Institutional Research: Hammer Productions

Institutional Research: Hammer Productions

Hammer Productions is based in London, in the United Kingdom was founded in 1934. It popularized the “Hammer Horror” films that were created in the mid 1950s until the 1970s. While they mainly focused on Gothic films, Hammer also produced noir, comedy, science fiction and thriller films.

Before 1955, Hammer focused on making a variety of film genres but in 1955 they decided to focus on Horror films. They released the film the Quatermass Xperiment that was a surprisingly big hit. It was an adaptation of the BBC serial The Quatermass Experiment and the success of the film led to the just as successful sequel Quatermass 2.

While producing Quatermass 2, Hammer deiced to produce a film based on Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein. While production took a while over doubts on the film’s success, The Curse of Frankenstein became an enormous hit across the world and it became on of the most iconic horror films of all time. Hammer would go on to produce a “Hammer” version of Dracula and the Mummy. Both films went on to be iconic in their own right as well but Christopher Lee’s performance in Dracula made him the most celebrated actor of the role making the Dracula image his own and setting a high bar for all those after him. These were seen as the three most critically acclaimed films produced by Hammer and have been the backbone to many future Horror films.

From 1959 to 1974 Hammer would produce many sequels for Frankenstein Dracula and The Mummy, with The Horror of Dracula being their highest grossing film. However the sequels would all decline in quality, as time would go on. Christopher Lee would become disillusioned with his role in the sequels refusing to speak the dialogue in later films as his dialogue appalled him.

In the early seventies Hammer struggled with Horror due to subtle Horror films such as Rosemary’s Baby which were more serious in nature and mature. Many of their films failed at the box office or was received poorly due to the uninteresting angle at the time it was produced.

Since 2007 Hammer productions has been revived and started production on modern horror films. They have gone on to produce the well-received Let Me In and The Woman in Black, an adaptation on the book by Susan Hill.

This some research i did on well known production companies within the industry. It is important to research them because you get to see what horror films are being produced by the largest companies in the industry.