The 20 best Hammer horror films
Hammer Film Productions, the venerable British studio behind some of horror's buzziest titles, was established in 1935 by comedian and entrepreneur William Hinds, who named the company after his own stage name, Will Hammer. Before it completely embraced the horror genre, Hammer produced some of the anodyne mystery thrillers starring Bela Lugosi that were popular at the time, as well as war pictures and the odd Oscar vehicle. (Hammer's first production, the since-lost 1935 film The Public Life of Henry the Ninth, was the first British film to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.)
Things changed for the homegrown enterprise around 1955, when the sci-fi yarn The Quatermass Xperiment ushered in a new era of programming within the studio. Two years later, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, who would become and remain the two names most synonymous with the horror studio, starred in The Curse of Frankenstein. That film was directed by Terence Fisher and written by Jimmy Sangster, both of whom would contribute a great deal of Hammer's most well-known and respected horror pictures over the years. Fisher and Sangster followed hot on the heels of their Frankenstein film with The Horror of Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959), both of which brought the world of black-and-white Universal Studios monsters to Technicolor life, spilled more blood than audiences had ever seen at the cinema before, and solidified Hammer's spot as the top distributor of horror pictures at that time.
Hammer had an unprecedented run of success through the end of the 1970s, before closing up shop in the wake of decreasing interest in their trademark Gothic horror melodramas, and the proliferation of increasingly violent films coming out of mainstream Hollywood which detracted from Hammer's bloodthirsty demographic. Over a 44-year period, Hammer produced nearly 166 films in addition to three anthology series for television, including Journey Into the Unknown and Hammer House of Horror.
In 2010, Hammer revitalized itself as a new name in the horror game and released Matt Reeves' acclaimed Let Me In, soon followed by the Daniel Radcliffe-led remake of The Woman in Black. Hammer's most recent release was the twisty 2020 psychological thriller The Lodge, which garnered critical praise at the time of its release. With any luck, Hammer will continue its reign of terror for decades to come.
Here's EW's list of the 20 best Hammer horror productions of all time.
20. <i>The Resident</i> (2011)
Hammer's second addition to its 21st-century canon is certainly an adult thriller, but one of a different shade than Let Me In, the film that resurrected the studio. The Resident finds Hilary Swank as a recently divorced doctor moving into her dream loft in Brooklyn only to discover that her landlord (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has a bit of an obsession with her. Hammer veteran Christopher Lee appears briefly as Morgan's father.
The Resident is deeply indebted to the semi-erotic yuppies-in-peril thrillers of the mid-'90s, and it wears those trappings as well as any of its various inspirations. Swank has consistently proven herself a stunningly adept elevator of schlock, an unexpected though welcome career path for her. For his part, Morgan proves to be a perversely twisted villain (this predates Negan's reign on The Walking Dead), and though one could have hoped for Lee to be given more to do, it is lovely to have him on hand.
Where to watch The Resident: Prime Video
19. <i>The Lady Vanishes</i> (1979)
Hammer's final release during its peak period was this Anthony Page-directed, made-for-television remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 film. Cybill Shepherd stars as Amanda, an American heiress on a cross-country train trip in pre-war Nazi Germany, who befriends a kind older woman, Miss Froy (Angela Lansbury), during the journey. When Miss Froy disappears, and no one but Amanda has any recollection of her, the heiress enlists a photographer (Elliott Gould) to back her up in uncovering the truth behind the missing woman.
This energetic and colorful reimagining of the Hitchcock classic finds Shepherd in the prime of her comedic powers, playing splendidly off of Gould as her foil. Much like William Castle's 1963 version of The Old Dark House, this version of the story is more blatantly positioning itself as a farce. It's a style that aligns nicely with the old-fashioned plotting. Though it must be said that the sets and costumes never convince one that the actors are inhabiting a world outside of the 1970s, it hardly matters. The Lady Vanishes immediately hits the ground running and carries itself lithely over the finish line, managing a few twists and thrills even for those that may already be familiar with the original.
Where to rent The Lady Vanishes: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)
18. <i>The Quatermass Xperiment</i> (1955)
In 1953, The Quatermass Experiment — about a doomed space mission that results in two members of the crew going missing and a third returning to Earth possessed by an alien parasite — aired as a six-part miniseries on the BBC. It was one of the first examples of must-see programming, with TV historian Robert Simpson noting that the original series was "event television, emptying the streets and pubs for the six weeks of its duration." Cult science-fiction author Nigel Kneale wrote the original teleplay, and though the screenplay is credited to director Val Guest and co-writer Richard Landau, the film retains all of the best parts of Kneale's misanthropic sensibilities.
