Hammer Film Productions

Hammer Film Productions was a British film studio best known for its horror output from the late fifties to the mid seventies. After initially producing mainly standard mystery fare and BBC radio adaptations, their first horror movie was 1955's scifi/horror hybrid The Quatermass Experiment (itself adapting a BBC TV serial). It took The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) to fully establish the studio as a horror factory, usually in period and Gothic settings. 
Hammer movies tended to be bloodier and pushed the envelope of sex and nudity in contrast to the previous Universal Pictures classic horror movies. Universal itself signed a deal with Hammer, allowing for their 1958 version of Dracula as well as remakes and continuations of The Mummy movies and The Phantom of the Opera. Universal in turn was Hammer's most frequent US distributor through 1963.
The studio also made an assortment of fantasy films with prehistoric or ancient settings (including One Million B.C. with Raquel Welch) and occasionally stuck to more mainstream genres. However, horror was their primary product and the studio made international stars and genre icons out of leading men Christopher Lee (Dracula and both Frankenstein's monster and the Mummy in their debuts) and Peter Cushing (Dr. Frankenstein, Van Helsing, and Sherlock Holmes in the studio's Hound of the Baskervilles). Dracula and Frankenstein were the lynchpins, although the studio gave its loose answer to The Wolfman in Curse of the Werewolf, tackled Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde twice, and made several psychological or more crazed killer-themed outings.
By the 1970s, Hammer found that American films were outpacing it in gore even in mainstream movies and the studio began to wane. To the Devil a Daughter (1976) was their final horror, with nothing more released until 1979's remake of The Lady Vanishes, their final film. Two 1980s TV anthologies followed later. While the original studio folded, a Dutch company bought the brand name and film catalogue in 2007, periodically releasing new horror movies since like 2012's gothic The Woman in Black (with Daniel Radcliffe).
==References==
*Crichton, complaining about cannibalistic mad scientist Kaarvok getting him in the third season Farscape episode "Eat Me," fatalistically declares "That sick Hammer horror son of a bitch!" Kaarvok is played by Shane Briant, who appeared in four 1970s Hammer movies, and the episode plays heavily on horror tropes and atmosphere including fog-like steam.
==Connections==
*John Atkinson played a villager in Demons of the Mind (1972)
*Timothy Bateson played a barman in Nightmare (1964) and Mr. Bird in The Anniversary (1968)
*Geoffrey Bayldon played a porter in Horror of Dracula (1958) and a police doctor in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) 
*Honor Blackman played Anna Fountain in To the Devil a Daughter (1976)
*Shane Briant played Peter in Straight on Till Morning (1972), Emil Zorn in Demons of the Mind (1972), Paul Durward in Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974), and Simon Helder in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)
*David Buck played Paul Preston in The Mummy's Shroud (1967)
*Joan Collins played Molly Carmichael in Fear in the Night (1972)
*Pierre Franckh played a bellboy in The Lady Vanishes (1979) 
*John Franklyn-Robbins played a minister in Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
*Tommy Godfrey played Mr. Godfrey in Straight on Till Morning (1972)
*Elliott Gould played Robert Condon in The Lady Vanishes (1979) 
*Robert Hardy played Baron Friedrich Zorn in Demons of the Mind (1972)
*David Healy played Raymond Pelley in Lust for a Vampire (1971), Peter in the Hammer House of Horror episode "Charlie Boy" (1980), and Jack Mervyn in the Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense episode "In Possession" (1984)
*William Hootkins played a party guest in The Lady Vanishes (1979) and Lou Delmart in the Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense episode "Black Carrion" (1984)
*Michael Hordern played the priest in Demons of the Mind (1972)
*Gordon Jackson played a TV producer in The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) 
*Horst Janson played Captain Kronos in Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)
*Freddie Jones played Professor Richter in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Professor Julian Keeley in The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
*Rosalind Knight played Evelyn Barnes in The Lady Vanishes (1979) 
*Joanna Lumley played Jessica Van Helsing in The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
*Frank Middlemass played a lodger in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) 
*Robert Morley played Roderick Femm in The Old Dark House (1966)
*Joseph O'Conor played a coroner in The Gorgon (1964)
*Richard Vernon played Pearson in the non-horror Cash on Demand (1961), Sir Gerald Walters in the Journey into the Unknown episode "The Madison Equation" (1969), and Col. Mathews in The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
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