up to the set.

And that was lovely.
(SCOFFS)

They were like,
'Well, if we need more nudity,

at least let's give those actresses
something to do.'

And that was entirely motivated by
the fact they were trying to shock.

I did three films with Hammer.

First one was One Million Years BC.

You know, that was impressive.

I definitely remember in Burbank
going to the theatre,

you know,
to see One Million Years BC.

There was a big line
around the block. (CHUCKLES)

We went down the line - you see all
the kids talking about the dinosaurs

and all the teenagers
talking about her. You know?

The conversation would go
up and down

compared to what the age group
of the person in line was.

And the second was
the brilliant film...

Why did you come?
I can only believe...

the Fates brought me here.
And they brought you to me.

(CHUCKLES) One of the greats.

And the third was
Dr Jekyll And Sister Hyde.

Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde is,

in large part, perhaps, because
it was scripted by Brian Clemens,

Dr Jekyll And Sister Hyde
is an enormously witty film.

I think the responsibility
for expressing bolder genre ideas

and bolder carnality
in the Hammer movies

can almost entirely be...

put at the door of Brian Clemens.

Brian Clemens was a visionary.
He was cheeky. He was saucy.

And he said, 'Well, in my script,
Dr Jekyll And Sister Hyde,

Yeah, I'll give you
some exploitation,

but damn, is it gonna have meaning.
Damn, is it gonna be cool.

It's gonna be as cool
as goddamn Emma Peel.'

He happened to be, I think,

in the restaurant in the studios.

Jimmy Carreras
was at the next table.

Brian suddenly writes down
on a scrap of paper

at the table...
Dr Jekyll And Sister Hyde.

Jimmy said,
'Come see me in my office tomorrow.'

By the time Brian
gets back to his office,

they've already
commissioned a poster.

He hadn't put one word on paper
at that point.

One of the classic stories
about Hammer,

you know, is Jimmy Carreras'
fondness for commissioning posters.

He would go over to New York.
He would meet...

all the bosses of all the majors -

20th Century Fox, Columbia, Warner.

And he would ask them for ideas,

and they would feed him with ideas.

He would then come back to England
with those ideas,

and he would cherry-pick
which ones he thought were good.

And then he would get his poster
artist to make a teaser poster.

And took it to America and said,
'That's our next movie.'

And everybody
fell over themselves to...

put money into it.

I said, 'You wanna see a script
or know who's in it?

'Don't bother about that.
This is a Hammer film.

And we know it will be alright.'

And he came back to me and said,

'That's our next movie. You've
gotta go away and write it now.'

I said, 'What do you mean?' He said,
'We start shooting in six weeks.'

And that's really
how they operated.

He would sell an idea
based on a teaser poster

before a word of script
had been written.

There's a wonderful
treasure trove of...

..wildly lurid posters...

for films that very often
turned out to be...

much more sedate
than those initial posters.

But Dr Jekyll And Sister Hyde
is an example of a movie

examining gender within genre.

VOICEOVER: Dr Jekyll, Sister Hyde.

Man or woman.

Or both?

When I read the script, I thought,
'This could be really interesting.'

I am one who believes that all of us
have male and female in us.

And I would like to have
explored it more, actually.

But at that point, they were
so busy trying to get me to be...

..um...full nudity,
which was not in the script.

I was quite happy
to show my breasts,

because the point is
that if he turns into her,

she's gonna have to figure out...

what is the power?

And that was
very interesting to do.

That was really interesting to do.

And I wish we had gone deeper
into it and kind of done...

because we would have...
should have had more confusion...

from both sides.

It is I who exists, Dr Jekyll.
Not you.

LOGAN: Brian Clemens
was able to bring a sort of...

different kind of sexuality to that.

And Martine Beswick
was so commanding and so powerful,

that even though she is exposed,

it is fitting for the script
as the character learns about

what her new identity,
her new gender identity is.

Clemens was on the cusp
of taking Hammer

in a bold and exciting new direction,

but the company was about to be dealt
yet another devastating blow.

In 1969, the American studios
begin to withdraw,

because they're suffering
bruising losses at home,

and it's no longer
financially viable...

to be quite so heavily invested
in the British film industry.

James Carreras runs to his friends
at the Variety Club,

principally Bernard Delfonte at EMI,

and he agrees to finance
Hammer's films in the '70s.

But now the budgets are tiny.

The budgets are £100,000 for a film.

To put it in context,
12 years before,

The Curse Of Frankenstein
was £80,000.

In 1957, Dracula was £90,000.

12 years on, with inflation, they've
now gotta make a film for £100,000.

And the budget doesn't
stretch as far at Elstree,

where they were making
these films now,

than they did it at Bray Studios.

In autumn 1970,

James Carreras invited his
son Michael back into the company

in his old role
as executive producer.

