Poe Pictures and the Hammer Tradition

In his book On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King refers to the horror movies he saw in the early 60’s as Poe Pictures. (side note here, if you are an audio book fan, do yourself a favor and listen to Stephen King read this book, this is the best audio book I’ve ever heard , I’ve listened to it 4 or 5 times now) He’s specifically referring to the Roger Corman films, usually starring Vincent Price and Based (at least the titles were) on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe. But more broadly I think he’s referring to this "type" of film, color horror pictures from the late 1950’s to the early 1970’s. These films whether they are from the British Hammer Studios starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing or the AIP films starring Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, all had one thing in common, they are more about atmosphere than story. These films ushered in a new era of horror films, while tame by today’s standards at the time they raised the stakes, adding color and blood ("Hammer blood" a term Alex and I came up with to describe the fake reddish orange thick tempera paint they used for blood in these films).

 I first read about the Hammer films in the Crestwood House Monster series books. The books would principally be about whatever Universal Monster film the title of the book was taken from. The Dracula book, would tell the story of the original Dracula film starring Bela Lugosi. After it completed the retelling of the story of the movie complete with stills, it would then go on to give briefer summaries of the other films in the series from Universal. Then there would be a few pages devoted to film versions of the character that came after the universal Series, always giving a decent couple of pages to the Hammer cycle of films. The books described the Hammer films as being much more graphic and bloody than the Universal films were, which I guess they are, while still being pretty PG by today’s standards.

I was not a horror fan as a middle schooler, my friends were into the Friday the 13th movies and their like, but those were too graphic and scary for me. I stuck to my fascination with “The Monsters”, and their heightened world of horrors rather than the modern slasher films and their heightened sense of reality and violence. You see I liked the fantasy element, the heightened sense of visuals and the departure from reality in monster movies. I didn’t want to watch people the age of my older brother and sisters tortured and killed in what looks like our world, our reality, I still don’t. So the descriptions in the books of the Hammer series being in Color and full of blood, alternately made me anxious and afraid to see them. Unfortunately the Hammer films were not readily available to me growing up, I would from time to time look for them in the horror section of Blockbuster video, but if I ever saw them there, which I can’t remember ever doing so, I must have chickened out, even as a teenager. I do remember seeing one Hammer film with my Dad when I was younger it was the evil of Frankenstein, and I remember it being very boring. It was college before I ever saw another Hammer Monster film, The Horror of Dracula.

I remember as the lights went down in Weld Auditorium, being excited to finally see Christopher Lee in living color as Dracula. I also remember being slightly worried that it would be too much for me. Of course once again the imagination makes things much more intense than the film could ever have been. In fact while I love the film now and appreciate it’s production design and performances, at the time of the first screening in college my mind overcompensated for the relief that it wasn’t too much for me. I laughed at the film, I joked about it, I thought it was ridiculous, this was the reaction of a mind that was relieved it wasn’t terrified, and then disappointed that it wasn’t. Now that I have seen many more of these films I understand that my kids can watch them, there is nothing too terrifying in them. Now I appreciate them from an entirely different point of view. For me these are fantasy films. Films to be enjoyed for their atmospheric production designs and over the top performances and story elements. The moments I watch for in the Hammer films are those fleeting moments of actual terror or the shots that translate into stills that promise more than the film could ever deliver. Red Skies, black castles atop ridiculous mountains and gallons, well pints, of Hammer Blood.

Of the Hammer series, the Dracula films are my favorite. The Frankenstein series makes the mistake of following Dr. Frankenstein from film to film as opposed to the Monster as the Universal series does. As a result the films focus on the man, always making a new monster, thus less monster more people talking about making one. The Dracula films always bring Dracula back from the dead and give us multiple shots of Christopher Lee looking terrifying as the count, with bloodshot eyes and blood dripping from his fangs.

In college I was also introduced to my first real Poe picture, The Pit and the Pendulum Starring Vincent Price. This film I got right away and knew immediately that I need to own this film and the others of it’s kind. They share with the Hammer films a focus of design and mood, atmosphere over story, and wildly mannered and thrilling performances. The Poe pictures all seem to be variations on a couple of different themes; premature burial, cursed families, Inherited Insanity. Like many of the Hammer films too, there seem to be great story beats strung together by a lot of water treading. This is why many people don’t like these films today, some of these films run 87 minutes but it seems like 180 minutes. In order to appreciate these films you need to appreciate all the elements that go into the movies aside from story. The best of them have a story that is involving, but even the best of them probably seem slow if you can’t appreciate as well the production designs and performances. If forced to watch these films without either sound or Video, I’d choose losing the sound every time, because it is the visuals that make them special.

This brings us to the through line from the 30’s to today. The Universal films established the Monsters iconic looks and characterizations, it also established the series aspect of bringing the Monsters back to life from wherever the previous film left off. The Hammer films took the characters and refined them adding color and a more gothic visuals and design. The Poe pictures, while not utilizing the Monster characters, continued the established Atmospheric and production design elements that Hammer brought to the forefront. All of this leads us to one man, Tim Burton. Burton carries on the traditions set out by Hammer and the Poe pictures of design over story, of that heightened Gothic feel, of stone walls and Hammer blood. Sleepy Hollow is probably the clearest example of these traditions on display in a Burton film, to the extent that I shelve Sleepy Hollow with my Hammer films on the DVD shelf. Other films whose looks are clearly influenced by the Poe and Hammer pictures are Edward Scissorhands, Burton’s two Batman films, Sweeny Todd, and his most recent Dark Shadows. If one needed further proof of his love of those films just look at how he has peppered the stars of them throughout his films. He has used Michael Gough, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee all in multiple projects, all are veterans of the Poe and Hammer films.

