Monster Madness: The Gothic Revival of Horror

Monster Madness: The Gothic Revival of Horror (2015)

*** (out of 4)

Following their documentaries on the Golden Age of the 1930s horror film and the Sci-Fi boom of the 1950s, this film centers on Hammer films and how they brought Frankenstein's monster, Dracula,, the mummy and the wolf man back to the big screen in glorious color and with an added dose of sex and violence. The documentary covers Hammer's early days to their revival with the help of stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

Archival interviews with Cushing, Lee, Val Guest and Veronica Carlson are mixed with interviews with historians and experts as they discuss Hammer in the 1930s, their bankruptcy and their comeback with the sci-fi films and of course their major breakthrough with bringing the famous monsters back to the screen. There's no question that the interviews are certainly the highlight as it's great getting to see these older interviews. Sure, you can probably find them on YouTube but it's still fun seeing them here.

The majority of the film footage is from trailers but that's okay because I thought the filmmakers did a good job at not showing too much footage and making a good balance with the interviews. It's doubtful you Hammer experts are going to learn anything new here but it's still a fun way to go back through the studios history.

MONSTER MADNESS: THE Gothic REVIVAL OF HORROR is apparently the third in a series of documentaries exploring Universal horror, the 1950s atom age of horror, and Hammer horror in turn. What we get is basically another clip compilation in which various footage from both the Hammer horror classics and their trailers is utilised while a voice-over artist narrates the history of the company.

First, a word of warning: any genuine Hammer buffs are unlikely to find out anything new here. The quality of the given information is quite basic and scant, although the exploration of the early days of the Carreras family is quite interesting. Later, the documentary becomes a straight run-through of the films, focusing mainly on the Dracula and Frankenstein series, although intriguing mention is made of Hammer's forgotten psycho-thrillers. Stuff like THE REPTILE and THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES is ignored completely.

The most interesting thing about MONSTER MADNESS is the '90s-era interview footage of various personalities that emerges. We see Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing all too briefly, as well as Yutte Stensgaard, Jimmy Sangster, and Val Guest. This keeps things quite snappy. I also liked the mention of Michael Ripper and rival studios such as Amicus and Tigon. I could have done without the interviews with various American 'experts', basically movie bloggers who you've never heard of; they needed a Kim Newman or Tim Lucas to do the subject matter justice.

This was a documentary that I decided to check out while working. Later in the day, I like to treat these like podcasts. I'll listen to what they have to say and look down if something is particularly interesting. I've seen the first two episodes of this series of docs, this one focusing on the 1960s and 1970s. The subtitle here is about the gothic revival.

Now a majority of this documentary is focusing on the rise of Hammer productions. They ushered in a silver age of the horror film by using similar monsters that Universal did. Hammer just used sex and blood to help make these sell. What is also interesting there is that Hammer teamed up with Universal, distributing in the United States for this British company. Carl Laemmle was even swayed over.

Straight horror and monster films weren't the only thing that Hammer did either. They ventured into sci-fi with the Quatermass films, fleshing out the television serial into feature films. They made noir inspired murder mysteries and great black-and-white thrillers. The monster movies were their bread and butter but weren't limited.

Some other highlights from this were the rise of the horror hosts on TV. That gave a second life to the Universal classics. Hammer also would hire fading US stars to help get their films seen more in the states.

I'll then end out by saying that this is made well. It does feel more like a clip show with all the trailers and scenes that are edited in to help give a visual to things that we are hearing about. There are great interviews here of filmmakers, writers and actors who starred in these works. That is a good touch, especially with the age they're from. This could be some of the last interviews done by them. I love that time capsule aspect for this.

Good information here and helped give background to a good number of the films that I've seen or heard of. Would recommend it for that alone.

My Rating: 7.5 out of 10.