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Category Archives: Hammer Studios
PAINKILLER by NJ Fountain
“You wrote my note! My suicide note! You want to kill me!” Although the term ‘gaslighting’ has existed for decades, it is very popular at present to describe stories in which men manipulate the minds of women – and this … Continue reading
The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore
Regular visitors to this blog will know what a fan I am of the Hammer suspense thrillers. But in the 1960s, their greatest rivals at the British box office were Amicus, the company that specialised in anthology horror films, features … Continue reading
Posted in Amicus, Anthology, Hammer Studios
20 Comments
The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970)
Dagmar Lassander is a bored housewife who has been relying too much on drink to keep herself together. Her husband knows he has been neglecting her but his business (underwater diving equipment) is at a critical stage. One night she … Continue reading
Posted in Film Noir, Giallo, Hammer Studios, Italy, Jimmy Sangster, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
40 Comments
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1902) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this is one of those books that may seem very familiar even to those who have never actually read it. But they really should because it holds up beautifully. It is certainly the single best known … Continue reading
Cash on Demand (1961) – Tuesday’s overlooked movie
This tense real-time thriller ultimately becomes, somewhat surprisingly, a variant on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Peter Cushing plays the austere and unyielding manager of the City & Colonial Bank in Haversham, disliked, with reason, by all his staff. Enter André … Continue reading
Posted in Film Noir, Hammer Studios, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
Tagged André Morell, Peter Cushing
45 Comments
The Full Treatment (1960) – Tuesday’s overlooked film
This tale of psychological turmoil is fairly intriguing to start with but does get a bit bogged down before becoming thrillerish a bit too late in the game. It was the last in a run of popular films that writer-director … Continue reading
Posted in Film Noir, France, Hammer Studios, Tuesday's Overlooked Film, Val Guest
Tagged Val Guest
18 Comments
Top 20 Amnesia Mystery Movies
Whether it’s the intrigue of Jason Bourne adventures or the farcical escapades of the Hangover films, memory loss remains a popular narrative device in fiction in general and at the cinema in particular. Here is a guide to my top 20 favourite … Continue reading
Posted in 'Best of' lists, Alfred Hitchcock, Amnesia, Billy Wilder, Boileau-Narcejac, Charlie Chan, England, Eric Ambler, France, Greece, Hammer Studios, James Hilton, Jimmy Sangster, John Frankenheimer, Len Deighton, London, Los Angeles, LP Davies, New York, Orson Welles, San Francisco, Spain, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
Tagged Robert Ludlum
88 Comments
Women of Twilight (1953) – Tuesday’s Overlooked Film
Nothing to do with Stephenie Meyer, this stark social drama (aka Twilight Women) was based on Sylvia Rayman’s groundbreaking all-female play. The up-and-coming Lois Maxwell and Laurence Harvey co-star, though the film is dominated by René Ray as unlikely heroine Viviane and Freda Jackson … Continue reading
Side Effects
The thriller genre can be so capacious and seductive that filmmakers often use the form to smuggle in less commercial content on its coat-tails. Successful examples of this include the debate on Britain’s antiquated homosexuality laws found in Victim (1961), … Continue reading
Douglas Slocombe – 100 years old today
OK movie buffs, here’s a fun pop quiz for you: what do Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sean Connery’s last Bond movie, Michael Caine in The Italian Job, Montgomery Clift’s turn as Sigmund Freud and several classic Ealing comedies such … Continue reading
The Last Page (1952)
Released as Man Bait in the US, this story of blackmail and murder in the London book trade was adapted from a 1947 play by James Hadley Chase, a writer still best-known for the pulp shocker No Orchids for Miss … Continue reading
Spaceways (1953)
An engaging if curious genre hybrid, this is a patchwork movie combining Cold War espionage, a murder mystery and two love triangles in a science fiction setting – and all on the tightest of budgets. Unpretentious and fun, this British … Continue reading
Wings of Danger (1952)
Zachary Scott stars in this British aviation mystery directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Studios. It was based on the 1951 book Dead on Course by ‘Mansell Black’, a name used here by journalist Packham Webb and prolific novelist Elleston Trevor. … Continue reading
