The Ultimate Hammer Collection – She

This is the first film in Hammer’s massive 21 movie box set, The Hammer Collection –  this 1965 movie was by Hammer’s standards big budget with a lot more location shooting than was usual for the studio. This results in a lavish looking movie that looks particularly good thanks to the DVD remastering.

The movie plays as a boy’s own adventure and is far removed from the horror pics Hammer were known for during this period, mind you Hammer’s two biggest horror stars, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee lead the cast, which includes support from the beautiful Ursula Andress as She Who Waits, John Richardson and the always wonderful Bernard Cribbings providing light comic relief.

Hammer take a lot of liberties with  Haggard’s original novel but in doing so they do manage to provide a pretty enjoyable, if a little daft adventure movie.  the story is updated to post-First World Wae Palestine, its explorers recast as demobbed soldiers uprooted by the war.

An enjoyable enough romp then but the opening titles  tell us that this film was shot in “Hammerscope” which means 2.35:1 . However this edition suddenly converts to Anamorphic 16.9.

Countdown to Halloween – The Horror of Sherlock Holmes

Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

So suitable for the British horror studio was Conan Doyle’s, The Hound of the Baskervilles that it could have been written with Hammer Films in mind. Indeed following their success with revamping the Dracula and Frankenstein franchises Hammer turned to the most famous fictional detective of them all, Sherlock Holmes for this movie which was intended to be the first in a new series with Peter Cushing in the title role. Alas the movie didn’t perform as well at the box office as expected and plans for the series were scrapped while Hammer concentrated on more gothic material. Pity really – I would have loved to have seen Hammer tackle The Giant Rat of Sumatra.

The film looks like a Hammer movie – the colour is excellent, garish in places with all that over saturated red and the gothic elements that the studio did so well, are brought out in Doyle’s story like never before. Of course they were always there, even in the original story but Hammer emphasise these parts of the storyline without really altering the original. There are some differences to the original story – Stapleton’s webbed hands for one thing, the tarantula attack for another but these work well within the story and indeed the  webbed hands carried by one line of the Baskerville clan is inspired and is a nice little macabre touch.

Peter Cushing here gives an excellent performance as Sherlock Holmes – the actor was a Sherlockian himself and he brings his knowledge of the character to the role. Andre Morell is a more than suitable Watson. It is also nice to see Christopher Lee playing a romantic lead role and one wonders what would have happened had he played more such roles. He is certainly convincing here. All in all this is a great Sherlock Holmes movie and under the direction of Terence Fisher the ponderous middle section so obvious in most productions of this story moves along at a great pace.

Why wasn’t it a big box office hit then? Well the blame for this lies with Hammer themselves. They promoted the movie as a big horror flick in the style of their successful Dracula and Frankenstein movies, with hardly any mention that this was in fact a Sherlock Holmes movie. The advertising posters suggested a kind of werewolf but when we see the hound on screen it is nothing more than an over sized Great Dane. Movie fans back in the day may have been disappointed – after all, they were going to see a film starring Hammer’s two biggest horror icons with a large slavering hound in the advertising posters and what they got  Sherlock Holmes adventure. A damn thrilling one nonetheless but word of mouth could have harmed the movie after its strong opening weekend.  SEE THE ORIGINAL CINEMA TRAILER EMBEDDED BELOW TO SEE HOW THE FILM WAS MARKETED.

Still the movie’s stood the test of time and this is a great version of the much filmed story – it’s also nice to see the current DVD version showing such an impressive looking cut of the movie. The colours are vibrant and the sound booming. It is only a pity that it is a full frame 4.3 version on the UK release when I believe the American market get a true widescreen version.

Peter Cushing would of course go onto play Holmes for the BBC, but his performance as the detective here is perhaps his definitive stab at the part. Christopher Lee also got a stab at playing both Watson and Holmes in future Holmes movies but the less said about them the better.