Quatermass is a cornerstone of the science-fiction genre. Almost immediately, bits and pieces of Guest's film were regurgitated into American films, to say nothing of the countless British knock-offs. In several sections, The Quatermass Xperiment even plays with the found-footage genre, surely one of the first movies to do so. (2011's nearly-forgotten Apollo 18 is a very pale imitation of the story here.) Running a brisk 80 minutes, Quatermass had its title changed by Hammer to take advantage of the BBFC's (British Board of Film Censors, the MPA of the UK) brand-new X (18 and over only) rating, a certification the filmmakers keenly pursued. While the film is beyond tame nowadays in its depiction of violence, it does feature (like many Hammer productions) a few scenes that are shockingly explicit for the time. The creature effects here are brilliant, as well, used sparingly, but effectively, so that they ring out all the more when they do appear.
Where to watch The Quartermass Xperiment: The Roku Channel with ScreenPix
17. <i>The Satanic Rites of Dracula</i> (1973)
Lee's penultimate turn as Dracula anchors this creatively-wild combination of vampire lore, satanic horror, and political thriller. (The cult-meets-monsters plot plays as if one of the Cult-of-Thorn-obsessed Halloween sequels suddenly included bloodsuckers and bellbottoms.) Peter Cushing returns as Van Helsing to do battle one last time with Lee, disguised here as an eccentric real estate magnate. (This would be their final appearance together in a Dracula film.) Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous appears as Van Helsing's granddaughter, Jessica.
In less assured hands, the combination of genres might have backfired terribly, but director Alan Gibson shepherds the production through its various tones without ever straining credulity in a way that impedes the entertainment value. After Gibson's own A.D. 1972, which felt like the franchise running on fumes, Satanic Rites overloads on invention and breathes fresh life into the series.
Where to watch The Satanic Rites of Dracula: Freevee
16. <i>The Curse of Frankenstein</i> (1957)
Director Fisher and screenwriter Sangster, who would fruitfully collaborate one year later on Horror of Dracula, paved the way for Hammer's most successful years with this reimagining of Mary Shelley's classic novel about the misguided Dr. Frankenstein (Cushing) and his monstrous creation (Lee). The alterations to the original story lend the movie an edge that other, more straightforward adaptations have lacked. In its early stages especially, as Frankenstein collects the pieces for his monster, the movie has an atmosphere of later, grittier films that examine the psychopathy of twisted men, like Maniac (1963) and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986).
It might be difficult to see The Curse of Frankenstein now in the same context with which one saw it upon its initial release. Before this iteration of Shelley's tale, the first modern version of the myth, there hadn't been a horror film that so graphically indulged in gore and violence, in bright and shining color photography no less.
Where to watch The Curse of Frankenstein: Max
15. <i>The Mummy</i> (1959)
Fisher and Sangster teamed up once again for this take on Universal's tissue-swaddled stalker. Would you be surprised to hear that Cushing (as heroic archaeologist John Banning) and Lee (as the titular Mummy) also return to the fray? After desecrating a tomb (stop doing that!), John's foolish father (Felix Aylmer) accidentally resurrects Kharis, a former high priest who now finds himself mummified and on a quest for revenge against those who invaded his territory.
The Mummy is an exceedingly elegant and creepy horror picture that seamlessly blends its action and adventure elements. (Though it was derided at the time, Stephen Sommers' 1999 remake, also titled The Mummy, is a perfect contemporization of this movie's horror-to-adventure ratio.) With the earlier The Mummy, both Fisher and Sangster have distilled what works best about the monster movie genre into a compact 90 minutes of unadulterated fun.
14. <i>The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires</i> (1974)
Has there ever been a more tantalizing-sounding sub-genre than "martial arts horror"? Cushing's Dr. Van Helsing is recruited to fight the seven vampires of the title, who have menaced a remote Chinese village for generations, in this Hammer and Shaw brothers co-production, filmed in 1973 at the Shaw Brothers Studio in Hong Kong.
