The Amicus Anthology

Compared to some of the subjects of author Bruce Hallenbeck's previous books, most notably The Hammer Vampire and The Hammer Frankenstein, The Amicus Anthology likely provided a greater challenge -- one that he thankfully rises to.

For the Hammer Frankenstein films, excepting the one-off spoof/parody Horror of Frankenstein, are unified by the constant presence of Peter Cushing in the title role and, barring The Evil of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher as director/auteur. The Amicus anthology films, by contrast, were directed by Freddie Francis and Roy Ward Baker in approximately equal numbers and had no recurring characters.

The history of Amicus is intrinsically linked to that of its rival. Milton Subotsky presented Hammer with a script for a Frankenstein film. Hammer's bosses didn't like it, but learned that Mary Shelley's characters were out of copyright and thus made their own treatment. This became the epochal Curse of Frankenstein.

Subotsky and other Amicus mainman Max Rosenberg responded to Hammer by employing Christopher Lee for the atmospheric City of the Dead. While not an official Amicus film its present-day setting would emerge as something differentiating Amicus and Hammer horror on aggregate.

There are, in my opinion, three key reasons why The Amicus Anthology works.

First, Hallenbeck provides historical context to the horror compendium film in his opening and closing chapters, which reference the likes of Waxworks, Dead of Night, and Creepshow.

Second, he contextualises Amicus's anthologies in relation to their single-story horrors, such as The Skull, and their non-horror films, such as the Amicus in all but name Dr Who adaptations with Cushing as (a) Who. (This Amicus/Who nexus is worth noting, with third and fourth Who's Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker both appearing in Amicus anthology horrors.)

Finally, Hallenbeck makes you think: Do you prefer to see Amicus's guest stars or Hammer's character actors? Do you prefer segments or wholes? Do you prefer humour as punchline or intermittently? Does a great segment outweigh a good film?

The Hammer Frankenstein

This new book from Bruce Hallenbeck, published by the UK’s Hemlock, follows on from the same author’s The Hammer Vampire.

If the chronology and complexity of producing works on the two foremost Hammer franchises seems a bit back-to-front, given that the studio’s first vampire film followed its first Frankenstein film, and more challenging, in that there was greater variation amongst the vampire films, it perhaps made commercial sense as vampire films were more popular at the time and, if Underworld and Twilight are considered, more popular today.

The Hammer Frankenstein begins with a brief foreword by Veronica Carlson, who is distinguished by being the only female lead to appear in two of the studio’s Frankenstein productions – Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and The Horror of Frankenstein (1970).

Following this Hammer scholar Denis Meikle provides a general introduction to the Gothic as a literary genre and the place of Mary Shelley’s source novel within it.

The remaining chapters are all by Hallenbeck and take a chronological approach, with one chapter on each of Hammer’s seven Frankenstein films – The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), the aforementioned Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and Horror of Frankenstein (the odd one out in that it a re-imagining of the first film rather than continuing on from its predecessor) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973).

Prior to discussing Hammer’s Frankenstein, however, Hallenbeck first of all devotes a chapter to the story’s pre-Hammer film history, from the Edison Company’s 1910 short through to the Monster Rallies and inevitable encounter with Abbott and Costello in the 1940s. Here, as the author indicates, the Whale/Karloff films are the most important, establishing the definitive look of the monster and that he, rather than his creator, was given primacy. (Subsequently the author does the same with a chapter on the post-Hammer Frankenstein film.)

Both these points were to prove crucial when it came to The Curse of Frankenstein. For, as is well-known from more general histories of the studio, Hammer found themselves with a basic source that was now out of copyright alongside certain aspects which were Universal’s intellectual property, most notably the look of the monster. Hammer’s response, of course, was to both give the monster a new look and to shift the focus from the creation to his creation.

It is through this chapter that the strengths and, to a far lesser extent, the weaknesses of Hallenbeck’s approach come through. Taking the positives first he expertly draws together and selects from the existing and ever-expanding literature (the aforementioned Meikle, Richard Klemensen’s long-running Little Shoppe of Horrors fanzine, Dr Wayne Kinsey’s Bray and Elstree Years volumes, Marcus Hearn’s various ‘official’ studies; Jimmy Sangster’s autobiography, etc., etc.). Hallenbeck also skilfully addresses various facets of the film’s production, distribution, reception, and influence, placing each in their specific and general contexts. In so doing he also crucially manages to give his own critical perspective upon the film. I would argue that it is this that is so vital when dealing with something as well known as the Hammer Frankensteins. This in turn relates to the main failing of the book, if it can be called a failing, namely the extreme difficulty of bringing something new to bear without spending ever greater and less productive amounts of time in the archives or lazily invoking and applying capital-T type Theory.

