Clash of the Titans (The Curse Of Frankenstein / Horror Of Dracula / The Mummy (DVD))

Member Name: DadManCat

Product:	The Curse Of Frankenstein / Horror Of Dracula / The Mummy (DVD)
Date:	21/09/04 (243 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Transfers, Solid entertainment, Good performances

Disadvantages: Lack of extras, Lousy menus, Price

Such was the huge output of the legendary Hammer Film Studios, and the distribution deals struck, that the rights to the movies now lay in the hands of dozens of studios. Expecting a consistent release schedule onto DVD is like waiting for the studio to crank back into life, frankly pointless. Hammer have been best served in the United States by Anchor Bay, who have been doing their best to compile worthy extras to go with their impressive restored prints. In the UK? Well, we have been less lucky. All the major distributors have snuck a Hammer film out, usually without extras, little fanfare and little care. This Warner Brothers box set is a real half way house, a bit of an unsatisfactory compromise, full of potential, but ultimately settling for the lowest common denominator.

It looks good enough, a robust box with a nice gloss laminate, opening out to give way to a three disc gatefold. Rather symptomatic of this release though, and it’s half arsed conception, the image on the front is from a ‘Brides of Dracula’ poster, and hardly screams quality product. It just looks a little tacky...and Belgian.

What lurks inside the box is far from tacky, well, apart from the the rather lurid design work. Here we have three classic Hammers. Perhaps THE three classic Hammers. 1957’s ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ set the gothic horror ball rolling and announced Hammer to the world stage. 1958’s ‘The Horror of Dracula’ (yes, it’s an American print) simply acted to rubberstamp Hammer’s decision to dabble in dark deeds. 1959’s ‘The Mummy’ was perhaps the British studios finest moment and as such it’s great to have it on DVD.

All three pictures possess the Hammer factor, that being the collection of faces in front of and behind of the camera. The group of people that huddled into the damp and archaic Bray studios and weaved magic with little money or resources. Mention Hammer at it’s best, and people will undoubtedly talk of director Terence Fisher, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, producers Michael Carreras, Anthony Nelson-Keys and Anthony Hinds. Production designer Bernard Robinson, cameraman Jack Asher and composer James Bernard, these were the names behind the cameras that defined the best period of Hammer. In front of the cameras? Well you can’t mention the studio without thinking of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, but like a repertory company, Hammer had a family of actors available who all brought their own magic to productions.

The three films in this set all feature screenplays by Jimmy Sangster, a writer with a knack for ‘exploitation’ movie making. He possessed an ability to see the wood for the trees, delivering audiences what they wanted with little time to think or draw breath. A good job too, for any meaningful analysis of a Hammer script sees it collapse inwards like a flimsy house of cards. ‘Dracula’, ‘Frankenstein’ and the ‘Mummy’ owe less to Stoker and Shelley than to the Universal flicks of the 1930s. There is a passing resemblance to their literary origins but little more. With 90 minutes of screentime to fill, a 3 week shooting schedule and miniscule budget, there was little time for wordy worthy screenplays. Instead, we are delivered fast, punchy approximations of the literary horrors.

‘Dracula’ is set entirely in Transylvania, eschews the beginning of the novel and makes Harker a vampire hunter in the employ of Van Helsing. Straight into the action then. Going for the jugular as it were. Sangster keeps elements of the original story, but only as flesh to the bones of his horror barnstormer. Gone is the creepy festering count of the book, instead with have an athletic virile creature in the form of the not unhandsome Christopher Lee. We have heaving bosoms, wild horse and carriage chases, swordfights, tumbles and stakings galore.

‘Curse of Frankenstein’ gives us a prologue where we are introduced to the titular Baron as a young man, losing his family at an early age, inheriting a fortune and title to boot. He is a keen student and before we know it, pretty unpleasant too. Fast forward, and as an adult he is charming and charismatic, but utterly evil. He embarks on a project to reanimate the dead, and then to construct human life from a ragbag collection of organs and body parts. All he succeeds in doing is creating a homicidal brute, which allows for much rampaging and general blood curdling.

‘The Mummy’ is the most Universal influenced, and is pretty much cobbled together from their Lon Chaney Jnr serials of the 40s. Archeologists break into the Tomb of Ananka, anger the keepers of said holy place, who in turn unleash a mummy to track them down and make them regret their trespassing. Mummy and owner follow the Banning party from Egypt to England, and carry out their revenge in brutally clockwork fashion. Throw in some reincarnation and lost love, and it could well be 1941 all over again.