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is wildly absurd in the best ways, a feat of exploitation filmmaking that is astonishing for existing in the first place, all the more so because it works so well. The Shaw brothers were initially unhappy with the film delivered by Roy Ward Baker, so they hired Chang Cheh, a favored director of theirs, to spice up the fight scenes. While evidently a vision of two separate artists, Golden Vampires is staged at such an operatic level that you can excuse any inconsistency in the presentation. The martial arts sequences are gorgeously handled in majestic wide shots; an early battle in an open field brings to mind the acrobatics in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The vampires don't disappoint either, and Cushing commits admirably to his part as he always does. It's only a shame that he doesn't engage in much kung fu…
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is not available to watch or rent.
13. <i>Let Me In</i> (2010)
Matt Reeves (2022's The Batman) followed up his directorial debut, Cloverfield, with this remake of the Swedish vampire-romance Let the Right One In that is on par with its originator in terms of quality. Kodi Smit McPhee (an Oscar nominee for 2021's The Power of the Dog) stars as Owen, a bullied boy who takes refuge in his friendship with Abby (Chloë Grace Moretz), a weary vampire in the body of a young girl who lives under the thumb of her predatory guardian (Richard Jenkins).
Let Me In was Hammer's first foray back into features after its 30-year hiatus, and it heralded an intent from the studio to generate high-quality horror films for an adult audience. Reeves updates the original in just the right fashion, though it is slightly curious that this is very much a remake of Tomas Alfredson's film, rather than an adaptation of the original novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which contains much more explicit horror elements than either of its cinematic versions. Moretz and McPhee are phenomenal actors, certainly two of the most emotive young performers of their generation, and their easy chemistry both grounds the film and keeps it from slipping too far into darkness and despair. Let Me In is slightly more optimistic in tone than Let the Right One In, but Reeves is a keen enough director that it feels like a spin on the material rather than a concession to Hollywood storytelling.
12. <i>The Snorkel</i> (1958)
Paul (Peter van Eyck) takes the rather drastic step of murdering his wife by drugging her tea and leaving her in a locked room with the gas turned up. Peter then hides under the floorboards, using a snorkel to breathe while an Inspector (Grégoire Aslan) investigates the scene. When the dead woman's daughter, Candy (former child star Mandy Miller, in her final role), arrives, she immediately accuses Peter of murdering her mother, just as he did her father several years earlier in a boating incident that everyone but Candy believes to have been an accident. Peter then reappears, having supposedly been in Paris, and sets in motion a series of events so that he may remove Candy from the equation as well.
If only more Hammer productions had gone to Italy. Guy Green's neat and tidy thriller, reminiscent of an elongated episode of the '70s British anthology series Thriller, is leant a significant scope by its Alassio setting. The Snorkel blends its straighter dramatic strands nicely with more blatant exploitation elements. (The poster brays, with admirable directness, "Teenage girl vs. killer-with-a-gimmick!") Through it all, we keep watching to see the increasingly dastardly Peter's undoing at Candy's hands, and the denouement certainly does not disappoint.
The Snorkel is not available to watch or rent.
11. <i>Taste of Fear</i> (1961)
Penny Appleby (Susan Strasberg) returns to her father's home on the French Riviera, only to find her stepmother (Ann Todd) making excuses for his absence. After Penny spots her father's dead body, only for it to vanish later, she enlists the help of the family's driver (Ronald Lewis) to help her crack the case. Lee appears as the doctor who sides with Penny's stepmother and attempts to convince the young woman that she never saw her father's corpse.
Taste of Fear is similar in plot and construction to The Snorkel, in that both are murder mysteries constructed around a young woman who is convinced she knows the truth and yet is not believed by any of those close to her. Seth Holt's film (Sangster penned the screenplay) does not exploit its French backdrop as elegantly as The Snorkel did its Italian setting, but it is a more mysterious twist on the same formula. The audience remains unsure of who to trust until the final moments, and even then it is not entirely clear who your allegiances should lie with. It's a superbly crafted Gothic thriller with a modern edge, certainly one of the best in this sub-genre that Hammer produced during its golden period.
Taste of Fear is not available to watch or rent.
10. <i>Maniac</i> (1963)
Drifter Jeff Farrell (Kerwin Mathews) stumbles into a bar in southern France, where he immediately becomes enraptured with the owner's stepdaughter, Annette (Liliane Brousse). Annette's stepmother, Nadia (Eve Baynat), begins to seduce Jeff as well, in the hopes that he will assist her in springing her estranged husband, Annette's father, from the prison in which he is incarcerated after blow-torching the face of a man who attacked his young daughter.