Michael doesn't
want to do that again.

He's done it, so he says no.

And this causes another major rift
between father and son.

Of course, Jimmy Carreras
was well aware of the straits

Hammer was heading into by 1970.

I mean, he was there
doing the deals, and by 1970,

they tended to be non-existent deals
with American studios.

And now James actually says,

'Why don't you come back?
But you can be managing director.'

And Michael starts
on 4th January 1971

as the Managing Director of Hammer.

As soon as Michael Carreras
takes over, things look up.

They decide to completely abandon...
the sexier films they'd been making,

with Frankenstein
And The Monster From Hell.

They bring Terence Fisher back
to make his last film.

Peter Cushing's
last go as the Baron.

It's a kind of callback
to the older Hammer Gothic mode.

And then they started
trying to mix the Gothic horror

with the Satanic panic elements.

Hammer had to hustle
to try to stay relevant,

and they become kind of 'throw it
at the wall' kind of movies.

One that stands out to me
is Dracula AD 1972.

I'm one of those many people who
have a lot of patience for that one.

It's something that I've just
always been interested about,

cos there was something
very transitional about it.

But you can tell that they're
starting to lose their way

and moving into something that...

is quite different from what
they used to be really good at.

They're no longer
based on classic stories.

Once they didn't know
where they were going any more,

the spirit of adventure
that had marked the early '60s

was nowhere to be found,

because a lot of the personnel
were nowhere to be found.

The celebrated creatives
that had crafted Hammer's success

through the 1950s and early 1960s

had all but disappeared.

Only Michael Carreras and his father,
James, remained...for now.

James was on, I think,
a sea cruise or a vacation,

and Michael learnt his father was
trying to sell the family company.

APPLETON: James Carreras was
in discussion with this company

called Studio Film Labs
for a while about a merger.

At the same time, James was talking
to Tony Tenser from Tigon Films

about Tony potentially
taking over Hammer

and engulfing it into Tigon.

Michael knew about
the first discussion,

but he didn't know about
the discussion with Tony.

Michael, obviously, was very annoyed
that this decision

was taken out of his hands,
especially at the point...

that he was the Managing Director,
and he wasn't even consulted.

So he launched his own bid
to buy the company.

They went to the PFS, which is
the Pensions Funds Subsidiary,

and asked for a £400,000 loan,

which they granted,

on top of £200,000 extra
to make two films...

to set them going.

So he was able to hustle enough
money to make a counteroffer...

..waited for the boat to dock.

His father walked off the boat,
and he handed him the contract.

So it was a fait accompli...

with no communication
between them.

It's almost like the cold war
had just calcified

everything in that relationship.

James took the bid.
And Michael became the Director.

The irony is Michael Carreras thinks
he's buying a solvent company.

He thinks he's buying
Hammer Films backed by EMI,

you know, so the bank account's
gonna be full.

And he finds out that that bank
account went with James Carreras.

When Michael took over
the company in 1972,

the one thing that happened
straight away was all the...

the American studios
pulled their financing.

This is potentially due to...

James's advice.

Or, I mean, I think
it's also to do with the fact

they were really
good friends with James,

and they just
didn't really have a...

relationship with Michael
in the same way.

RIGBY: I have the impression
that Michael had no idea...

just how...of the paucity
of Hammer's resources at that point,

whereas his father was well aware,

and nevertheless, still handed
the company over to him.

I need some money, Father.
You can't have any.

I think James had
a real disdain for his son.

I think he was ferocious, and tough,
in a way he didn't need to be.

He basically...

left him on a sinking ship.

Seemingly deceived by his own father,

Michael was determined
to keep the family business alive.

Following his deal
to take over Hammer,

he put the business ahead
of any personal vendettas,

hoping to recapture the Hammer magic.

He immediately went into production
on a vampire film,

a feature that had been commissioned
by the very man he felt betrayed him.

Captain Kronos is a really
interesting watershed moment,

I think, in Hammer,
and what could have been

and what might have been,

because Brian Clemens wrote
and directed a very sort of...

quirky, cheeky, interesting...

vampire movie unlike any vampire
movie that had ever been made.

Brian was very much in charge
of that because it was his baby.

He'd written it.
He was gonna direct it.

To be honest,
he was thrilled to bits.

I mean, he desperately
always wanted to direct.

LOGAN: It was a little folk horror.

It was a little, like, 'I don't get
what's going on in this, exactly.'

It had sword fights.
It was genre blending...

in a way that's very popular now.

So it was a really exciting
piece of work.

I enjoyed that film very much,

partly because
it was all shot outside.

And my passion is to be outside.
Got to be outside.

And it was great,
because I'd turn up in the morning,

and I remember
the hairdresser saying,

'You haven't washed your hair, have
you?' 'No, you told me not to.'

