The Hammer Collection movie reviews: Part 1

Sorry for the long delay, but it's FINALLY here!

First review:

Plague Of The Zombies (1966)

Hammer digs into a zombie flick (this was 3 years before Night Of The Living Dead). And I must say my overall experience was good.You get a creepy atmopsheric, balls to the wall cheap horror flick, with some dry blood. The characters in this movie are dull though, they act to weirdly and to kindly for me. The girl character really needed to get laid (in my opinion should have been raped), she goes around stupidly, with a stupid looking face and just feel useless. some male characters did better but not good enough. However the the strong parts in this film for me is the use of great scares and the low budget, you can see how some of the effects are obviously done, but that is what makes it good, it gives that extra dirty feeling and sickness to the movie.
The movie really had me jumping at times, the scene where the guys wife became a zombie, scared the shit out of me (I couldn't even look), or the dream sequence with zombies rising from the grave, just pure horror movie gold. The movie deserves extra credit for it's 60's gore! (head chopped of, walking burning corpse!)

It's a good start for me in the Hammer box
4 out of 5 burning corpses



Dracula Prince Of Darkness (1966)

back to back played in theatres with Plague Of The Zombies, Hammer makes Dracula returns after many years (don't know what happened there...). and they bring a sorta disappointing sequel.
Dracula rises again and bites the lady's, same shit, but this time Peter Cushing disapointingly isn't back as Van Helsing, but instead have these british boredoms doing the male roles. The movie gets strong with it's violent, but ends unsatisfying where people probably expected more from Dracula, he has no dialogue... AT ALL.... I read somewhere that Christophere Lee (Dracula) refused to say some dialogue because it was REALLY, REALLY bad dialogue... maybe I can't blame him.
If the film had Peter Cushing it would have been way better.
2,5/5




The Nanny (1965)

DAMM THIS MOVIE WAS GOOD

Hammer's last B&W film The Nanny is a suspensfull, well written and acted film. Bette Davis as The Nanny just OWNS, for a sweet old lady she scared the crap out of me. I almost could feel that this is the british low budget version of Psycho. The B&W definatly helps here.
Everybody thinks she's the best Nanny in the world, everybody goes with it, until the kid starts saying she killed someone and really slowly starts to build to a point that you need to believe the kid, and ends with a smart plot and feels very satisfying, not a 100% satisfying, but way more satisfyinger than Dracula Prince Of Darkness...
This one I REALLY recommend to horror fans, this one scene is just brilliantly directed.

4,5/5

PS: Sorry for the long delay, and I'll dig deeper into the movies next time.

The Hammer Collection DVD Box

Last weekend I was in London, and I purchased The Hammer Collection, wich contains 21 Hammer films.
What is Hammer?
Well, it was a filmstudio in the UK that made hardcore horror movies for it's time, they brought back the horror classic monsters Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy, they also did some adventure films and Sci-Fi, but they are still very known for their Horror.
I recently got a copy of Dracula (1958), their first Dracula, and I loved it. It had huge hairy balls for a movie in the 50's, lots of blood!
So I decided to purchase this Hammer collection Box, the box contains the movies:

'Blood From The Mummies Tomb', 'Demons Of The Mind', 'The Devil Rides Out', 'Viking Queen', 'Dracula, Prince Of Darkness', 'Fear In The Night', 'Frankenstein Created Women', 'The Horror Of Frankenstein', 'The Nanny', 'One Million Years BC', 'The Plague Of The Zombies', 'Prehistoric Women', 'Quartermass And The Pit', 'Rasputin The Mad Monk', 'The Reptile', 'The Scars Of Dracula', 'SHE', 'To The Devil A Daughter', 'The Vengeance Of SHE', 'Straight On Till Morning' and 'The Witches'.


The box design is great, simple box, cool horror feel illustration with also Dracula and a girl on the side in a graveyard cross. Inside the box you get like 6 postcards with posters of some of the movies containing in the box on the front of the postcards + a little book on the history of Hammer films and info about every film in the box, you have the 21!movies and DVD's sorta placed in this book, but nicely keept and not to annoyingly to get out.
all the books stacked on each other makes a form of a graveyard cross, like the one on the cover of the box.
The menu is simple and not cheap, some movies has commentary's of actors, producers and director's, and there is a documentary on Christopher Lee and a Feature doc: To The Devil...The Death of Hammer + some trailers and stuff to waste a min or 2.
Over some next blogs I'll be reviewing these movies at 2 movies a blog. So get ready for some Hammer fun over the next few weeks from this blog!
There are some shit hammer flicks and some of the best Hammer flicks, I am prepared :)
The only dawnfall I find in this box is that there are only 2 Dracula flicks of them in it, they made 6 flippin Dracula movies, they could have added at least 1 more Dracula flick :-/
And a Frankenstein one...

-Stijn Heirstrate