Sangster's script for Maniac owes a few debts to classic French noir such as Diabolique and Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows, and director Michael Carreras is owed a great deal of praise for crafting a film that contains the same amount of excitement and devious pleasure as those movies. Wilkie Cooper's cinematography is some of the best in any Hammer production (for that matter, any genre production from this time); the camera glides and zooms almost imperceptibly through scenes, as the framing and compositions work to steadily heighten the tension throughout the picture.
Maniac is not available to watch or rent.
9. <i>The Old Dark House</i> (1963)
William Castle's remake of James Whale's 1932 original film, which both lampooned and established the horror genre, concerns an American car salesperson (Tom Poston) who, while abroad in London, finds himself at the eponymous mansion, where murders begin to occur around the convening of a family to hash out the details of their inheritance.
Castle's tone here is more openly jocular than Whale's original, which chose a satirical approach over a parodic one. In fact, this appears to be a movie entirely unconnected from any reality yet discovered. It is certainly not scary, but in its zany silliness, it is often quite funny. Remaking a film such as The Old Dark House is, in fact, one of the more worthwhile endeavors if one is to remake anything. Castle takes ample advantage of the jokes that hang at the expense of tropes that have endured since Whale's send-up, and the ones that have emerged in the interim.
The Old Dark House is not available to watch or rent.
8. <i>The Lodge</i> (2020)
Grace Marshall (Riley Keough) moves with her stepchildren-to-be, Aiden (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh), into an isolated cabin just before the Christmas holidays, to await the arrival of her fiancée. It's to be anything but a holly-jolly Christmas, however, as Grace and the kids begin experiencing bizarre events that seem to harken back to Grace's past as the sole survivor of a mass suicide initiated by the cult to which she belonged.
The Lodge is Veronika Franz's and Severin Fiala's follow-up to their unbelievably nasty and intermittently suspenseful Goodnight Mommy. Much like the duo's earlier film, The Lodge takes a story that is relatively straightforward and energizes it with a slick nihilism that lends it the patina of the best downbeat horrors from the 1970s. Keough, (a stand-out in 2021's Zola and Amazon's Daisy Jones & the Six), gives one of the strongest performances at the center of any genre film; it's her characterization alone that keeps the second half of the movie a guessing game, where a lesser actor would have shown their hand by that stage.
7. <i>Straight on Till Morning</i> (1972)
Brenda (Rita Tushingham), an author of children's books living at home with her mother, decides to venture out to London and find a father for the child she is not yet pregnant with, but is determined to have. She meets Peter (Shane Briant), a sociopath preying on the city's women who lures Brenda into his bloody game of deceit.
Snugly fitting the bill of '70s nihilism, Peter Collinson's bracing thriller would likely never be made nowadays, not for what it says or shows but for how unremittingly dour the whole production is. Like the best thrillers of this ilk, though, its darkest impulses do not weigh it down but rather give it a sadistic, jet-black comic edge. There was something in the water in the filmmaking community at this time that has been elusive ever since, where even the nastiest material could be directed with a flourish that would send it down smoothly.
Where to watch Straight on Till Morning: Freevee
6. <i>Horror Express</i> (1972)
Passengers aboard the Trans-Siberian Express from Shanghai to Moscow are stalked by a humanoid creature that can absorb the skills of its victims. Lee and Cushing play the doctors on board tasked with stopping the chaos. Horror Express is a prime example of Hammer at the peak of its powers, operating outside of the Universal monster blueprint. Eugenio Martín's thrill ride has an enduring wit, not to mention a bloodlust to match that of Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. At their best, the Hammer period horrors approached a serious-minded costume drama as invaded by a variety of murderous predators. (Depending on budget, this approach was more convincing at some times than others.)
Horror Express, which was shot in Madrid, feels like the work of a director who was a fan of the horror genre and wished to elevate the material beyond pure camp. Its rollicking pace is reminiscent of Tremors, quite a different alien-buddy movie, but a relative nonetheless.
Where to watch Horror Express: Tubi
5. <i>Hands of the Ripper</i> (1971)
As an infant, Jack the Ripper's daughter Anna (Angharad Rees) witnesses her father stab her mother to death. Now a young adult experiencing troubling blackouts, after which freshly eviscerated bodies always seem to be present, Anna the Ripper decides to take up with a psychiatrist (Eric Porter) who attempts to cure her of her murderous affliction.
Hands of the Ripper is a potboiler in the truest sense of the word. It's a beguilingly mounted period piece, the type of which Hammer was so skilled at churning out, but it also catches you off-guard with its emotional impact. Unlike his terribly inert Countess Dracula, director Peter Sasdy finds an exquisite balance between character drama and alarming jolts within a larger story that plays closer to a Polanski-esque version of creeping madness than a typical Gothic horror melodrama.
