Legend of Hammer Vampires

Legend of Hammer Vampires (2008)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Jimmy Sangster, Janina Faye, Carol Marsch, Christopher Matthews, Caroline Munro, David Prowse and Yvonne Moniaur are among the Hammer vets who are interviewed in this documentary that covers all of the vampire films made by the British studio.

If you're a fan of Hammer then you'll certainly want to watch this 97 minute documentary that takes a look at everything from HORROR TO Dracula to THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES and everything in between. The first film gets a few extra minutes of time devoted to it but the various sequels and re-imagined films.

The documentary does a very good job at going through the films in the order that they were made. This here gives you a great idea of how the times and films were changing. The added bit of sexuality for stuff like THE VAMPIRE LOVERS and TWINS OF EVIL is discussed as is the new setting for something like Dracula A.D. 1972. The interviews are certainly an added bonus since just about every film has someone involved with it here discussing it.

The film features clips from all the movies but even better are getting to see various posters and original artwork that was used to promote the films. The interviews are certainly an added bonus and helps make this a very entertaining documentary.

It was a drawn-out, agonising, dramatic death - for the Hammer studio, that is. From the time they decided to go in for vampire movies, they managed a couple of respectable hits, and then just one flop after the next, viewed by half-asleep audiences on a wet Sunday in the boondocks.

That they did even as well as this was due largely to the arrival of the unknown Christopher Lee - in his own words 'tall, dark and gruesome' - who replaced Bela Lugosi as the only Dracula the public could believe in. But he soon grew tired of his banal dialogue and demanded to be killed off. Ludicrously, he was then lured back for a film that had already started shooting, and had to be re-titled 'Dracula has Risen from the Grave'!

Another casting anecdote was the signing-up of the shapely young Caroline Munro because Hammer's chairman kept seeing her on a well-placed supersite poster for Lamb's Navy Rum, and eventually demanded to meet her. (Outshining the product, the admen call it!)

The planning of these movies had a lot to do with blending the horrific with the erotic, and 'The Vampire Lovers' daringly ventures into lesbian territory, though I don't think scriptwriter Tudor Gates is quite correct when he claims it was a first. (Try 'Dracula's Daughter' from 1936.)

Meanwhile a colourful cast of actors reminisce, mainly with affection, about their Hammer days, though some of them seem to be putting on an exaggerated performance while they're at it. One who doesn't is John Forbes-Robertson (a surname with distinguished echoes on the London stage), an engagingly modest interviewee in what would sadly turn out to be his final appearance. And this large sample is unanimous that Peter Cushing was the most agreeable and considerate actor to work with.

For one moment, I thought I was looking at a clip from 'Carry on Screaming', but Pinewood Studios were obviously using the same props (much better than usual for the bargain-basement carry-ons) that Hammer had left behind from one of their better efforts, set in Edwardian days.