Here, for your viewing enjoyment is a list of the Hammer films chronology of the Dracula series: The Horror of Dracula, The Brides of Dracula, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Scars of Dracula, Dracula A.D. 1972, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

The Hammer Frankenstein series:The Curse of Frankenstein, Revenge of Frankenstein, The Evil of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, The Horror of Frankenstein, Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell,

And finally some of the Poe Pictures: The Pit and the Pendulum, The Haunted Palace, Tales of Terror, Twice told tales, The Tower of London, The Tomb of Ligela, The Raven, The Premature Burial, Masque of the Red Death, Fall of the House of Usher, and The Comedy of Terrors.

That's When the Monsters come out!

When The Cos spoke those immortal words he was referring to Ten O'Clock, but to me it means October! Every year at this time I get the urge to revisit All the Monster movies of my youth and more accurately my imagination. When I was young we didn't have 500 channels of Television, DVR's, and Blu-Ray players. We didn't even have DVD or Laserdisc players, in fact until I was about Seven we didn't have a VCR. What I did have though was a Dad and an Imagination, and in a way that was better. I wouldn't want to rely on my imagination now but I don't think I'd be quite the same person I am, if I hadn't had to as a child.

 I love Movie Monsters, particularly the old Universal Studio Monsters from the 30's and 40's. The weird thing is, I loved them before I'd ever seen one of the movies they appear in. I learned of the Monster's; Dracula, The Wolfman, and Frankenstein's Monster from my Dad and Library books. I can remember car rides with my father at night when I was young, probably five or six. It's dark in the car the only lights coming from the dash and the lit Kent 100 in his mouth. I don't know how the stories would start, either to keep me awake until we got home, or to keep me and my brother and sister quiet and stop the bickering that seemed to constantly go back and forth. It doesn't matter how they started what matters is what the stories told, which was basically the plots of the Universal Monster films. But the key thing is, they were better than the films. Anyone who watches those films now is more likely to get tired than scared. Those films, as exciting as their plots are and the posters appear, are a bit on the creaky and slow side. This is especially true of the earliest films, Dracula and Frankenstein both 1931. But as muted as they appear now to modern audiences, I still thrill to them. Out of nostalgia? Sure to some extent, but really it's because the films that played in my imagination, while my father told the stories, were dynamic and dark, scary and action packed, and they had thrilling musical scores (a little dig at Dracula there). When I watch these movies again, to some extent, the films that played in my mind overlay what I'm actually watching.

The films themselves got better. In Fact the second film in the Frankenstein series, The Bride of Frankenstein, is probably the best of the solo Frankenstein films, maybe of all the Monster films put together. The later films also got more exciting in the retelling, because now rather than the tale of Frankenstein, there were stories of Frankenstein, meeting the Wolfman and Dracula, All the Monsters together. Add in a Hunchback and a mad scientist and hell the story tells itself. What was really fascinating about the films, as they were told to me, was that each movie began with an explanation of how the creature had escaped it's almost certain demise in the previous film. They didn't pretend the last film didn't happen they simply came up with a plausible way (at least to a young child's mind) that the monster had survived. This burned into my imagination and made for hours of fun for me as I played with my Monster action figures and playset and created films in my mind that picked up where the stories I'd been told left off.

The greatest toys ever!!

Hours were spent reenacting the tales told by my father, expanding on them raising the stories to levels that the films could never live up too. When you are playing with action figures there is no limit to what you can do and there's really no need at all for boring dialogue or some trumped up love story to throw in the mix. The only thing missing were little Abbott and Costello action figures, because Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was one of the first three Monster films I ever saw. We were able to rent VHS tapes of Dracula and Frankenstein, in around 1980 or 81, that was the first time I saw those two. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was on TV at some point, probably a Sunday afternoon on TBS or WGN. The Wolfman would have been the 4th I'm sure, but that as well seems to me was at a later date. I remember a couple of times there being specials on TV that showed clips of the old monster movies, as well as clips from the later Hammer films of the late 50's thru early 70's. Aside from that, it was Junior High School before I ever got to see any of the later films, House of Frankenstein or House of Dracula, also around the same time I saw Nosferatu (the silent German film which is the first screen telling of the Dracula story) for the first time. I believe it was channel 29 in Minneapolis that ran a bunch of these films late at night and I was able to record them. Up until that point it was library books that gave me my best visuals of the monsters and filled in the stories for me.

These are the Crestwood Monster series books and I must have spent about 137 hours pouring over each book in the series. It was these books that fanned the flames of my Monster loving brain. It was also here that I first heard of the second cycle of Monster films, the Hammer films, but that is another entry. This is about the characters and the stories that first enlivened my imagination, that created this life long love of "the Monsters". I can also see it as the genesis of several of my personality traits. I cannot watch anything out of order. I can't watch a TV show, drama, sitcom, whatever, if I've missed an episode. What I love about TV series is the continuity , what you might call the soap opera aspects of a show. I see this as a direct continuation of my obsessions with how each movie linked to the one before in the Universal films. I'm much too forgiving of any film that tries to adapt these characters or uses these characters, because I long so much for them, like old friends that are now gone. Give me Dracula and a creepy castle, Frankenstein's Monster and a mountain laboratory, The Wolfman and a fog drenched forest on a full moon night, and you can pretty much forget about the story or pacing, I'll still buy a ticket and get it on Blu-ray. You see I can't help it, I love them thar Monsters.

If you've never seen the films do yourself a treat and watch them, here's the order to do so in: Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Son of Dracula,  House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula,  Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.