Against the former – “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” to cite Walt Whitman – it should also be considered that the various reproductions of (often annotated or crossed out) key pages from scripts are a delight.

Hallenbeck’s next chapter, on the abortive US television series attempted in between Curse of Frankenstein and its sequel, is perhaps more interesting for the Hammer aficionado. This is partly because its subject is less familiar, partly because ideas first mooted here would be Frankensteined and given new life in some of the later films.

The third and fourth chapters, on The Revenge of Frankenstein and The Evil of Frankenstein, prove similarly strong. Hallenbeck adjudges Revenge superior to its predecessor as a sequel and steers a course between the Scylla and Charibdis of the US/pro-Universal and UK/pro-Hammer camps with regard to the latter, the only entry in the main cycle to be directed by someone other than Terence Fisher.

Turning to Frankenstein Created Woman, Hallenbeck usefully brings out how Fisher’s return was combined with stylistic and thematic innovations, in the director’s modish use of the hand held-camera and the hitherto scientific-materialist Frankenstein now experimenting with the transplantation of the soul. He also notes how the lab sets were less impressive than those of the preceding film, nicely illustrating how low-budget filmmaking is always a creative compromise.

This is also the case when it comes to the final Hammer Frankenstein, where the enclosed spaces of the insane asylum in which Frankenstein now lives and works help connote the sense of diminishing returns that, ironically, echoed the studio’s fortunes (or, rather, lack thereof) at the time.

Overall, a worthy addition to anyone’s Hammer library.

The Hammer Vampire

Written by Bruce Hallenbeck and released as part of Hemlock’s ongoing Hemlock Film series, this 2010 publication analyses the Hammer vampire in its various manifestations from 1958’s Dracula through to 1974’s The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

The films are discussed chronologically and thematically across six main chapters, with a prologue and epilogue bookending things by outlining the pre-Hammer situation and post-Hammer developments respectively.

The first chapter, entitled The Terrifying Lover, looks at Dracula and The Brides of Dracula. The second, The Nature of the Beast, encompasses Kiss of the Vampire and Dracula: Prince of Darkness. The third, The Vampire as Antichrist, examines Taste the Blood of Dracula, Dracula has Risen from the Grave and The Scars of Dracula. The fourth, Sin, Sex and Sadism, focuses on The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil. The fifth, The Vampire in Society, discusses Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula. The final chapter, Variations on a Theme, looks at Countess Dracula, Vampire Circus, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter and Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

I didn’t always find these groupings convincing on account of the overlaps and interconnections between films in some of them – the reworking of Brides of Dracula’s planned climax for Kiss of the Vampire; the way in which Dracula’s resurrection in Prince of Darkness (and, indeed, that subtitle) already position the character as antichrist; or the vague Karnstein references that were in Captain Kronos’s script at one point.

I was however convinced by Hallenbeck’s overall thesis. This is that over the course of 15 or so years Hammer’s films went from radical to reactionary in their treatments of the vampire myth. This is conveyed not only through a consideration of the pre- and post-Hammer vampire films but also those films whose releases run parallel to them.

Simply put something like 1970’s The Loves of Count Iorga Vampire would not have been possible without Hammer, whilst at the same time they themselves were struggling to come to terms with the new more sexually (and, on occasion, politically) explicit films they had given rise to.

He is also particularly good at challenging some of Christopher Lee’s more exaggerated and self-defensive claims as cases he protesteth too much: It appears not so much to have been that Lee refused to say anything in Dracula: Prince of Darkness as that Jimmy Sangster had not written any lines for Dracula. Similarly, Lee’s constant protests to Hammer about his remuneration seems as much a negotiating strategy or ritual as anything else.

In the end, I think the value of Hallenbeck’s book will depend on where you fit as a Hammer fan: If you are a completist, like me, then you obviously need it. If you are a selective completist or on a limited budget, then you might find that too much of the material overlaps with what you already have by the likes of Wayne Kinsey. If you are neither of these then it is weighing up the volume’s more detailed discussion of its subject against the absence of other subjects. Of course, the Hammer = Horror association also likely means that you are not aware of many of these selfsame subjects.

This itself actually leads to a question: Can we ever expect to see an in-depth study of Hammer’s non-horror films, either as a whole or by genre in the same way? Will Hemlock do 'British Cult Cinema: The Hammer Comedy' at some point in the future?

Whatever the answer, Hallenbeck’s book is well-written, informative and does what it sets out to.