Halloween Countdown – the great directors: Terence Fisher

Terence Fisher is the most famous of the Hammer films directors – he started off directing low budget thrillers such as Colonel Bogey, Stolen Face and Four Sided Triangle and it wasn’t until he helmed Hammer’s first full colour gothic horror, The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957 that he became a superstar. The movie starred Peter Cushing as the devious Baron Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the sympathetic though horrifying creature. Fisher collaborated with screenwriter, Jimmy Sangster and with producer, Anthony Hinds they became a team that would go onto rule horror cinema for a great many years. They followed up Frankenstein with the even more successful, The Horror of Dracula (1958) which gave is arguably the finest ever screen Dracula.
Fisher’s style can be traced back to the old Saturday Morning cliffhangers that were so popular in the cinema when he was growing up – his sense of pacing is legendary and his films, particularly those done for Hammer, are provide real edge of the seat viewing. In the same year as Horror of Dracula, Fisher also directed  The Revenge of Frankenstein which saw Cushing return as the baron and this time he is a true evil character, driven by his own selfish needs. And then in 1960 Fisher returned to Dracula, this time without Lee for The Brides of Dracula – this time the film made the eroticism, which was evident in The Horror of Dracula, much more explicit. Again the movie is an energetic romp with a widely inventive climax in which Cushing, bitten by a vampire, cauterizes the wound himself before tackling the vampire. The film remains great fun but suffered without Lee as Fisher was pleased when Lee returned as Dracula for Dracula: Prince of Darkness.

 

Given their subject matter and lurid approach, Fisher’s films, though commercially successful, were largely dismissed by critics during his career. It is only in recent years that Fisher has become recognised as an auter  in his own right. His films are characterised by a blend of fairy-tale, myth and sexuality. They may have drawn heavily on Christian themes, and there is usually a hero who defeats the powers of darkness by a combination of faith and reason.

 

Fisher worked on a production line basis, often directing three films in a year, but no matter how flimsy the material his sense of style, pacing and use of bold saturated colours always resulted in an enjoyable picture. Many of the Fisher directed Hammer movies are classics – The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Mummy, The Curse of the Werewolf are all movies that feature the Fisher trademarks. During the mid-Sixties Fisher was offered directing duties on the James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice but he refused and instead remained with Hammer Pictures. And although he continued to work solidly for the rest of the decade he would never recapture the glory of the early films he made for Hammer.

 

 

 

 

 

Dracula V Dracula

There have been many movie versions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but the two versions of the story that remain most iconic are those made by Universal and Hammer and both have their fans with each camp claiming one is better than the other. Bela Lugosi played Dracula in Universal’s famous 1931 version and Christopher Lee took the part for Hammer’s full colour update of Bram Stoker’s original novel, and fans are also divided over which actor is the definitive Dracula.
The fact is that both films are such classics that it is futile to argue that one is better than the other, because each have their strengths and weaknesses. And although I prefer Christopher Lee in the role, it must be said that Lee’s performance took much from Lugosi’s earlier work and indeed no matter which actor takes the role, and no matter how hard they try and stamp the role with their own personality, there will always be something of Lugosi in their version of the character.  Everything about Lugosi’s performance is carried forward in each and every version of the story since – his looks, his manner, the way the character dresses and the way he used his eyes to suggest some kind of hypnotic influence.

Christopher Lee was a much more menacing character in Hammer’s version but the film benefited from a relaxed censorship system and full colour. When Lugosi’s version was made colour was still a long way off, and indeed sound was only just starting to make an impact. Indeed the opening lines in Universal’s Dracula, spoken by Carla Laemmle are the first words ever spoken in a  Dracula movie. It is worth noting that when Dracula was released not all cinemas had been fitted to provide sound and a silent version of the movie was also released.

 

Incredibly Lugosi wasn’t first choice to play Dracula, indeed the actor wasn’t even in the running and Lon Chaney was the actor originally cast but his death from cancer meant the studio had to find another actor. Paul Muni, Conrad Veidt and Ian Keith (who?) were all considered before Lugosi was cast for the small fee of $3,500.
It is true that Hammer’s version is easier to watch than Universals, but that doesn’t hide the fact that Lugosi’s Dracula remains an important cinematic landmark.

Lee made more Dracula films than Lugosi’s and became the character for an entire generation, but it is only his first Horror of Dracula that can stand comparison with Lugosi’s iconic movie.

So which is best? Well, dude you need to see them both.

The Woman in Black

I saw this movie during its original cinema run and was mighty impressed, but I wanted to watch it in more intimate surroundings and so I picked up the Blu-Ray which was released earlier this week. And I found it even better the second time around. Of course there’s no blood and gore and the movie relies on storytelling and atmosphere to create the scares, which away from the shared audience experience of the multiplex, really hit home. It’s a quiet film, a slow burner and it needs the viewers full concentration to get the most out of its cleverly told and acted story.

