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It’s been a heck of a half-year. Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974) led the charge in terms of Hammer’s Limited Collector’s Edition range: a series of 4K restorations presented with specially created programmes, expert commentaries, new artwork and exclusive archive material. The Captain was swiftly followed by Four Sided Triangle (1953), Shatter (1974) and, of course, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957). We recently confirmed that Blood Orange (1953) would join the range imminently, but what next?
The next film to be inducted into the hall of fame that is Hammer’s Limited Collector’s Edition range, will be Blood Orange (1953), a murder-mystery thriller directed by fan-favourite Terence Fisher and starring Tom Conway.
Camp classic? A trailblazer for queer horror? An exploitative money grab? Or, in the words of its star, Ingrid Pitt, just your everyday story ‘about a couple of nubile girls in a grand house in a hot Styrian summer with nothing to do but play with each other’? 55 years after it first played in ABC cinemas across the UK, we sink our teeth into The Vampire Lovers and examine how it beat the censors, wowed the critics and became… well, whatever it became.
In Part One of this feature we looked at early examples of science fiction on air, and how despite the dramatic originality of The Quatermass Experiment, its creative impact was not immediately felt and if anything, it’s puzzling that so little was done to capitalise on its success. But in 1955 the BBC aired a second series and more importantly, in terms of global reach, Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment was a huge hit with audiences around the world. The Professor’s journey was entering a new phase, and was about to take some unexpected turns…
Summer is coming, with all its attendant horrors. So what better time to close the curtains, hunker down and stick on some horror movies to banish those summer blues? And if you need ideas about which films to watch, read on for a coffin-load of suggestions…