'Don't wash it for a week.
We need it kind of yucky.'

I said, 'OK, alright, then.
I won't. Great.'

And Michael Carreras
should have been smart enough

to realise that was an exciting way
to keep building his brand,

to keep the Hammer brand going.

Maybe he felt threatened. Maybe it
just wasn't his sensibility.

It was a bit too esoteric. It was
basically ahead of its time, really.

He was very sniffy about Brian
Clemens, you know, in terms of...

'He's not quite understanding
our style or what we do here,'

you know, as if he's his father,

you know,
putting his old school tie up.

And I'm like,
'Michael, no. Don't do this.'

There was
a great opportunity there...

for Brian Clemens
to become the new Jimmy Sangster,

the new Terence Fisher, the new...

idea man behind Hammer.

Michael Carreras should have
gotten so behind that movie

and said, 'Look what Hammer
can do now. This is different.

Here's the man who made it,
Brian Clemens.

He's an artist.'
But he didn't do that.

It just sort of...crept out.

And it wasn't given
a proper release.

It came out, apparently,
about a year or so later.

Brian's directorial debut,
in essence,

was sort of...shoved at
the back of a cupboard, basically.

How stultifying that must have been,

how debilitating
it must have been to an artist.

If I could go back into Hammer
history and arrange a meeting,

I would sit down Michael Carreras...

and Brian Clemens and say,
'Boys, work it out.'

Company politics, and the absence
of any new creative vision,

were beginning to suffocate Hammer.

Meanwhile, other filmmakers
around the world

were breathing new life
into the horror genre.

Problems for Hammer...

probably started with The Exorcist.

(SCREAMING, CLATTERING)

Suddenly no-one's interested
in what's going on
in Transylvanian castles.

People want to see what's
going on next door,

down the street, inside your house.

That's where horror moved,

and that's where horror still is to
this day, whether it's The Exorcist,

or another big hit that they're
trying to emulate, it's too late.

Michael, even as much
as he was being creative

and trying to diversify
the Hammer output,

I'm not sure even he knew

the direction it was
going to go in in the '70s.

I think what we were
seeing then in the '70s

was the decline
of the British film industry.

Within a few years,

British commercial filmmaking,

at the end of the 20th century,
would be more or less wiped out.

It's always the challenge
with art...

to make money, to stay solvent.

And Hammer,
like every other British studio,

was at the mercy of the marketplace.

To Michael Carreras's credit,
he kept the thing going...

when, obviously, they were not
on the same track as the audience.

And so...

even the movies that were supposed
to be good, like...

..which on paper, looks like
it would be a pretty good movie.

It was trying so desperately
to be The Exorcist...

that it lost its own individuality.

And not only don't they work,
they don't make any money.

It's like any studio,
whether Disney or any of them,

they try to move with the times.

It's easier said than done.

Despite this significant downturn
in creative output

during the mid-1970s,

which led to disappointing
financial outcomes,

Hammer's legacy
has remarkably endured.

The magic forged over the prior
two decades managed to persist.

Lesser studios
would have faltered sooner,

and lesser leaders might have
let the company fade away.

But Michael Carreras' unwavering
never-say-die attitude...

kept the Hammer flames burning.

Michael Carreras's tenacity during
the '70s in keeping Hammer alive,

I think, is key to the fact
that it's still alive now.

And he made movies,
which is, let me tell you,

it's no mean feat to get movies made
and released - it's a big deal.

The fact the last Hammer film was
a remake of a Hitchcock picture...

VOICEOVER: Now you see her...

(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)

..now you don't.

Never a good idea, by the way.

And it's not such a bad movie,
but nobody wanted to see it.

And it doesn't have
anything Hammer-esque about it.

APPLETON: And Michael really thought
that Hammer would come back to life.

I'll give you life again.

He literally thought
that he would be able

to save Hammer
right up to the very end.

That's what I admired most
about Michael Carreras,

that with everything falling apart,
without the support of his father,

he hustled like crazy.

He won't give up.

Can't you see?

Michael didn't want to give up
because apart from anything else,

it was his family business.

And I think nobody wants
to admit defeat, ultimately.

Maybe he wanted
to prove something to his dad,

who never really
believed in him, particularly.

In the '70s, Hammer is surviving
on British finance.

Almost exclusively.

My name is Mitch Wicking.

And I'm the son
of Christopher Wicking.

I wrote screenplays for Hammer
in the mid-'70s.

So it seems to be, from Dad's
diaries, a long catalogue of...

..Michael spending money
to raise money.

There was tales of waiting for...

the fat man, as he calls him.
I think it's Michael Klinger.

It was a German
who was ready to fund projects,

but they wait and wait,
and there'd be a telex.

'He's on his way.
He's on the plane.

