Hammer Film Posters

I love film posters in particular from the sixties, seventies, and today I checked out some of the fantastic Hammer film studio posters. I love the artwork, recently I bought a few of my favourites, and just need to have them framed.

While the posters would have been considered risqué normally featuring a semi-clad woman, now, they are looked on has cheeky illustrations almost innocent to modern viewers - saucy and suggestive. I remember reading that "Tit and fang" could sell any film but I liked them because I like the art style, as I am a big fan of tasteless art from this era especially film posters.

Hammer posters were wilfully chaotic, crowded with cartoon-like figures and with typefaces designed to replicate dribbling blood or unspecified ooze. The taglines were appalling and brilliant: "Beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet!" shrieked the poster for The Mummy's Shroud, while Taste the Blood of Dracula exhorted viewers to "Drink a Pint of Blood a Day!”

Like the films they depicted, the posters' cartoonish style often masked some seriously explicit imagery. Extraordinary the posters on most occasions were commissioned before the films the studios would use them as marketing tools to lure investment. Also, once the money was banked the poster would be used to advertise the upcoming release.

An early poster for Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde has girls in tight jeans and T-shirts being murdered in the streets. It was only later that someone pointed out actually the film was set in the late 19th century."

The company made more than 200 films, including The Quatermass Xperiment, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Devil Rides Out, and The Vampire Lovers. Hammer made international stars of its leading men, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Raquel Welch created an iconic image by squeezing into a fur bikini for the sci-fi extravaganza One Million Years BC and the men of the world hold heartily thank you Hammer for the image.

While Hammer films were popular with cinemagoers the film left most critics with a bad taste and a strong dislike and were panned. More than one critic sighted the posters of mesmerising the public and dragging them off the street. In America, the films were normally shown as a double bill and were very popular at drive-ins.

I thing everyone should have a favourite Hammer film from the horror gene and no surprise my favourite is the lesbian sage of The Vampire Lovers Ingrid Pitt.

In the Seventies the death nail was sounded for Hammer Horror films with the likes of The Exorcist, I would say killed Hammer and even the advertising poster became more sophisticated with no more cleavage! This new film were selling horror, scary horror.