Sky documentary goes behind the screams of Hammer Film studios for its 90th birthday

“They were phenomenally important. They moved the dial,” says Benjamin Field, the award-winning director and producer behind the project. “There were no colour horror movies pre-Hammer. And contemporary horror is the way it is today because Hammer opened the doors to let them in.”

Reinventing a genre made famous by Universal in the 1930s, Hammer scored huge hits including The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy, but also with sci-fi (The Quatermass Xperiment) and pre-historic epics (One Million Years BC). “Essentially they had a repertory company of crew and actors,” says Field, “who turned up time and again to make these films, films that were adored.”

Field admits he came late to the party. “Growing up a child of the 80s, they just didn’t feature on my radar. In October last year, that all changed and I got introduced to Hammer. It was a real moment for me.

"The first thing that I really noticed was how stylish it was... I saw The Curse of Frankenstein – a good place to start. Wow, it was stunning! The sets are glorious, the colour is lush and lurid. It’s an attack on the senses. The music plays a massive part of that, of course. It feels like a revolution from what went before, and it doesn’t take long to realise why Hammer took the world by storm."

Hammer's HQ from 1951 to 1966 was Bray Studios in Berkshire, and the films would draw extensively on the grounds and, in particular, Oakley Court country house, for their gothic ambience.

Crucial to the 50s and 60s heyday of Hammer was the pairing of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as, typically, a brilliant but misguided scientist and a shambling monster, respectively. The actors’ sparky chemistry and double-act charm was apparent when they were reunited in 1994 – the lovely picture below was taken for an RT interview published just a week before Cushing died.

“The combination of having two incredible performers was essential for Hammer’s success,” explains Field, who adds that it was also partly a fluke. “Christopher Lee just needed to be a tall guy to get a part in The Curse of Frankenstein but the studio lucked out and then very accidentally got a guy who had great presence who could act.

“Cushing had done work for the BBC, he was greatly admired, but prior to that he’d been a successful theatre actor. Lee was a great mime artist, another theatrical skill. Director Terence Fisher let the actors play the scenes out, cutting minimally. He kept them paired for as long as possible. It became a magic formula – the results were electric.”

When Radio Times interviewed the stars in 1994, they defended Hammer's films from criticism. "Our way of doing these films elevated them above being shabby shockers," said Lee, "but the press still said the British film industry should not be represented by ‘films of this kind’.

"Well, ‘films of this kind’ were made by the most successful independent production company in the history of British cinema and probably the world. Why are they still showing them, again and again?"

"Exactly," agreed Cushing. "These films are still showing and new audiences think they were only made a couple of years ago. People come up to me and say, ‘Excuse me, are you Peter Cushing’s dad?' I say, ‘No, I’m his grandfather.' Today’s generation say they prefer the Hammer pictures because they left a great deal to the imagination. There was no foul language, no gratuitous violence and, in the end, good always triumphed over evil."

The documentary also reveals candid contributions from some of Hammer's leading ladies, Madeline Smith, Martine Beswick and Caroline Munro, and from famous fans who also happen to be Hollywood directors: Tim Burton, John Carpenter and Joe Dante.

“But sometimes,” says Field, “you find stars where you don’t expect to.” He refers to key Hammer figures like producer Anthony Hinds, make-up pioneer Phil Leakey, composer James Bernard and cinematographer Jack Asher, who “painted with light”.

But then, team effort is vital to Field, a co-founder of the company behind the documentary, Deep Fusion Films. "The team you build around you are vital and I’m so glad that this film champions the Hammer team who built a legendary company from the ground up. I’ve done that using my team who have done wonders for me over the last few years.

"It’s very easy to put praise on those who hold ‘star appeal’ but much like the documentary itself, I want to point the finger behind the scenes and highlight the amazing work of the researchers and crew that I work with tirelessly to pull off a doc of this scale." He name-checks Dick Klemensen and Wayne Kinsey, who helped pull the project together with their "encyclopaedic knowledge of Hammer".

Of Hammer's legacy, Field continues: “Things really only started to have a downturn once the team started to split up.” He refers to the studio's tawdry, exploitative period in the early 1970s – one that coincided with a crumbling of censorship barriers, and the “monsters” of the documentary's title points to both fictional and real-life monsters.

Field agrees, however, that during the Cushing/Lee era for which it is most famous, Hammer was prolific, with well-crated stories in which good conquered evil. "One hundred per cent – Hammer’s output during the heyday was immense.

"They found a formula that worked and they made films with an intriguing balance of business acumen and creative productivity. But it was a balancing act. I firmly believe that Hammer was only able to have a heyday due to the crew they had with them at exactly the right time."

Ultimately, he hopes that people will see the films in a new light after watching the documentary. “Hammer’s crew were just doing their job, but as far as I’m concerned they were defining the future of horror."

Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters is on Thursday 31 October at 9pm on Sky Arts. Catch up on Now

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