Hammer House of Horror
In 1980, Hammer Films (in association with Chips Productions and Cinema Arts International) created a series for British television, the Hammer House of Horror, which ran for 13 episodes with 51 minutes per episode. The series was financed by ITC Entertainment and broadcast on the ITV network by ATV.
In a break from their cinema format, these featured plot twists, which usually saw the protagonists fall into the hands of that episode's horror. These varied from sadistic shopkeepers with hidden pasts, to witches and satanic rites. The series was marked by a sense of dark irony, its haunting title music, and the intermingling of horror with the commonplace.
Notable episodes include:
- "The House That Bled To Death", in which a young couple and their daughter move into a new home, unaware that its previous tenant murdered his wife. Achieved mild notoriety for a children's birthday party scene during which blood gushes from the overhead pipes.
- "The Silent Scream", in which Peter Cushing plays an apparently personable pet shop owner working on the concept of "prisons without walls" whilst harbouring a dark secret. Brian Cox, later the first actor to play Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann's Manhunter, was the guinea pig.
- "The Two Faces Of Evil" - a surreal episode, featuring forced camera angles, stylized sets, bizarre perspective shots and a plot revolving around doppelgangers and malevolent twins.
- "Charlie Boy", in which an African fetish exerts a fatal influence and leads to several deaths.
- "Carpathian Eagle" - Anthony Valentine stars as a police detective struggling to solve a series of gruesome, ritualistic murders undertaken by Suzanne Danielle. Siân Phillips co-stars, and a young Pierce Brosnan makes a brief appearance playing "last victim."
- "Rude Awakening" - Denholm Elliott stars as an estate agent whose increasingly strange but realistic dreams give him serious trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality.
- "The Children of the Full Moon" - Diana Dors plays a kindly bumpkin with an extended family, but no husband. When a recently married couple stumble upon this unusual situation, the truth is gradually revealed. Robert Urquhart, who had played Paul Krempe in Hammer's early horror triumph The Curse of Frankenstein cameos.
- "Witching Time" - where Patricia Quinn plays a witch who is draining the energy and essence of Jon Finch.
- "Visitor from the Grave" - in which ghostly vengeance is visited upon a fragile young heiress played by Kathryn Leigh Scott of Dark Shadows fame
Episodes were directed by Alan Gibson, Peter Sasdy and Tom Clegg, among others, and script edited by Anthony Read.
