I don’t know about the rest of the team here at AndyErupts but for me, Hammer Horror was a major part of my introduction to the genre at a young age and formed many of my own opinions on classic horror.
Hammer’s return to form was exemplified by the recent performance of The Woman in Black, which took £10m at the UK box office and $60m worldwide. Now, news has broken that the recently resurrected Hammer horror studio has chosen De Monfort University in Leicester, UK to house their script archive and associated documentation at the university’s Cinema and Television History (CATH) research centre.
More than 240 items have been deposited at the CATH centre from Hammer and this opens Hammer’s collection to public research and study for the first time.
CATH Director and the only Professor of British Cinema, Steve Chibnall said: “The CATH Research Centre is proud to be associated with the revival of this classic British brand, and to be entrusted with elements of its historic archive at a time when the company is restoring its classic films for Blu-ray and DVD release.
Our agreement with Hammer will involve the cataloguing and curation of the materials, but the intention is also to make them available to scholars in digital form. We expect to launch this project at a conference and film festival in Leicester in the first half of July this year.
When I was growing up, Hammer and horror were virtually synonymous, and seeing one of their films was a rite of passage into adulthood. Of course, they liked to sail as close to the wind as possible as far as the censor was concerned, but their products were memorable and influential internationally, and have now been recognised as Britain’s most important contribution to fantasy cinema.”