Really Sangster delivers us comic strips drawn large and in three dimensions, well, apart from the characterisations that is. It is to director Terence Fisher, and actors like Cushing and Lee, that the credit must go for making these loose sketches seem at least a little like real people. Lee’s count is unnervingly urbane, while his creature is a mockery of Frankensteins dreams, all loose limbed and childlike. His Mummy is an unstoppable force, communicating in nods and mere flashes of the eyes all that you need to know. Cushing is simply superb. He brings depth to the flimsiest of roles, and here makes Van Helsing, Frankenstein, and John Banning all seem like part of the Royal Shakespeare Companys Summer Season. An actor of great skill and subtlety, in some ways saddening that he became inextricably linked with horror and cheap exploitation cinema.

It would be foolish of me to say Terence Fisher was a great director. He wasn’t. He was however someone who had risen through the ranks, and therefore understood everything that it took to put a film together. He was professional and knew what it took to create a scene and an atmosphere. His films were rarely dynamic or energetic, but they do drip with atmosphere and a sense of the unknown. He also got the best from everyone around him, and while not a showy director like Freddie Francis, he did what it took to get the best take in the can.

Fisher would not receive the plaudits without the tireless work of Jack Asher, a cameraman who Hammer ultimately couldn’t afford. A talent above and beyond the means of the studio, the early gothics are memorable largely down to how he lit and shot them. Creating colour palettes for each movie, not being afraid to underlight or overlight, and capable of creating nightmares that Tim Burton would kill to have onscreen. Asher’s lighting on ‘The Mummy’ is simply mindblowing. A surreal colourwheel that takes in deep reds, greens and browns, it has to be seen to be believed. Such care and attention to detail in what were essentially throwaway pictures designed to make a quick pound and to finance the next one.

Also helping to make the nightmares solid was the outstanding work of designer Bernard Robinson. His sets always belied the status of Bray Studios, suggesting vast soundstages when in reality it was a crumbling old stately home ill equipped to deal with the rigours of film making. His interiors are sumptuous affairs, a study in Victoriana clutter, creating plenty of areas for shadows and shocks, while his creations on the Bray backlot were no less impressive. Frequently he would create small slices of middle Europe in the middle of muddy autumnal Berkshire field.

James Bernard composed Hammer’s best scores, and his three note descending Dracula motif is etched into the brains of all Horror fans. Composing at breakneck speed with a small orchestra, he created musically phonetic scores. Taking the title, speaking it aloud and then transferring it to paper. That he created such memorable scores is amazing given the way he was forced to work thanks to Hammers relentless production schedule. He is responsible for 2 scores in this boxset, ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’. Franz Reizenstein provides an eerie and powerful score for ‘The Mummy’.

So it’s all very well telling you how good these films look and sound, but do the discs actually do them justice. The answer is a very firm and very surprising yes. We get lousy menus, no extras bar some fuzzy trailers which are horribly panned and scanned, but the main features are amazing. They look like they were shot yesterday. Yes there is the inevitable print damage for films nearly 50 years old, but in terms of colour and clarity they are a revelation. ‘The Mummy’ and ‘Dracula’ are the best showcases for the work of Robinson and Asher, and the DVDs do not insult their memory. These are three very good transfers.

Audio? Well, the mono sound is okay. Occasionally distorted and jumbled and clearly not having had the same amount of love as the picture received. They are displayed in their original ratios, 1:85.1 at a push. Hammer did experiment later with it’s own scope process, the imaginatively named HammerScope but all it did was show up the limits of the directors and the scale of the sets.

Criminal and practically unforgivable is the lack of bonus material. Yes, it’s great to finally have these three films on DVD, but given their importance (no idle fan boast this), they deserve something. Anything. Just something. Then again, we shouldn’t expect too much from Warner Brothers, who along with Paramount have made a name for themselves for doing as little as humanly possible with DVD releases. They even make MGM look good.

Rated 15, there is little here to frighten todays cinema going public, but there are occasional moments of gore that are unsuitable for the faint of heart. Available for £24.99 from usual suspect Play.com, and the less attractive £29.99 from high street retailers, it’s an opportunity to have three classic Hammers, that look great, sound okay but are horribly devoid of extra material.

Summary: