Hammer Film Productions Ltd. is a British film production company based in London. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic horror and fantasy films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involve classic horror characters such as Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy, which Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies, as well as, in later years, television series.
Anna Raymond Massey was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Best Actress Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel Hotel du Lac, a role that one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, has said "could have been written for her". Massey is also well-known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) as a barmaid who becomes involved with a suspected killer. She performed over one hundred character roles in British film and television.
Dracula is a 1958 British gothic horror film directed by Terence Fisher and written by Jimmy Sangster based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel of the same name. The first in the series of Hammer Horror films starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, the film also features Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing, along with Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, and John Van Eyssen. In the United States, the film was retitled Horror of Dracula to avoid confusion with the U.S. original by Universal Pictures, 1931's Dracula.
Ingrid Pitt was a Polish-British actress and writer, best known for her work in horror films of the 1970s.
Carol Lynley was an American actress known for her roles in the films Blue Denim (1959) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
James Michael Bernard was a British film composer, particularly associated with horror films produced by Hammer Film Productions. Beginning with The Quatermass Xperiment, he scored such films as The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. He also occasionally scored non-Hammer films including Windom's Way (1957) and Torture Garden (1967).
Barbara Shelley was an English film and television actress. She appeared in more than a hundred films and television series. She was particularly known for her work in horror films, notably Village of the Damned; Dracula, Prince of Darkness; Rasputin, the Mad Monk and Quatermass and the Pit.
Pamela Franklin is a British former actress. She is best known for her role as Sandy in the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), for which she won a NBR Award and received a BAFTA Award nomination.
Hazel Court was an English actress. She is known for her roles in British and American horror films during the 1950s and early 1960s, including Terence Fisher's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) for Hammer Film Productions, and three of Roger Corman's adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories for American International Pictures: The Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964).
Caroline Jane Munro is an English actress, model and singer known for her many appearances in horror, science fiction and action films of the 1970s and 1980s. She gained prominence within Hammer and horror circles, starring in Dracula AD 1972 and Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974), garnering a cult following for the numerous films that she starred in. She also acted in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), and in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). In 2019, she was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame.
Valerie Therese Leon is an English actress and model who has had roles in many film and television productions, including six of the Carry On film series and two James Bond films, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Never Say Never Again (1983) alongside Roger Moore and Sean Connery, respectively. She also had roles in high-profile films such as The Italian Job (1969), The Wild Geese (1978) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) and had a starring role in the Hammer horror film Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971).
Sarah Louise Clouston Geeson, known professionally as Sally Geeson, is an English actress with a career mostly on television in the 1970s. She is best known for playing Sid James's daughter, Sally, in Bless This House and for her roles in Carry On Abroad (1972) and Carry On Girls (1973). She also starred alongside Norman Wisdom in the film What's Good for the Goose (1969), and appeared with Vincent Price in two horror films, The Oblong Box (1969) and Cry of the Banshee (1970).
Pippa Steel was a British actress best known for her roles in two Hammer horror films: The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Lust for a Vampire (1971). Also one appearance in TV series Public Eye (1971)
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll is a 1960 British horror film directed by Terence Fisher and starring Paul Massie, Dawn Addams, Christopher Lee and David Kossoff. It was produced by Michael Carreras for Hammer Film Productions. The screenplay was by Wolf Mankowitz, based on the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Mary Peach is a South African-born British film and television actress, who was married to the screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster from 1995 until his death in 2011.
Betta St. John was an American actress, singer, and dancer who worked on Broadway, the West End, and in Hollywood films. She started her career aged 10 as a child actress in uncredited movie parts in her native USA. As an adult actress her first starring role was in the MGM film Dream Wife opposite Cary Grant in 1953. In 1954 she starred with Victor Mature in Dangerous Mission. Later residing in England she appeared in starring roles in British films including High Tide at Noon, two Tarzan films, and the horror features Corridors of Blood with Boris Karloff and Horror Hotel with Christopher Lee.
The Damned is a 1961 British science fiction horror film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Macdonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Viveca Lindfors and Oliver Reed. Based on H.L. Lawrence's 1960 novel The Children of Light, it was a Hammer Film production.
Gillian Hills is a British actress and singer. She first came to notice as a teenager in the 1960s in the British films Beat Girl (1960) and Blowup (1966). She also spent a number of years living in France, where she embarked on a singing career as well as starring in a number of French films.
Patricia Helen Mary Jessel was an English actress of stage, film and television.
Never Take Sweets from a Stranger is a 1960 British thriller drama film, directed by Cyril Frankel and starring Patrick Allen, Gwen Watford, Janina Faye and Felix Aylmer. The screenplay was by John Hunter based on the 1954 play The Pony Cart by Roger Garis. It was produced by Hammer Films. The twin themes of the film are paedophilia and child sexual abuse, and the way in which those with sufficient pull can corrupt and manipulate the legal system to evade responsibility for their actions. The film is regarded as bold and uncompromising for its time.