The plot should be known by the world and his dog but to recap = Harry Potter plays a single father who is still grieving the death of his wife during the birth of their baby son. He is sent to a remote coastal village to put the affairs of a deceased woman in order, before her house can be put on the market, but the house is haunted by the woman in black, a malevolent spirit who is revenging herself on the villagers who she feels failed to save her son from drowning in a mud pond. The film is visually rich and impressively atmospheric, harking back to the Hammer movies of yore. The viewer’s nerves are kept taught throughout, with wind-up dolls springing suddenly to life and the light glinting off the eyes of a toy monkey giving every impression of a malign supernatural force at play. It is to the director’s credit that none of this feels too hackneyed and the eponymous woman in black (Liz White) is played with unforgettable menace.

The movie has been a big success for the  resurrected Hammer Films and will hopefully set off a cycle of period horror movies, which was always something that Hammer did best. I’m not too sure that Harry Potter holds the  gravitas required to carry the part, and he does seem far too young to play a tortured widower with a four year old son, but it was probably his name which lured the hordes into cinemas to see this low key ghost story so his casting was likely a masterstroke.  In fairness though Harry Potter does well with a challenging role and often his youth serves as a reminder that he is an outsider in the village, but he does seem to downplay the scares and often comes across as oddly emotionless.

There are many changes from the novel but for the most part they improve on Susan Hill’s original story, but the ending is something of a let down  – Hill’s original story  had an ending that haunts you long after turning the final page, but the movie  wraps it all up quite neatly. Still  the film deserves kudos for proving that  a defiantly British, old-school horror movie devoid of sex, violence and profanity can be box office gold.

Bang Bang, the bloodstained hammer

Hammer are to make three new movies a year including a new Dracula –  Don’t get too excited because that information comes from a 1980 press release from the company who had recently bought Hamden House which they intended to convert into another Bray Studios. None of that came to fruition, well apart from the new studios and a TV series, and it was a while longer before Hammer finally got back into feature film production but the golden days of the studio are now long behind us. That proposed new Dracula film would have brought Christopher Lee back to the role and would have been set in contemporary times because Hammer felt that gothic films had had their day. Alas none of this was to be and until the recent revival the last Hammer horror film was 1976’s To the Devil a Daughter which wasn’t really a financial success.

 

However given the success of Hammer’s The Woman in Black, a new Dracula movie is once again on the cards but it is extremely doubtful that Christopher Lee will take the role of everyone’s favorite vampire, thought he’d make a cool Van Helsing. These days the company is in the hands of Simon Oakes and are going from success to success under his guidance. Not only are they producing new genre films, and having great success with them, but the classic output is being lovingly transferred to new DVD and Blu-ray editions, and they even have an imprint for publishing horror novels, with Hammer Books. And only this week it was announced that Michael Sheen has been offered the leading role in The Quiet Ones,  unveiled to be the next movie from Hammer Films. In addition, Brit actor Damien Lewis is also said to have been offered a part.Based on a earlier script by Rampart/The Messenger writer & director Oren Moverman that has been re-drafted by John Pogue (Ghost Ship, U.S. Marshals), the horror is described as a ‘poltergeist movie’ by Hammer Films CEO Simon Oakes and which will start filming in May in South Africa.

 

“We can’t really tell you much about it but we really are looking at it. I’ve been saying that we’d never remake the films per se, but we would do our own versions of it. Certainly in my time with Hammer we will definitely do a Dracula. We will do a Frankenstein if we can find a route in. It’s about finding a route in that makes it your film.” Simon Oakes

Hammer are healthy again which is a good thing for movie lovers – the studio may have considered its output to be B-movies but they  have become iconic and the very name conjures up images of gothic horror –  This studio may have lost all relevance when it started churning out big screen versions of popular sitcoms like On The Buses and Love Thy Neighbor, but no one really doubted that the studio would one day rise from the dead.

