Currently off with a chest infection and part of my prescription are Hammers.
Hammer Horrors to be exact.
I've seen two in the last 24 hours, a double dose!
The first was Curse of the Mummy's Tomb from 1964, which was on the UK Horror Channel. I must say overall I thought it was weak for a Hammer. It just lacked that umph that we've come to love from them.
OK, its a passable enough story but the Mummy's, well, rather lame. Universal did it much better in the black and white original and Hammer did a much better job with Blood from the Mummy's Tomb from 1971 starring the screen stealing Valerie Leon.
As the least scary of all the classic monsters Mummies have to go that extra bandage to thrill us. At least that's the case for me.
Not so the next Hammer, which I saw on DVD: the Kiss of the Vampire from 1963. A much more assured affair and despite not mentioning Dracula once or having big Chris Lee in it it nevertheless is an excellent flick, which does much to coagulate the continuing vampire mythos begun by Hammer in 1958.
Kiss is that rare movie that is never on TV, which rarely gets a mention but is actually a fantastic slice of horror cinema.With its story of holidaying in deepest Bavaria it reminded me of that other confident bite of the genre, Dracula Prince of darkness, one of my favourite Hammers of all time (l'm currently reading the TV tie-in).
If you haven't seen it I can wholeheartedly recommend Kiss of the Vampire.
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