The World of Hammer Noir

Welcome to a world of femme fatales, anti-heroes and tragic inevitability. Welcome to the world of Hammer noir…

Film noir. If anyone tells you they know precisely what it is, they’re either lying or they’re mistaken. Either way, don’t trust them with the price of a cinema ticket. Even Billy Wilder said he didn’t know exactly what defined a noir, and he wrote and directed some of the very best. Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951). All Billy’s work. But for many, film noir is like art itself. Impossible to define, but you know it when you see it.

A scattering of Hammer’s post-war movies feel a lot like noir. The lighting, the mood, their downbeat narrative elements and the presence of a femme fatale tick all the boxes. But maybe a few have something – humour perhaps, or an optimistic ending - that dictates they’re not quite film noir as many interpret the expression. For that reason, some fans and critics occasionally use the phrase Hammer noir to describe them instead, and somehow, this feels like the perfect compromise. If ever a compromise can be perfect, that is.

To celebrate the recent release of some of these oft-overlooked classics, we’re examining three elements of Hammer noir, and looking at which characters and movies embody them the best. So, let’s turn up the collars of our trench coats and take a peek into their louche, low-lit world…

This detail from new artwork accompanying the release of the 4K restoration of Blood Orange sees Gina (Naomi Chance) central, sandwiched between Helen (Mila Parély) and Tom (Tom Conway).

Femme Fatales

Who’s the most complete femme fatale in the Hammer noir repertory? It’s a category that’s teeming with contenders, but we’ve narrowed our search down to three wrong’uns…

Gina from Blood Orange (1953) has got the whole femme fatale thing down to a fine art. She seduces, steals, lies and kills, but throughout it all, she’s able to throw suspicion onto other people. But what’s so intriguingly evil about Gina is that she seems to enjoy revelling in her wickedness, as if having to play the victim is a bore for her. When she finally turns on her collaborator and temporary beau, Captain Colin Simpson, she makes sure she’s got a gun trained on him when she gloats, ‘At least Mercedes was a man… If you hadn’t been such an infatuated fool I couldn’t have talked you into stabbing Mercedes!’ She spits out the words with obvious relish, as if savouring the fact she can finally reveal her true self.

By the time she tells him, ‘The only reason I agreed to marry you was because Helen made you a partner!’ we almost feel sorry for the vile Captain. Almost. But not quite.

Look at her expression when later, she pumps him full of bullets. It’s the one time in the movie we see genuine delight on her face.

She even had Tom Conway fooled, and when he leads her off at the end (‘It’s too bad it had to work out this way,’) the audience can rest assured she’s far from finished. Somewhere in London there’s a defence barrister she’s about to wrap around her trigger finger. Had Blood Orange received its planned sequel, the prospect of Gina’s return would have been mouthwatering, and who’s to say whether this striking killer in haute couture would have let Conway best her a second time?

Reviewing the recent release of Whispering Smith Hits London, TPM wrote ‘…the film is rich in smoky tension and moral ambiguity, all shaped by Hammer’s unmistakable British sensibility.’

Sylvia in Whispering Smith Hits London (1951) proves to be an even better deceiver than Gina. She completely hoodwinks the eponymous Steve until the eleventh hour, and even when he figures out she’s behind her former friend’s death, he underestimates her. As she aims a brace of pistols in his direction, he says calmly, ‘Why don’t you be a good girl and give me those guns?’

And confirming her credentials with a half-smile playing on her lips, she purrs, ‘But I’m not a good girl, Steve.’

Textbook femme fatale behaviour!

With her skill at keeping the brightest detective in the dark, her blackmailing schemes, the fact she has chats with a gun in each hand, and yes, the way Greta Gynt makes her much more interesting than the good guys, Sylvia should be right up there in the femme fatale stakes.

What lets her down? She cares. She calls one killing ‘a pity’ because she liked the victim, and she arguably has feelings for other people in her life, including Steve. When she accidentally shoots her lover, she looks devastated. Gina would have treated it as a minor faux pas, but Sylvia reveals she has a heart.

Text: Brooke was ‘discovered’ by RKO and cast in New Faces of 1937. She later featured in movies including Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943) and Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

Yet if Baron Frankenstein had set out to make the perfect archetype of a femme fatale he’d have created Carol Forrest from The House Across the Lake (1954). She’s got a rich husband who worships her, but she wants more and doesn’t mind whom she hurts to achieve it. Carol finds seducing men as easy as lighting a cigarette, and gives it about as much thought, and interestingly, she harbours a belief that everyone shares her amorality. When her unwilling partner in crime, Mark, declares he’s going to the police to dob them both in, she completely misreads the situation, assuming he shares her motivations. ‘I’ll do anything you want!’ she screams at him. ‘If it’s money you want… It is money you want, isn’t it?’