Where to watch Hands of the Ripper: Tubi
4. <i>The Phantom of the Opera</i> (1962)
Terence Fisher's version of Gaston Leroux's novel (with a screenplay by John Elder) was not received well critically or financially at the time of its release. Indeed, behind-the-scenes problems led to significant alterations to the overall film. Originally, Cary Grant had reached out to Hammer about starring in one of their upcoming films. Grant had been so impressed by Fisher's work on The Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula that he wished to work specifically with the director, and so Hammer went about crafting a script. The result of this was a draft of Phantom in which each role was written to potentially appeal to Grant himself, who ended up not taking any of the parts after his agent talked him out of doing a low-budget horror flick. Hammer then had a script on its hands of such cost that the only way to make a profit was to release the film with an A rating, which would allow children of all ages as long as anyone under 12 were accompanied by an adult.
Yet, Fisher's adaptation is a worthwhile one. It is visibly compromised in its presentation of violence — you can practically feel the crew straining to hold back their splattery impulses — but, presumably by accident, The Phantom of the Opera turns out to be a (mostly) family-friendly horror made on a grand scale that such films are rarely afforded. Perhaps it is not as grisly as Fisher's other Universal monster riffs, but it's a wonderful gateway horror movie for younger audiences that perhaps aren't yet ready for the more extreme stuff.
Where to watch The Phantom of the Opera: Peacock
3. <i>The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas</i> (1957)
Val Guest, director of The Quatermass Xperiment, reteamed with that film's original scribe, Nigel Kneale, for this top-notch yeti thriller. A team of explorers, led by Dr. John Rollason (Cushing) and his wife Helen (Maureen Connell), on an expedition to the Himalayas with members of a local monastery, collide with a second team of explorers who are searching for the abominable snowman.
The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre of monster movies. It's as much about man's folly as it is a great, big, hairy monster tromping around the snow-capped mountains. Kneale's stories were always subtextually rich, and here he does not disappoint. In addition to being a rollicking adventure and a bone-chilling horror picture with the ethereal dread of Kubrick, it's a parable about the quest for fame and fortune versus the quest for scientific explanations, and how both of those things can potentially lead to ruin.
The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas is not available to watch or rent.
2. <i>Horror of Dracula</i> (1958)
In many ways, Horror of Dracula (or simply Dracula abroad) is the film that made Hammer's name. It certainly buttered the studio's bread for many years to come, along with Cushing's Frankenstein series. Lee stars in this retelling of the classic tale, and he gives perhaps the most iconic performance as the blood-sucking Count. Though sex appeal has become rather synonymous with both the character of Dracula and vampires at large, Lee was the first to imbue the role with a swagger where others had simply gone for the creep-out factor. Cushing himself appears as Doctor Van Helsing; he would go on to appear as Van Helsing in four further productions.
Hammer stalwart Fisher's direction seems to pre-empt Italian horror baron Dario Argento with his use of lighting and camera movement, which coupled with the quintessentially late-'50s color palette makes the film absolutely leap off the screen. The shock scenes, too, still hold up all these years later.
Where to watch Horror of Dracula: Max
1. <i>The Devil Rides Out</i> (1968)
After over a decade of directing Hammer interpretations of Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Mummy, Fisher helmed this, his third-to-last feature film and the final that would not have "Frankenstein" in the title. Set in 1929 and based upon the novel of the same name by Dennis Wheatley (published in 1934), The Devil Rides Out stars Lee as Nicholas, a sophisticate investigating the whereabouts of his wayward charge Simon (Patrick Mower). Along with his compatriot Rex (Leon Green), Nicholas liberates Simon and Tanith (Niké Arrighi) from a cult of devil worshippers, during which they disrupt a ceremony and are subsequently pursued by a vengeful spirit.
The Devil Rides Out is a supremely creepy occult thriller that treats its subjects with documentary-like precision. Fisher's film is in many ways more restrained than a great deal of Hammer's output, yet that allows its punches to land even harder. The wave of devil-cult thrillers in the 1970s roundly attempted to harness the same realism that Fisher brings out in this film, but none of them could match the truly outré quality here. There are moments of The Devil Rides Out, select passages and images, that still strike one as being quintessentially "horrific," the sort of unspeakable, distorted images that linger from your nightmares.
The Devil Rides Out is not available to watch or rent.
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