Hammer originally started out in the 1930’s when Will Hammer founded Hammer Productions. He was soon joined by Enrique Carreras and together they formed a distribution company called Exclusive Films. They produced a few comedies during the Thirties as well as a thriller The Mystery of the Mary Celeste which starred Hollywood’s Count Dracula, Bela Lugosi. But by the Forties Hammer were no longer producing films and it wasn’t until the two founder’s sons took control that the Hammer we know and love started to form. Right from the start James Carreras displayed a shrewd business mind and he reckoned that by ensuring none of their films had a budget larger than £20.000 and by making five films a year they could turn over a profit annually of £25,000. Hammer could not afford big name stars and so it was decided to concentrate on the domestic market and produce movie versions of popular radio  shows. They scored some success with versions of PC49 and Dick Barton but it wasn’t until 1955 and The Quatermass Experiment that Hammer really came into its own. And from there it was a hop, skip and jump to 1957’s, The Curse of Frankenstein, which gave Hammer its first real bite out of the lucrative American market. The film also started a cycle of gothic horror films for which the studio have become synonymous.

 

The Hammer Frankenstein and Dracula cycles went on into the Seventies and ended on a high point for the baron with Frankenstein and the Monster from  Hell and an all time low for Drac with The Satanic Rites of Dracula. However the Dracula movies led to an interesting series of films based loosely on the Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla story – The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil, but by now the boom years had ended and Hammer dwindled into a shadow of its former self. They’re fighting fit now, though.

So Hammer is dead, long live Hammer.

 

Hammer Films Website

All set to Hammer the eBook market

Hammer Film Studios are on a roll at the moment and now the successful Hammer Books are set to make a big splash in the eBook market with a series of original novels which follow the run of novelizations of classic Hammer movies – To be released on February 2nd, the first book is The Greatcoat, described as “a terrifyingly atmospheric ghost story” from Helen Dunmore. Set in 1954, newlyweds Isabel and Philip Carey move to Yorkshire town of East Riding.There Philip establishes himself as a GP while Isabel tries hard to adjust to the realities of married life. Feeling out-of-place and constantly judged by the people around her, including her landlady, she spends much of her time alone.

One cold winter night when her husband is out on call, Isabel finds an old RAF greatcoat in the back of a cupboard that she uses to help keep warm.Wrapped in the coat she sleeps and is beset by dreams. She wakes to hear a knock at her window.Outside is Alex, a young RAF pilot, waiting to come in. His powerful presence both disturbs and excites her. Her initial alarm soon fades, and they begin an intense affair. But nothing has prepared her for the truth about Alec’s life, nor the impact it will have on hers …

Other titles will follow later in the year as well as more of the novelizations of Hammer classics

 

 

Hammer studios go Blu-ray

 Horror film studio Hammer will collaborate with such distributors as StudioCanal, Germany’s Anolis Entertainment, Pinewood and illuminate Hollywood  HTV to perform a major restoration of the studio’s iconic movie studio. The partnership will reformat 30 films into HD for Blu-ray and new media exploitation.‘Dracula Prince of Darkness’ is the first movie that is scheduled to be released as part of the global restoration project. It will be released in the UK in March 2012, in conjunction with StudioCanal

Other titles to get the HD treatment include ‘The Reptile,’ ‘The Plague of The Zombies,’ ‘The Devil Rides Out,’ ‘Rasputin the Mad Monk’ ‘The Mummy’s Shroud.’ ‘The Curse of Frankenstein,’ ‘Dracula’ and ‘The Mummy,’ .

The movies will not only feature fully-restored HD picture and sound, they will also feature newly-filmed extras, including interviews with cast members. The extras are being produced by Marcus Hearn, an expert and historian for Hammer, and the author of ‘The Hammer Vault.’

“Our decision to restore some of Hammer’s most famous titles not only allows existing fans to experience the films again in high definition, but also encourages a new global audience to discover Hammer for the first time-especially as we get read to release our next exciting new Hammer project, ‘The Woman in Black.’” Simon Oakes, the President and CEO of Hammer

Hammer House of Horror and Flick off Clint – Dez Skinn interview

The following interview with UK comic legend, Dez Skinn was originally posted on my sister site, The Tainted Archive -however Dez is well known to British horror fans having edited the classic magazine, House of Hammer and so I am running the interview here.

Dez Skinn is a legend in British comic books – Comicsbullitin called him, “the best known man in British comics with a reputation that proceeds him worldwide. Born in 1951, Dez has spent many years editing and writing comics and not for nothing is he often called, The British Stan Lee.

