Flicker Fusion

I reacted with some caution over the news that the Dutch consortium Cyrte Investments has bought Hammer Films and intends to revive some of the studios old favourites for modern audiences.

Haven’t we been here before?

As early as 1980, four years after its last theatrical horror film (the stillborn To the Devil, A Daughter) Hammer head Roy Skeggs was waxing lyrical about the new future TV was bringing to the company, thanks to the helping hand of Sir Lew Grade’s ITC outfit. The result was 13 episodes of Hammer House of Horror. But rather than turn around the company’s fortunes, the shows were so lacklustre they effectively knocked another nail in its coffin.

In 1984, another attempt was made to revive the Hammer cadaver on TV, this time courtesy of a co-production arrangement with 20th Century Fox. The result was a handful of episodes of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, which turned out to even worse than the previous series, and ended up languishing on the TV landfill site that is late-night, non-networked programming.

In 1993, the company rose again to announce a new slate of film production. The media took up the story with gusto (the 9-year absence of Hammer had intensified the nation’s fondness for the brand). Pictures of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Dracula and Frankenstein briefly graced the pages of the daily newspapers, and pundits speculated about which of the classic tales would be remade. This time, nothing happened.

In 2000, Hammer was acquired by a private investment consortium, which included advertising guru Charles Saatchi. The consortium announced plans “to resurrect the Hammer name across all types of media, including the internet and digital television.” (Exactly what Cyrte has just said.) But, again, nothing happened.

So now it’s over thirty years since the last Hammer horror film, and, arguably, forty since its last good one. Sometimes, re-igniting the brand seems as likely as launching a new series of Carry On films (another long-defunct franchise that occasionally raises its head above the parapet).

But there is hope. The recent Cyrte transaction was headed by John De Mol, who runs Endemol. One of the more bold and innovative production companies of the last decade, Endemol is known chiefly, of course, as the maker of Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother. As egregious as those series may be, they do seem to get the entire world watching and talking for several months every year. So if anyone can kick-start the Hammer brand, perhaps John de Mol can.

But even if Cyrte actually succeeds in getting a film into production, it’ll have to be aware that those creaky old Hammer franchises will need to be considerably ‘re-imagined’ if they’re going to have a sporting chance in today’s A-budget/B-picture world. And there’s a few key characters they’d be foolish to revisit. Dracula? He’s been revamped, either on TV or the big screen, almost every year since the old Hammer series ended. The Mummy? Surely Universal’s lively The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001) has put paid to that. Zombies? After Land of the Dead (2005), the new Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004) and 28 Days/Week Later (2002/2007)? Not likely. Frankenstein? Perhaps. Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 version wasn’t up to much. Sherlock Holmes? Maybe, but do we need it after umpteen prestigious TV outings every five years?

I think De Mol’s best bet would be to revive Professor Quatermass — interestingly enough, seeing as The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) was Hammer studio’s first real foray into horror. TV has returned, effectively, to the character a couple of times (in 1979 and 2005), but a new version, on a bigger, modern scale, would be an enticing prospect indeed. The storylines for all three Hammer Quatermasses — The Quatermass Xperiment, Quatermass II and, especially, Quatermass and the Pit — are ripe for retelling. Nigel Kneale’s original scripts needn’t even be altered significantly; they’re still powerfully inventive. But lending them a fresh eye, with all the confidence that CGI and other modern special effects techniques would bring, could work absolute wonders, if the integrity of the original material is adhered to.

I, for one, was disappointed with the special effects in Roy Ward Baker’s otherwise superlative 1967 version of Quatermass and the Pit, as good as they may have looked when it was first released (although Kubrick’s 2001 was only a year away). Anyone under 40 watching Baker’s film now would find it hard not to snigger at the clunky model work and primitive pyrotechnics. (I don’t mean this disrespectfully; I just feel where the story still shines, the visuals have gone mouldy.)

Nigel Kneale’s work, of course, was about ideas, not special effects — that’s what made him one of the greats. But you’ve got to get bums on seats, so if New Hammer remade Quatermass and the Pit and pulled off a fusion of the two, things might take off nicely.