The Hammer Frankenstein: British Cult Cinema

In 1957, Hammer released The Curse of Frankenstein and changed the face of horror cinema forever. Hammer Horror was born, and the film made international stars of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. In the years that followed, the company made six more Frankenstein films and a television pilot, all but two of them starring Cushing as the callous and amoral Baron Frankenstein–a very different character to that created by Mary Shelley in her 1818 novel.      Award-winning author Bruce Hallenbeck explores in detail the many cinematic experiments of the baron who, along the way, made ‘“Creatures” of Lee, Don Megowan, Michael Gwynn, wrestler Kiwi Kingston, Susan Denberg, Freddie Jones and David Prowse in a series unique in the annals of British horror.  The Hammer Frankenstein relates the story of how Hammer Films, and director Terence Fisher, made a movie “monster” that endures to this day...