Hammer Films: The Ultimate Collection

Product Information

Fresh out of theaters, currently available on VOD and now streaming exclusively on SCREAMBOX, Bloody Disgusting’s Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls is coming home for the holidays, arriving as a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray on December 19, loaded with bonus features, extended/deleted scenes, commentaries and an exclusive slipcover. For its new box set Hammer Films: The Ultimate Collection, Mill Creek Entertainment gathers twenty of the Columbia released titles (spread across ten discs), spanning the years 1957 – 1970, including: Hammer at Columbia Pictures: An eleven-minute featurette in which Author/Historian C. Courtney Joyner takes you through Hammer’s early success and how Columbia provided a new home that allowed the company to expand its genre focus. This offers a worthwhile spotlight on several features from this set and even includes clips from trailers not provided elsewhere on this set. This is very well produced and informative. Hammer’s Women: Molly Arbuthnot and Rosemary Burrows (2021, 14 mins): overview of the prolific Hammer wardrobe mistresses by film historian Josephine Botting

Hammer Volume Six: Night Shadows revives four consummate Hammer classics from the early sixties, exemplifying some of Hammer Films' best work in the horror and thriller genres. Edgar Allan Poe looms large in The Shadow of the Cat, a macabre ‘old dark house’ tale of feline revenge, starring André Morell ( Cash on Demand) and Barbara Shelley ( The Camp on Blood Island); Peter Cushing ( The Gorgon, Corruption) and Oliver Reed ( The Scarlet Blade) star in Captain Clegg, which sees Hammer fuse horror and adventure in an eighteenth-century-set tale of smugglers and marsh phantoms; Herbert Lom ( Mysterious Island) stars as The Phantom of the Opera in Hammer’s acclaimed production of Gaston Leroux’s Gothic classic, whilst Freddie Francis ( Torture Garden) directs Nightmare, a spooky psychological thriller in the Les Diaboliques vein, which benefits from full-blooded central performances by Moira Redmond ( Jigsaw) and Jennie Linden ( A Severed Head). sigh*** One of the most controversial disc releases from the Hammer company. While their intentions were good, they don’t seem to have understood what their customers wanted, or would accept. No one would argue that the effects in this film were adequate, but the company made the decision to ‘correct’ them with new digitally created replacements. Modifying the content of a film in this way is a big no-no in both the restoration field and among film fans, UNLESS you offer the revisions as a choice via a second version alongside the original. Oddly, for a company that supplied superfluous full frame variants as extras on both The Curse of Frankenstein and The Mummy, they did not supply the unaltered version of this film on the Blu-ray. They also didn’t announce what they had done until the news leaked on the Internet, further infuriating fans. Are the new effects an improvement? Technically speaking, of course they are. That doesn’t negate the fact that the original version should have also been included. It would have made an interesting comparison as well. Visiting The House of Hammer: Britain’s Legendary Horror Magazine featurette with British author/film historian Philip NutmanCurious about all those Region B Hammer Blu-rays from overseas, the ones requiring a region-free player? As a public service, Savant has solicited an expert opinion (you’ll have to take my word for that) of a film restoration/transfer specialist who is also an informed fan of the filmic output of the little horror studio at Bray. I know, real Hammer fans buy first and worry about quality later, but this little guide might be of help to the rest of us budget-conscious collectors.

Airing on ITV in Britain in the fall of 1980 and later gaining even further notice in syndication, Hammer House of Horror took what was being done on the big screen and re-created it for home-based consumption. Hammer Studios was foundering at the box office in the late 1970s as Gothic horror was not bringing in audiences like it had in the past. The plan was to head to television for a horror anthology program with big stars, but at almost half the length of a major motion picture. The show was a hit, but it never made it past a single season. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is wildly absurd in the best ways, a feat of exploitation filmmaking that is astonishing for existing in the first place, all the more so because it works so well. The Shaw brothers were initially unhappy with the film delivered by Roy Ward Baker, so they hired Chang Cheh, a favored director of theirs, to spice up the fight scenes. While evidently a vision of two separate artists, Golden Vampires is staged at such an operatic level that you can excuse any inconsistency in the presentation. The martial arts sequences are gorgeously handled in majestic wide shots; an early battle in an open field brings to mind the acrobatics in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The vampires don't disappoint either, and Cushing commits admirably to his part as he always does. It's only a shame that he doesn't engage in much kung fu… Commentary with filmmaker/film historian Constantine Nasr and author/film historian Steve Haberman. The company’s direct sequel to Horror of Dracula has never fared very well on home video. Anchor Bay’s early DVD was dull, with muddy colors and fading on the edges of the frame. Subsequent U.K. and Italian releases were a little better but had issues of their own. This was the first Blu-ray release from the new Hammer company (unless we count Quatermass and the Pit; it’s unclear if that was completely under their banner). Most fans give it an unenthusiastic passing grade, but for my taste it’s one of the least watchable Hammer BDs. This is due to the green /yellow- hued color grading. I have seen several early theatrical screenings of DPOD from good quality prints, as well as numerous TV broadcasts through the years. While it was never going to match the sumptuous look of either of the first two entries in the Hammer Dracula series, it still had a ‘normal’ color palate. Val Guest, director of The Quatermass Xperiment, reteamed with that film's original scribe, Nigel Kneale, for this top-notch yeti thriller. A team of explorers — led by Dr. John Rollason (Cushing) and his wife Helen (Maureen Connell) — on an expedition to the Himalayas with members of a local monastery collide with a second team of explorers who are searching for the abominable snowman.

I will digress for a moment and say a word about the process of color grading a film. Each time a movie is transferred to video the colorist has a wide range of choices as to what the film should look like. There usually isn’t a template that automatically spells that out. Multiple approaches exist. Colorists can reference a film print or a previous tape master if those are available. The ‘talent’ (director or director of photography) may be asked to provide input. But other things come into play like time and budget constraints, and in the case of older titles the condition of the film element being used. Hammer provided a short documentary on the transfer process for this film in its Blu-ray supplements, which gave the impression that they were using the original Techniscope negative. Remember that Techniscope is a half-frame process, so the granularity of the image is going to be greater. Normally this would be the best source, but color dyes fade and change over time, limiting what can be done. Other Hammer negs from this era have fading problems. I don’t know if this is what’s happening in this case, or if the end result simply reflects what the colorist thought looked best. If the latter is the case it would be a matter of taste. Personally, I don’t think it looks good or correct. The transfer also suffers from overuse of digital noise reduction (DNR), which blunts the sharpness usually gained by going HD. This is most likely the same film source as was used in the Universal DVD box set. It would be a different transfer, again, as the earlier master fell victim to the studio fire. Unable to do much with the soft picture, the added resolution of Blu-ray mainly sharpens the grain. The only area of improvement on the Blu-ray is that it presents the film at 1:85:1 instead of the mysterious 2:00:1 used in the old Universal box. Madhouse: Inside Hammer’s ‘Nightmare’ (2016, 15 mins): Hammer historians Alan Barnes, John J Johnston, Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby revisit the production A religious sect led by Gustav Weil hunts all women suspected of witchcraft, killing a number of innocent victims. Young Katy, Gustav’s niece, will involve herself in a devilish cult, and become an instrument of Justice in the region.