Although a busy man Dez was only too gracious with his time when the Archive requested a question/answer session. Read on as the Archive proudly presents an interview with a true comic book giant.

TA:   You started off with IPC during what could be called the golden era of British comics. Tell us about working on such iconic titles as Whizzer and Chips, Cor and Buster. Were the humour titles of particular interest to you?

DS: I actually started as a research chemist, but I was rubbish at that! Then following a stint with Yorkshire Newspapers, yes, I moved to London at IPC Magazines, at the time the world’s biggest publisher! It was a chap named Mick Anglo who I’d come down to see, but he didn’t need any staff so I eventually ended up on Whizzer and Chips!

NOT where I’d wanted to be as I was a fan of everything American at the time, especially those lovely Jim Warren magazines, Creep, Eerie, Vampirella and Famous Monsters. Something about their format made them seem more grown-up than regular US comicbooks which you looked kinda foolish reading beyond being about 12!

But working at IPC was a great 5-year apprencticeship, an amazing learning curve and prepared me for what was to follow (and gave me a great address book of writer, artist, editorial and design contacts)

TA: What comics did you read when you were a kid and what got you into comics in the first place?

DS:Like many of my generation, I learned to read (age 4!) from comics. Jack and Jill, Playhour, Swift, Beano, Dandy, Beezer and Topper. Then I moved up to adventure titles, Swift, Eagle, Victor, Hotspur, Lion, Tiger, Valiant, Hornet. Amazing the range that existed back then. My first exposure to Americana was seeing a Flash comic, (#111, if I remember correctly) while at the seaside in Scarborough. Full colour throughout and two complete beautifully-drawn stories? I was blown away!

ON WORKING AT IPC  “The most important rule of all was to avoid two words, flick and Clint. So no references to flick-knives or Clint Eastwood in British comics, no siree bob. The reason was simple, most comics were printed letterpress, where fine lines would either blob out or disappear entirely and the space between letters often fill in. That’s why you invariably saw exclamation marks instead of full stops, punctuation was paramount and you’d no guarantee a lettered full stop would survive the presses.
But “flick”? Like “Clint” with lettering always created in upper case, the gap between the “L” and the “I” had a tendency to fill in, creating the appearance of a “U”. It became a regularly used expression among trainees if somebody was getting on your nerves, “Flick off, clint!” Tut-tut!” Dez Skinn

TA:When you went to Warners you had to expand their comic range – did you have  much freedom with titles like Korak, Tarzan and so forth? Did you have to get your stories OKAYED by the people responsible for the TV shows?

DS: The board interfered on covers initially, always wanting hard-sell colours “Red and yellow, red and yellow…” so I stopped showing them any!  But other than that, the amount of freedom was positively scary. When I was about to launch Starburst independently I realised I could write a House of Hammer editorial saying it was rubbish and people should drop it in favour of my new SF magazine! Not that that was true, but that’s how much freedom I had. Of course I was way too responsible to say such a thing. (And I’d have been fired when they’d read such in print.). It was no different with the licenced titles, but all the ERB material (Tarzan and Korak) was from the international pool that all licensees took material from.

TA: What was MAD like to work on?

DS: Brilliant! I’d adored it as a kid and it was great to bring my gang of writers and artists aboard. Also the respect the film industry had for the title was amazing (except for Stanley Kubrick who hated Borey Lyndon!). I got to meet quite a few stars and directors through it, so I was very pleased. It was also great to be able to put my “stamp” on the title, making it more film-related, especially with covers.

You set up your own company to create Starburst. Why do you think that title was such a success? Its influence can be felt in modern Sci-Fi titles like SFX.

ME: Ah, if only Starburst had kept up, there wouldn’t have been room for SFX! I knew Star Wars was a hit in America and had wanted an SF companion to my House of Hammer. So the timing seemed obvious, as Star Wars launched in the UK six months after its US summer debut. Wonderful for me. But my publisher felt that with Cinema X, MAD and House of Hammer they had enough film coverage in print, so I produced it in my spare times, in the evenings. But when I got the trade orders in, for 72,000 copies (almost three times what House of Hammer sold), I knew I’d got it right!

TA:Is it true that Stan Lee asked you personally to take over at Marvel UK?

