Hammer Studios: The Bray Years

Does the world really need another book about Hammer?

That is the question which most afficianadoes are likely to ask when they see Wayne Kinsey's new book Hammer Studios: The Bray Years staring at them from the bookshelves. Many will wonder if there haven't already been enough books about the studio and its films, their historical import and deeper meanings.

The answer, happily, is a resounding 'yes'.

Taking a basically empirical approach in piecing together a mass of primary and secondary sources, many hitherto unpublished or only exposed in long out-of-print small press and fanzine publications, Kinsey brings the day-to-day business of Hammer Studios alive more than any previous account.

Some of the stories and anecdotes are just plain hilarious. Nearly everything Martita Hunt did on The Brides of Dracula, for instance, or special effects assistant Ian Scoones' reminscences of using fake bats on Kiss of the Vampire where the rushes made it look like Noel Willman was being "wanked off" by the animal.

Often just as amusing, but also more fascinating for what they reveal, are the various interchanges between Hammer and the BBFC readers and examiners. For example, with regard to The Brides of Dracula:

p. 77. Gina (a village girl, turned vampire) seems to have become a weensy bit of a lesbian. She says to the heroine (a real ninny): 'My darling. You haven't forgotten your little Gina. Put your arms around me please. Hug me. I want to kiss you. Please be kind to me. Say you'll forgive me for letting HIM love me.' Girlish talk, perhaps? (They have burnt toast in their dorm together.) But what next? Dracula, the Homosexual vampire?

Or with regard to The Damned

It seems that the people behind this project are against Teddy Boys, 'The Establishment' and the nuclear deterrent. What they are in favour of is less easy to guess, though it seems likely that they are ardent fellow travellers or fully paid up members of the Communist party and would look with a less jaundiced eye on repression and regimentation from the left. Anyway, we cannot concern ourselves with the ideas, which in any case may escape the sort of 'X' film patrons we want to protect!

Comments like these will no doubt provide useful supplementary evidence for more psychologically and sociologically inclinced critics. Yet, at the same time, Hammer Studios: The Bray Years also provides a valuable rejoinder to film theory types that, perhaps more often than not, things are what they appear to be – an X is an X is an X – and seemingly significant choices are made for the most mundane reasons.

One eagerly awaits a follow-up, Hammer Studios: The post-Bray Years.