On 2 May 1957, a very special film was released in London cinemas. The Curse of Frankenstein, from Hammer Films, was the the first of the now legendary British studio’s great gothic horrors, which would come to dominate the horror genre for the next decade and a half.
Hammer had dabbled in horror before. As early as 1935, they’d cast Bela Lugosi in The Mystery of the Mary Celeste, while in 1952’s Stolen Face they had an obsessed plastic surgeon altering a woman’s face to more closely resemble his lost love. Their adaptations of Nigel Kneale’s chilling BBC science fiction serials, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957), then suggested the shifting of gears, but it was the release of The Curse of Frankenstein that really put the company on the map. Directed by Terence Fisher, this reimagining of Mary Shelley’s story brought horror into the colour era, terrifying audiences with a blend of gothic thrills and lurid bloodshed that came to define Hammer’s celebrated output.
As the film returns to cinemas, let’s look back at the best Hammer horrors, selecting one key release from each of the studio’s glory years, from 1957 to 1974. These 18 films defined the Hammer horror brand…