DS: I knew Stan from his earlier UK visits, being in the industry. So by 1978 when their reprints novelty had worn off and were sliding badly in sales, Marvel asked me to write a report on how to turn their fortunes around. They chose me to ask as I’d beaten them to the shops with Star Wars coverage (despite them being the official licencee) and even ran a Spider-Man film story before them! Stan liked my report – even though I had to rewrite it lots of times so it wasn’t too critical (it was a paid gig, you can’t bite the hand that feeds you). He visited the UK and invited me to join him for a weekend to discuss my ideas. But he also asked me to implement them as the UK publisher!

TA: You launched Doctor Who Weekly magazine. Tom Baker was the then current Doctor – did he have any involvement?

DS:Not half! Tom and I toured the country launching the title. To the wholesale and retail trade and to the fans. A wonderful time I had of it. Tom was a real character!

TA- When you left Marvel you seemed to vanish from comics for some time. What happened?

I wanted to try something different. I’d done what I’d set out to at Marvel, made the company profitable again through revamps and new launches, so I didn’t want to just be a paper pusher, a production editor, so I left it in the hands of my assistants, who all got promotions and hopefully pay rises, so everybody was happy! Because I’d acquired lots of film contacts, through working in Columbia-Warner House in Wardour Street and through producing Starburst, Monster Mag and House of Hammer, so I thought I’d put them and my artist contacts together. I set up a design studio, offering storyboards and post-production work to film companies. My artist partner’s wife had been a fashion editor so we also did a lot of work for the fashion industry. The company was called Studio System and made a refreshing change from constant weekly and monthly comics and magazine deadlines.

TA- Your comeback was with Quality Communications. You published a lot of the 2000AD stuff then and of course you co-created V for Vendetta. Any stories of this period?

DS: Hundreds of stories, that’s why I started my website (90,000 words to date and I’m not even out of the 1970s yet!). But Judge Dredd came much later. Studio System was great but we were a service company, only busy when needed. I wanted to be master of my own destiny again so I got back into publishing. As Quality Communications (so named to remind me to put quality above quantity) I first revived House of Hammer (as Halls of Horror because Hammer weren’t making films any more!) and launched Warrior as a creator-owned anthology. It was unheard of at the time, letting writers and artists own the material you commissioned from them. But it resulted in them producing their best work, so we got Marvelman, Axel Pressbutton, V for Vendetta (for which I still get my share of the royalty cheques from Warner Bros!), Big Ben, Shandor – continuing from House of Hammer, and more. It put a lot of world class writers and artists on the map and won stacks of awards. It may have done a Jimmy Dean and died young, but better than than ending up like Elvis Presley!

Then came the Judge Dredd US editions. That as meant to be like a Marvel UK in reverse, first making money from reprints and then using the profits to create new material (as I’d done with Captain britain, Night-Raven, The Black Knight, Doctor Who, etc for Marvel). But this time it was for America. Shame we didn’t last long enough to achieve my aim, I dropped out over cost-cutting greed after a year or so and left my printer to do horrible cheap stretched versions.

TA-What did you think of the V Vendetta movie?

DS: Brilliant. Film can never be 100% faithful to any other medium, whether radio, TV series, book or comic, it has to play to its own strengths. So considering it was Hollywood, who usually retain little more than the title, I was very pleased.

TA-What do you think the British comic industry needs at the moment?

DS: A young Dez Skinn! Somebody foolish, altrusitic and with a passion. And with the balls to walk the walk as well as talk the talk! For myself I’m busy playing in a new sandpit, the United Arab Emirates.

TA:Why has the UK comic market shrunk? Do you think the reason is  that kid’s now have so many other mediums to explore – MOVIES, 24HR TV, computer games? Will then comics ever demand their attention in the way they once did?