Oh, Carol. It’s justice and redemption.

It almost comes as a disappointment when we find she’s remarried and claims it’s for love, but we see through that sham pretty quickly. After Mark punches out her new hubby she gives the tiniest of laughs, ignores her spouse completely and simply addresses his attacker. ‘Feel better now?’

The fact she’s played by the magnificent Hilary Brooke is just one more reason why we’re putting Carol Forrest number one in our chart of fabulous femme fatales.

Marketing material for The Saint’s Return, known in the US as The Saint’s Girl Friday.

The Hero Who’s Not Quite An Anti-Hero

Writing for Cent Magazine, Georgina Sussman noted, ‘The anti-hero is the male lead of Film Noir, often having a bad past, coming out a better man; he’s quick-witted and over-dramatic… Humphrey Bogart is a Film Noir favourite starring in many, most famously Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep and Samuel Spade in The Maltese Falcon.’

Hammer tend to have heroes rather than anti-heroes, which is perhaps another factor that makes their movies Hammer noir as opposed to ‘accepted’ film noir.

But it’s worth examining Simon Templar in The Saint’s Return (1952) if we’re looking for a protagonist who fits the bill. Templar, aka the Saint, was certainly an anti-hero when he first appeared in the thrillers written by Leslie Charteris. There was a wildness to the character, and although he was battling criminals who were truly malign (gun-runners, drug smugglers, kidnappers and the like) he didn’t turn a hair at the thought of murdering them (indeed, that was often his plan) and he openly acknowledged he was partly motivated by reward money. Even when retrieving stolen property he was known to take a 10% cut of the loot. Charteris toned down his ruthlessness in later stories, but in those early works, his most famous creation emerges as a gleeful anti-hero.

The RKO series of Saint movies began with The Saint in New York (1938) starring Louis Hayward, but George Sanders and Hugh Sinclair were handed the halo for the following seven outings. Hayward was coaxed back to play the lead in Hammer’s The Saint Returns (distributed in the US by RKO) and perhaps owing to its 50s setting, he demonstrates more of an edge that brings to mind the figure’s original literary persona.

Writing about Hayward’s portrayal, critic Derek Winnert pointed out, ‘This is not at all the smiling smoothie Roger Moore version of The Saint. Hayward is quite the anti-hero, a rogue and a crook, and a violent one, but always somehow still on the side of right and honour, if not actually the law. It is a fascinating characterisation.’

Text: Kay Sutton and Louis Hayward, seen here in a publicity shot for the first RKO movie to feature Simon Templar, The Saint in New York.

Hayward is often at his best playing morally ambiguous characters, such as Philip Lombard in And Then There Were None (1945) and he’s great here, with just the right amount of menace and steeliness. When the film becomes darker after a fairly light beginning, he’s at his most interesting, manipulating characters with ease and showing a ruthlessness that Sanders and Sinclair never went near.

There are other contenders for best Hammer noir anti-hero, of course. In Whispering Smith Hits London, Whispering Smith seems more concerned with hitting on Rona Anderson’s Anne than focussing on the tragedy of a dead girl. ‘Mr Garde believes that his daughter was murdered!’ Anne declares.

‘I think we ought to have a cocktail before lunch, don’t you?’ Smith replies.

Soon after this he harshly accuses her of pursuing the case out of self-interest, but just when we think we’re firmly in anti-hero territory, he’s risking his life to uncover the truth. Yet he retains something of the selfish sleuth as his investigation progresses. Watch his interrogation of Manson. He offers no kind words when the blackmail victim pours out his broken heart, and he’s fully aware that by even talking to him, he’s putting the other man’s life at risk. It’s a danger Smith doesn’t hesitate to heap on Manson because he’s on the hunt, and nothing will stop him.

Henry (Sidney James) with (l-r) Bertha (Betty Ann Davies) and Janice (Sheila Burrell). Bertha would doubtless be fuming to have been left out of our list of femme fatales.

Another unlikely anti-hero in Hammer noir is the millionaire yoga expert, Henry Clavering. Played by Sidney James in The Man in Black (1950), he manages to expose his wife’s cruel schemes, but the way he achieves his goal could be legitimately described as horrifying. He lets friends witness his apparent death and his plan entails making his loving daughter believe her father is dead. Was there really no other way?

But in the final reckoning, Simon Templar gets the nod over Smith and Clavering because the latter simply doesn’t feel like a noir hero, the American detective is a good guy at heart, whilst the way Hayward plays the avenging adventurer confirms his Saint is no saint.

Marketing material for Paramount Pictures’ masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard. The line-up comprises (l-r) William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Nancy Olson and Erich von Stroheim.