He'll be coming with
a suitcase of money,'

as Dad puts it in the diary.

And then right at the last minute -
it's always the last second...

(EXHALES) ..doesn't turn up.

So he ploughed a lot of money,
including some of his own,

into building up a number of...

big budget films, such as Nessie,
Vampirella, Vlad The Impaler,

which, of course,
didn't see the light of day,

and all that money was lost.

Apart from Nessie and Vampirella,

there were three or four, five, six,
seven different smaller movie ideas.

And there was the big one.

They approached Stan Lee
at Marvel Comics

with the idea of doing a franchise.

You've got Iron Man in there,
and Doctor Strange,

and quite a few others.

Stan's reply is, 'Oh, yeah. Great.

Lovely. Let's take the next step.'

And then there's some reason
why they couldn't do it.

So you can imagine...

what kudos that would have been
if that had have come off.

Michael can't carry on any longer,

and the Official Receiver
takes charge.

So the fact that Hammer
goes under definitively in 1979...

for a time, is not
entirely surprising, because...

most other sectors of the British
film industry are doing so as well.

He kept the company alive
and enabled all this stuff,

decades later, merely by...

by that dog-with-a-bone quality
that he had.

And it was a dog-with-a-bone quality
that was largely based on,

you know, a sentimental reaction
to the fact

that his whole life had been Hammer,
and he didn't want to see it die.

When you make something that's
so specific and so idiosyncratic,

it's not gonna work for 40 years.

I suppose I wasn't in tune.
I have to take the blame for this.

I was in charge.
We should have had new thinking.

We should have had
completely new writers.

We should have had new directors. We
should have had all sorts of things.

Michael Carreras passed away
in 1994 from cancer,

just four years
after the death of his father.

All of the men who'd steered Hammer
through its golden years were gone.

For many, it marked
the final curtain for a company

that had brought so much fear,
wonder and excitement to the screen.

As we look back,
decades after his death,

Michael Carreras stands tall
against the Hammer backdrop.

A man whose fingerprints were across
nearly all of the Hammer films,

having worked in so many departments

and taking on so many
different responsibilities.

In a world of heroes,
legends and monsters,

Michael Carreras
was a very human being.

At the end of this chapter
of the Hammer story,

one man's struggle
kept the Hammer name alive.

Michael Carreras succeeded.

The fact that
Michael Carreras was able

to keep the company
through that period...

I'm sure is why we're able
to still talk about it today.

In the years since
Hammer's near-death experience

at the end of the 1970s,

it has been kept alive
in various iterations,

producing films
and television series...

from the Hammer House Of Horror

to blockbuster films
like The Woman In Black.

Despite all of the trials and
tribulations the company has faced,

Hammer has risen to legendary status
in the world of film.

Those films were made by people
who cared. They loved them.

They made them
with great care and attention.

Those films will last forever.

I get asked time and time again,

in letters and interviews
and things,

'When is Hammer gonna return
or will Hammer return?'

and certainly the answer
doesn't lie with me.

But I would be very happy
to see it return.

Definitely.

It is the desperate irony
that Hammer, as a company,

now reflects its most
famous character, Count Dracula.

You can never kill it. It just has
a way of reviving again and again.

And, boy, have we seen some
convincing deaths in the films.

And yet, somehow,

it always comes back.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Life after death. Indestructible.

(MUSIC SWELLS)

MAN: Cameras rolling.
WOMAN: All good.

Yeah.Hammer, Hammer.
(LAUGHTER)

So we'll do... We'll do an easy one
to start with.(LAUGHS)

Just try.We'll start and work it
out.We'll see how easy it is.

And all we ever did
was dissect bunnies.

A little higher.Happy there?
A bit higher.

Cool. Mark it.
Yeah. Joe Dante, take 1.

It says John Carpenter.

(LAUGHS)
You can pretend.

You know, it's like Howard The Duck.

Didn't anyone see that
little duck suit, you know?

What a great question.

I'd like it noted that was two
great questions.Yeah. Within one.

In forty-five minutes, that
makes two great questions.Yeah.

It's like an Old Spice commercial.
You know, it really changes.

So, yes, my mum gave me
this pamphlet with penguins in it.

(LAUGHTER)Oh, no, stop it!
I'm gonna have to get up.

(LAUGHTER)

WOMAN: It's got worse!

It's like The Godfather.

Just when you're out,
they drag you back in.

So you and Edna read the book.
Read the pamphlet.Pamphlet.

Well, week after week, she'd always
come over on a Sunday morning.

She lived at the bottom of
my garden, as did Nigel and Jeremy.

Just stop it! (GIGGLES)

You had somebody
living in your garden? (LAUGHS)

But I did!

(LAUGHS)

Right. Can we cut?
Cos I can't chat to her any more.

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