DS: It happened in the US in the 1970s. There the newsstands stopped wanting comics, because they took up as much space as more expensive titles, but without the same profit incentive. Also there were so many different titles, and the sellers didn’t know which would prove popular and which would not sell (a problem with everybody having their own title – wisely avoided in the UK by us generally sticking with long-lasting anthology titles).
But over here, the trade (WH Smith, Tesco, etc) are equally incapable of judging a good from a bad title, so nowadays they look at the quality of the cover-mounted free gift to assess the entire comic (utter nonsense, I know!). This has resulted in almost as much being spent on the “giveaway” as on the actual contents of the title.
End product: higher cover price for a lesser item. Hence sales shrinkage, hence retail cutbacks leading to even lower sales. It’s not fair to blame alternatives to comics, there have always been alternatives.
When I used to be in the thick of it, launching titles based on content rather than attachments, the publishers made the decisions and the trade (wholesale and retail) was thankful that anybody would produce things they could sell and make a profit from. Now they seem to be calling the shots, with publishers brow-beaten by people whose expertise is in selling confectionery. Madness!

TA – I have always thought the nostalgia market has not been tapped to its fill potential. I’d love to see a glossy monthly featuring reprints from old IPC titles like Battle, Action, 2000AD etc. If you could produce a dream title of reprints what stories would be included and why?

TA:Sorry, but for me “a dream title of reprints” is somewhat oxymoronic. While I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of reprinted material — from MAD to Marvel to Fleetway/IPC material — it has always been as a means to an end. The end being that cheap reprints, if they sell well, provide a budget for new ideas.

In MAD, I always had as much new material as possible. http://dezskinn.com/warner-williams/#MAD

At Marvel I used the profits from reprints to revive Captain Britain and the Black Knight, plus creating Nigh-Raven http://dezskinn.com/Marvel-UK-3/
…and launching Doctor Who Weekly! http://dezskinn.com/Marvel-UK-5/

At IPC with my first stint on annuals, I always kept some money back for new material. http://dezskinn.com/ipc-fleetway/#spooky

On my second stint, with Judge Dredd, Steel Claw, Cursitor Doom and the like for America, I had plans to go way beyond their inventory. I’d much rather originate than reprint and let others take the easy path of high cover prices for the limited market of nostalgia. http://dezskinn.com/quality-periodicals/#beyond

With new ideas you can merchandise and license, for foreign editions and films, with reprints your hands are tied. They’re low-risk, but preaching to the converted. I’m more the missionary sort, ever wanting to bring new people into the fold.

RELATED LINKS: http://dezskinn.com
…a lifetime’s work, both in progress and still under construction.

http://tiny.cc/Holmesmovie
John Watkiss’s stunning concept portfolio: The Art of Sherlock Holmes:

 

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

It’s been some years since I’ve seen this movie and I was pleased to find it on DVD doubled with Quatermass 2 – the DVD transfer is bright and crisp and the black and white image looks sharp with no artifacts whatsoever. It’s a great DVD package from Hammer.

 

The DVD bills the movie as the Quatermass Experiment on both the inlay and the disc itself but the correct title, and the one that pops up on screen in The Quatermass Xperiment – Hammer Films chose the spelling to put an emphasis on the X certificate which the movie originally recieved from the board of film classification. And although far removed from Hammer’s later horror series the film is regarded as the first of the Hammer Horrors.

The plot, taken from the BBC TV serial of the same name, well, the Quatermass Experiment in any case, concerns a spaceship that crashes back to Earth with only the one member of the crew aboard. That crew member, Carroon , has mutated into something and is able to absorb the life force of any living thing he comes into contact with. He first absorbs a cactus which causes his right arm to begin mutating. Carroon’s wife, Judith, hires a private investigator to break her husband out of the hospital. The escape is successful but Carroon kills and absorbs the private investigator in the process.

The original TV series was an enormous success with critics and audiences alike, later described by film historian Robert Simpson as “event television, emptying the streets and pubs, and Hammer wisely stuck to the same elements but did make the central character  of Quatermass something less of the square jawed hero. Here he doesn’t come across as particularly likable and considers his scientific work to be above all else, including human life. Jack Warner is at hand to provide a sidekick with his policeman who is not a million miles away from Dixon of Dock Green. Hammer also changed the ending – in the TV series Quatermass persuaded Caroon to commit suicide for the good of mankind, but in the movie version its all cool electrocuting the monster that was once a man.

Overall this is a classic SF/Horror film with an excellent performance from the entire cast, with special honours going to Richard Wordsworth as the doomed astronaut – he manages with facial expressions alone to create great sympathy as he stumbles across the countryside like Karloff’s Frankenstein’s monster. It may be pulpy and old fashioned but then it’s a damn sight better than many modern SF thrillers.