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.
Amicus Productions was a British film production company, based at Shepperton Studios, England, active between 1962 and 1977. It was founded by American producers and screenwriters Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg.
Peter Woodthorpe was an English actor who supplied the voice of Gollum in the 1978 Bakshi version of The Lord of the Rings and the BBC's 1981 radio serial. He also provided the voice of Pigsy in the cult series Monkey and played Max, the pathologist, in early episodes of Inspector Morse.
Tales from the Crypt is a 1972 British horror film directed by Freddie Francis. It is an anthology film consisting of five separate segments, based on short stories from the EC Comics series Tales from the Crypt by Al Feldstein, Johnny Craig, and Bill Gaines. The film was produced by Amicus Productions and filmed at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, England.
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, usually shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss. The work was first published in German.
Charenton was a lunatic asylum founded in 1645 by the Frères de la Charité in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, now Saint-Maurice, Val-de-Marne, France.
Dr Terror's House of Horrors is a 1965 British anthology horror film from Amicus Productions, directed by veteran horror director Freddie Francis, written by Milton Subotsky, and starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
The Plane Makers is a British television series created by Wilfred Greatorex and produced by Rex Firkin. ATV made three series for ITV between 1963 and 1965. It was succeeded by The Power Game, which ran for an additional three series from 1965 to 1969. Firkin continued as producer for the first two series, and David Reid took over for series 3.
Patrick George Magee was a Northern Irish actor. He was noted for his collaborations with playwrights Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, sometimes called "Beckett's favourite actor," as well as creating the role of the Marquis de Sade in the original stage and screen productions of Marat/Sade.
The Monster Club is a 1981 British anthology horror film directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Vincent Price and John Carradine. It is based on the works of the British horror author R. Chetwynd-Hayes. It was the final film from Milton Subotsky, who was best known for his work with Amicus Productions; Amicus were well known for their anthologies, but this was not an Amicus film. It was also the final feature film directed by Baker.
Torture Garden is a 1967 British horror film directed by Freddie Francis and starring Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Michael Ripper, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Ursula Howells, Michael Bryant and Barbara Ewing. The score was a collaboration between Hammer horror regulars James Bernard and Don Banks.
There have been many and varied references to the Marquis de Sade in popular culture, including fictional works, biographies and more minor references. The namesake of the psychological and subcultural term sadism, his name is used variously to evoke sexual violence, licentiousness and freedom of speech. In modern culture his works are simultaneously viewed as masterful analyses of how power and economics work, and as erotica. Sade's sexually explicit works were a medium for the articulation of the corrupt and hypocritical values of the elite in his society, which caused him to become imprisoned. He thus became a symbol of the artist's struggle with the censor. Sade's use of pornographic devices to create provocative works that subvert the prevailing moral values of his time inspired many other artists in a variety of media. The cruelties depicted in his works gave rise to the concept of sadism. Sade's works have to this day been kept alive by artists and intellectuals because they espouse a philosophy of extreme individualism that became reality in the economic liberalism of the following centuries.
The Criminal is a 1960 British neo-noir crime film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Stanley Baker, Sam Wanamaker, Grégoire Aslan, Jill Bennett, and Margit Saad. Baker plays Johnny Bannion, a recently-paroled gangster who is sent back to prison after robbing a racetrack, with both the authorities and the criminal underworld looking for the money.
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, usually shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1967 British film adaptation of Peter Weiss' play Marat/Sade. The screen adaptation is directed by Peter Brook, and originated in his theatre production for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The English version was written by Adrian Mitchell from a translation by Geoffrey Skelton.
From Beyond the Grave is a 1974 British anthology horror film from Amicus Productions, directed by Kevin Connor, produced by Milton Subotsky and based on short stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes.
And Now the Screaming Starts! is a 1973 British gothic horror film directed by Roy Ward Baker. It stars Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Stephanie Beacham and Ian Ogilvy. It is one of the few feature-length horror stories by Amicus, a company best known for anthology or "portmanteau" films. Baker felt the title was "silly".
The Uncanny is a 1977 British-Canadian anthology horror film directed by Denis Héroux, written by Michel Parry, and starring Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, Ray Milland, Joan Greenwood, Donald Pilon, Samantha Eggar, and John Vernon.
They Came from Beyond Space is a 1967 British Eastman Color science fiction film directed by Freddie Francis and starring Robert Hutton, Jennifer Jayne, Zia Mohyeddin and Bernard Kay. It was produced by Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky. The screenplay was by Subotsky, based on the 1941 novel The Gods Hate Kansas by Joseph Millard.
The Psychopath is a 1966 British horror film directed by Freddie Francis and starring Patrick Wymark and Margaret Johnston. It was written by Robert Bloch and was an Amicus production.
Frankenstein is a British horror-adventure film series produced by Hammer Film Productions. The films, loosely based on the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, are centered on Baron Victor Frankenstein, who experiments in creating a creature beyond human. The series is part of the larger Hammer horror oeuvre.
