Hammer Glamour (2009)
Written by Marcus Hearn

 

Classy. Elegant. Refined. And boring, boring, boring.

At some point in my childhood, I got it into my head that all Hammer horror movies were like that. And indeed, many of them are positively crawling with lavish, aristocratic imagery and extravagant, ostentatious style. But when I saw THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, the first Hammer Studios production I ever allowed myself to watch all the way through, I was blown away, more than anything, by how sexy it was. Since then, I've become quite the ardent and enthusiastic appreciator of Hammer's films and their signature blend of dignified (if over-the-top) melodrama, gloomy gothic atmosphere, and, best of all, salacious sexuality, sanguinary bloodletting, n' sumptuous sleaze.

For my money, the true stars were never guys like Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, or Oliver Reed. Those fellows are all fantastic, amazing actors, yes, and wholly deserving of their status as legends. But, in my eyes, the names really worth remembering have always been those of the ladies. Lovely ladies like Caroline Munroe, Julie Ege, Ingrid Pitt, and many, many more.

Hammer Glamour, one of the most recent releases from Titan Books (the same publishing house that gave us slasher fans the jumbo-sized Crystal Lake Memories tome back in 2005), exists for the purpose of celebrating a sadly bygone era when "gore whores" were "scream queens." Queenly they were indeed, for even the lustiest, most erotically-charged and naked-as-a-jaybird minxes among them never lost that defining quality of oh-so-posh élan that made them "Hammer girls" in the first place.

They are writhing demon temptresses, doe-eyed peasant girls, stripped n' whipped sacrificial virgins, and sadistic satanic succubae. Cheesecake pin-up cuties and voluptuous vampire vixens. Maneaters, both in the figurative and literal senses. All of them beautiful, curvy, and unrepentantly naughty ...even the "innocent" ones. Such are the sights you will find in this exhaustive coffee table book, filled as it is with hundreds of movie posters, promo pictures, and the like, an endless parade of gorgeous photographs, both color and black-and-white. 160 eye-popping pages, bound in a big sturdy hardcover, wrapped in a dust-jacket brazenly emblazoned with the bewitching visage, and cleavage, of Madeline Smith.

Painstakingly researched, passionately written, and lovingly compiled by Marcus Hearn (author of the similarly exhaustive book The Hammer Story and onetime editor of Hammer Horror Magazine) Hammer Glamour explores the rise of England's famed fright flick factory, its fall, and the many years of envelope-pushing, bone-chilling, tremendously titillating sex n' violence-fueled cinema it spawned, as seen through the eyes of its most seductive sirens. Biographies of 50 different Hammer honeys detail the careers of the studio's sultry stable of starlets n' strumpets, and provide a number of glimpses into the history of Hammer itself. It's a multilayered book that'll keep you reading and re-reading in anticipation of gleaning some new insight or another into the lives of actresses like Hazel Court and Joanna Lumley, as well as the company that employed them.

True, some of these mistresses of the macabre weren't exactly the most talented thespians to ever grace the silver screen, but all of them delivered a sweet, succulent mouthful of diabetes-inducing eye candy to every motion picture they were cast in, without fail. The images of garish, ruby-red blood drops falling from lush, pouting lips onto heaving, pale bosoms that became the Hammer Studios trademark would not have been possible without them.

Sometimes romantic, sometimes just exploitative, Hammer's terror yarns were always awash with morbidity, grandiosity, and carnality. Hammer films had sex appeal, lots of it, and that was just as key an ingredient to their success as their liberal use of the red stuff and their penchant for sinister-yet-stately ambience. We all know the names and life stories of men like Lee, Cushing, and Reed. It's about time that the effort was made to pay tribute to the females who starred alongside them, who helped carry such classic pictures as THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER to iconic prestige. For too long, too many of them have been seen as little more than minor footnotes and fan favorites buried inside a vast mountain of ephemera n' esoterica.

As a lifelong lover of these deadly dames, it's refreshing and invigorating to see them finally get their due, pulled up out of the shadows of their male-co-stars, treated not merely as cult items but instead appreciated and exalted as the moribund matriarchs of that golden age of gothic horror history that they are.

A testament to the beautiful side of horror (and the horrific side of beauty), Hammer Glamour is a must-have for any heterosexual male Hammer fan with or without a pulse. I highly recommend it to everyone else as well.

Until next slime,
Stay sick!

Your pickled pal,
William Weird.