Posted in Elleston Trevor, Hammer Studios, Terence Fisher, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
Tagged robert lippert, terence fisher
34 Comments
Mantrap (1953)
Paul Henreid stars in this fast-paced British whodunit, an adaptation of Adam Hall’s Queen in Danger, my review of which you can read here. In the US the film was released as Man in Hiding and was one of dozens of … Continue reading
Posted in Adam Hall, Hammer Studios, London, Terence Fisher, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
Tagged robert lippert, terence fisher
20 Comments
QUEEN IN DANGER (1952) by Adam Hall
Elleston Trevor doesn’t rate a single mention in The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing (1999), and that’s a real shame. The author of some 100 novels, as Trevor he published exciting war and adventure stories that easily stand … Continue reading
Edgar Wallace Mysteries (1960–65)
Between September 1960 and October 1965 cinemas in the UK screened 47 films produced by Anglo Amalgamated as part of their Edgar Wallace Mysteries series. These low-budget movies, more or less based on the works of the celebrated mystery author, … Continue reading
BRAT FARRAR (1949) by Josephine Tey
Imposture lies at the heart of this well constructed suspense novel by Elizabeth Mackintosh, the Scottish author best known today for the mysteries she published as ‘Josephine Tey’, though she also wrote books and plays using her own name and … Continue reading
Fear in the Night (1972)
Joan Collins plays a sexy sculptress with a taste for blood and the grotesque in this ‘old school’ thriller from Hammer productions. The star though is topbilled Judy Geeson as Peggy, a mentally fragile newlywed who plans to join her … Continue reading
Stolen Face (1952)
Hammer Films came to prominence thanks to the series of bold horror films they made in colour from the late 1950s and throughout the next decade, the best of which were directed by Terence Fisher. But they both got their … Continue reading
Posted in Alfred Hitchcock, Hammer Studios, London, Terence Fisher, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
Tagged robert lippert, terence fisher
25 Comments
Crescendo (1970) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
Hammer made a return to the thriller genre after a break of several years by dusting off an old script by Alfred Shaughnessy that originally had been intended as a possible vehicle for Joan Crawford with Michael Reeves to direct. … Continue reading
The Nanny (1965) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
Bette Davis gives a subtle and nuanced performance as the title character in this small-scale suspense movie that deserves to be much better known. It is easy to succumb to the temptation to lump it together with What Ever Happened … Continue reading
THE TERROR (1930) by Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace was still a big name when I was growing up in Italy in the 1970s, his iconic signature and profile emblazoned on dozens of yellow paperbacks and linked to a long list of rather lurid movies usually set … Continue reading
Posted in Edgar Wallace, Gothic, Hammer Studios
22 Comments
Hysteria (1965) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
The Hammer company stopped acting as its own distributor from the late 1950s, instead making deals with virtually all the Hollywood majors to handle (and bankroll) their output. This film is one of the few made for distribution by that … Continue reading
Paranoiac (1963) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
The young Oliver Reed was under contract at Hammer Studios just before becoming a major star and Paranoiac is among his best films of the period, providing the actor with one of his earliest chances to play the kind of … Continue reading
Nightmare (1964) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
A teenage girl in her nightie walks down an eerie and dark corridor, apparently lost. Becoming increasingly uneasy and hearing voices, she fearfully open a door and finds her mother, grinning, apparently waiting for her. It’s the inside of a … Continue reading
Maniac (1963) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
In the movies it seems that the ‘Rural South’, irrespective of where it may actually be in the world, is synonymous with savage attitudes and retrograde customs; an atavistic haven where old customs die-hard; and where outsiders, usually from the … Continue reading
Taste of Fear (1961) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
This film, released more prosaically in the US as Scream of Fear, is a psychological suspense yarn plainly inspired by Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) but offering several neat twists and turns of its own. A superior Hammer movie – … Continue reading
Tipping My Fedora 