Tragic Inevitability

Many elements contribute to the distinctive feel of a noir and more specifically, a Hammer noir. But tragic inevitability is a significant one. For example, when Holly Martins arrives in Vienna in The Third Man (1949), ‘Happy as a lark and without a cent,’ we know his reunion with Harry Lime will put a considerable dint in that happiness. The opening monologue subtly implies it, and Holly’s trials feel fated. Some noirs, including Sunset Boulevard, even go as far as to show us the culminatory tragedy at the outset, framing the film as a flashback hurtling towards inescapable doom.

In Hammer noir, there are some striking moments in which the audience recognises something is about to go horribly wrong, and we acknowledge three of those dramatic instances now.

The first comes in The Saint’s Return when Keith (played by William Russell, credited as Russell Enoch), tells Templar, ‘I really could make a fresh start!’ He’s so eager, so hopeful and so convinced he’s got a way out, it’s almost painful to watch. We know - we just know - the young man is for the chop, and so it proves. It’s a quietly effective scene as it shows the lengths Templar will go to, effectively blackmailing a hesitant ally into helping him. When Keith tells him, ‘I’m ready to give evidence any time,’ the Saint pats his shoulder.

‘That’s the spirit!’ he assures him.

Two scenes later, Keith’s dead. Study Templar’s face as he leaves the room. Just like the audience, he’s got a pretty shrewd idea of what’s about to unfold, and that predictability is gut-wrenching.

Away from set… The Flanagan Boy (released in the States as Bad Blonde) starred Barbara Payton and Tony Wright.

There’s a different kind of tragic inevitability at play in The Flanagan Boy (1953). One of the movie’s central characters, Lorna Vecchi (the sublime Barbara Payton), narrowly missed out on our list of femme fatales. She’s certainly icy, selfish, alluring and murderous enough to sashay into any assembly of villains. But here, she’s also a human inevitability. Put her next to the eponymous Johnny Flanagan and without a doubt, Bad Things will happen.

We meet Johnny early in the picture. An up-and-coming boxer, he’s a good lad, but when he’s distracted by a barmaid in a pub, we suspect we’ve glimpsed his tragic flaw. The story plays so the two of them – Lorna and Johnny – initially repel each other, but no one (except Lorna’s husband) is fooled. Their relationship has danger written all over it, so we’re certain it must progress and equally aware it will lead to something terrible.

This understanding is perfectly encapsulated at the so-called party where Giuseppe Vecchi insists his wife and Johnny share a dance. Neither declines. Previously, the two have quarrelled, but as they glide around the floor, they embrace and without saying a word, their faces touch. It’s a charged, memorable moment. The chanteuse on the side sings, ‘Please let forever begin tonight…’, their previously icy stares become smouldering looks, and is the audience imagining it, or…

No.

We cut away to Johnny’s trainer, Sharkey (Sidney James). He’s a wily old man of the world who’s seen it all before. His expression as he watches Johnny and Lorna lose themselves in something which sure as heck isn’t the music, tells us everything we need to know. This is a dance of death, and the encore can only bring trouble of the deepest, life-changing variety.

‘I loved making films… There was something about that lens that I adored, and it adored me back. So we were a great combination.’ – Lizbeth Scott, one of the stars of Stolen Face.

But for heart-quickening, emotive tragic inevitability, we must hold Stolen Face (1952) aloft. This film is noir to its celluloid core. The story of a surgeon who finds love, loses love and tries to recreate it by giving a scarred, former criminal the face of the woman he fell for. He’s warned about his strategy but rushes headlong into it, gripping us, the audience, who know that not every problem can be fixed with a surgeon’s scalpel… We’ll be talking more about the film soon, but for now it claims top spot in our final category.

And so to recap our winners… Carol Forrest (The House Across the Lake) takes the femme fatale crown, Simon Templar (The Saint’s Return) is recognised in the Anti-hero category, and the most complete moment of tragic inevitability is deemed to be found in Stolen Face.

Having said that, we’ve only touched on seven films and it seems criminal we’ve not mentioned Hammer noir gems like 36 Hours (1953) or Man Bait (1952). Additionally, it should be acknowledged that many more distinctive themes and elements go into the creation of a Hammer noir. Here, we’ve only had time to cover three, but perhaps at some point we’ll return to look at ingredients such as lighting, victims and overall feel.

In the meantime, however, let’s finish with the words of that film noir favourite, Robert Mitchum, who when discussing the genre’s early years admitted, ‘Hell, we didn’t know what film noir was in those days. We were just making movies. Cary Grant and all the big stars got all the lights. We lit our sets with cigarette butts.’

And in part that sums up the allure of these productions. They weren’t blockbusters, yet they were well-crafted films made to enthral and entertain the millions who watched the shadows from the shadows. They may have been dark, but the best noir and Hammer noir movies still retain their ability to dazzle.

Blood Orange, Whispering Smith Hits London and The Man in Black are all available now as part of Hammer’s Limited Collector's Edition Range.