1st Edition
Critical Readings on Hammer Horror Films
This collection offers close readings on Hammer’s cycle of horror films, analysing key films and placing particular emphasis on the narratives and themes present in the works discussed.
Ranging from the studio’s first horror outing, The Mystery of the Mary Celeste (1935) to Hammer’s last contemporary film, The Lodge (2019), the collection celebrates cult-favorites such as The Quatermass Experiment, the films of Terence Fisher, to overlooked classics such as Captain Clegg or The Mummy franchise. The volume also delves into Hammer’s psychological thrillers, the studio’s venture into TV with Hammer’s House of Horrors, with theoretical frameworks varying from queer studies to postcolonial readings.
This volume will appeal to scholars and students of film studies, international cinema, film history and horror studies.
Introduction
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Matthew Edwards
Part I: Hammer Horror before (and Beyond) Horror
1. The Mystery of the Mary Celeste – Hammer’s First Horror
Matthew Banks
2. The Quatermass AnXiety and the Evil Within: Re-emerging Victorian Ethos in Post-War Science-Fiction Narratives
César Guarde-Paz
3. Hammer Studio’s Captain Clegg and the Genre Legacy of Swashbuckling Gothic Horror
Garret Castleberry
4. I Bette you I’m a Great Mother: Middle-Aged Women and Grotesque Maternity
Canela Ailén Rodríguez Fontao and Mariana Zárate
Part II: The Golden Age of Horror
5- ‘A Sickness partly Spiritual, partly Physical’: Monster, Savant, Gender and Class in The Brides of Dracula (1960)
TD Velasquez
6. “Give Me a Skin for Dancing In”: Female Grotesquery and Desire in The Witches (1966)
Nicole Hamilton
7. Children of the Night: Vampiric Blood Lines, Reproduction, and Queer Futurity in Hammer Horror’s Karnstein Trilogy
Katie Duggan
8. Let Horror Speak: Theodicy, Eschatology, and Rebellion in Hammer’s Dracula and Frankenstein Films
Andrew Grossman
9. House of Horror: Domestic Architecture and Eco-Gothic Slippage in The Reptile (1966) and Children of the Full Moon (1980)
Brenda S. Gardenour Walter
Part III: The Horror of Decadence and Resurrection
10. Sinking Masculinity in Hammer’s Cycle of Mummies
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
11. The Sun Has Finally Set: Hammer House of Horror as Postimperial Provincial Horror
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
12. The Kick and/or the Crucifix: The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and the Kung Fu Craze of 1970s
Diganta Roy
13. Postmodernity and Elevated Horror in The Lodge (2019)
Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith Suresh
Part IV: Interviews
14. The Satanist: An interview with David Wickes
15. Visitor from the Grave: An interview with actor Kathryn Scott
16. Revenge of the Runners: An interview with Brian Reynolds
17. Run Like Hell: An interview with Hammer Film Production runner Phil Campbell
18. Doctor Jekyll – An Interview with Joe Stephenson
Biography
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (PhD in Arts, PhD Candidate in History) works as Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Argentina) and teaches courses on international horror film. He is director of the research group on horror cinema “Grite” and authored a book about Spanish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir (2020). He has edited books on Frankenstein bicentennial, on directors James Wan and Wes Craven, and on the Italian giallo film and horror comics (Routledge). His forthcoming publications include a edited volume on Dario Argento and another one on Baltic horror.
Matthew Edwards is an independent film scholar and primary school teacher from Cheddar, England. He has authored and/or edited various books on cult/horror cinema including Bloodstained Narratives: The Giallo Film in Italy and Abroad, The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema; Klaus Kinski, Beast of Cinema; Twisted Visions: Interviews with Horror Filmmakers; and Murder Movie Makers: Directors Discuss Their Killer Flicks. In 2023, he was nominated for a Rondo Hatton Horror Award for the best interview. He has also written for many magazines and contributed booklets for 88 Hong Kong film releases.
