The British Horror Film

British Cinema

Hammer Film Productions began as a small family business based in London in 1934. The production team was very limited and often used the same writers and editors for many of their films and even used the same actors such as Christopher Lee who featured in twenty-two productions. The films created and distributed by the company Exclusive were low budget and quickly made with poor camera work and were made purely for the purpose of earning some money. These were known as ‘quota-quickies', and were used to fill in the gaps beside the more expensive, well-made films. In Britain at the time 25% of films screened had to be British since the Cinematograph Films Act in 1927, meaning these poorly made films were screened anyway.

Hammer Productions realised they still had not made a hit film and began creating films targeted at an international market, later finding success in the release of The Quatermass Xperiment in 1955. This later had two films to follow including X Unknown and Quatermass 2. The film was rated with an ‘X’ certificate which they used in the advertising by highlighting the 'X' in the name to allure audiences through the use of restrictions as there is a certain appeal about watching a film that has been restricted in some form. The success of the film gained Hollywood's attention, later receiving investments from them and in 1960 being financially secure as the world leaders of the horror cinema market.

Hammer films were known to be particularly formulaic, often very similar, with a focus on British landscape, folklore, superstitions and rural spaces outside modernity as well as monster films such as the mummy. There was also a fascination with religion, cults and what is beyond death which mimicked the loss of faith in the institutions of British society such as education, politics, law and the church. In addition, many of their films were set in the past rather than the modern day and were derived from gothic novels such as Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Dracula. This was then broken with the release of the 1973 film The Wicker Man, which broke many of the stereotypes of Hammer films and was a huge success. Although many of Hammer's films were indeed successful, they rarely chose to create something new and different after the release of Quatmermass, rather opting to produce sequel upon sequel and portray stories that had already been told through previous films or in gothic novels and audiences eventually got bored. 

1957 market the release of the first colour horror film, The Curse of Frankenstein which proved hugely successful and was something that had never seen before and started a new wave of horror that benefits from art cinema, marrying art with the horrific. The film featured gruesome imagery with shots of brains in jars and severed limbs, different from the more reserved American horror films at the time.

By 1970, Hammer Productions began to decline and successful American movies with more refined special effects and larger budgets eventually brought about the end of Hammer as audiences were no longer interested. Similarly, to Hollywood, the British industry became less and less popular due to the emergence of the colour TV, allowing audiences to stay in the comfort of their home to watch a film rather than go to the movies. After the decline of the British horror, they attempted to recover the market and produced three lesbian vampire films as other cinemas at the time often explored themes of sexuality such as Dario Argento. Many of their films such as Vampire Lovers, To The Devil A Daughter and The Satanic Rights Of Dracula began to feature full-frontal nudity and sex scenes and are regarded as some of the most explicit films to date.

Since then Hammer has produced very few films, one of them being the 2012 film The Woman In Black which was yet again an adaptation from a gothic novel and has largely died out, unlike Hollywood horror films which are still booming.

British horror can be compared to both New Zealand and German cinema. Although both influenced by the gothic novel, British horror films at the time featured more gore or extreme violence due to censorship in Britain not yet being as strict, while German Expressionism focused on distorted realities and exaggerated mise-en-scene. Strange and dark elements similar to the kiwi gothic are also visible in British horror films, such as The Woman In Black, which features a landscape that is ‘alive’ and trapping its victims.