The House of Hammer Vol. 1, 2026
Directed by Various Filmmakers.
Featuring Jonathan Rigby, Mark Jenkin, Dean Puckett, Chris Alexander, Heidi Honeycutt, Dick Klemensen, Victoria Price, David Pirie, David Huckvale.
SYNOPSIS:
First in a series of box sets celebrating the golden age of British horror.
You have to hand it to the current incarnation of Hammer as they really are pushing the brand and getting the name back into the public consciousness. Not only have they been releasing some of the lesser-known non-horror titles in lavish 4K box sets, their Hammer Presents range is shining a spotlight on some notable Hammer-adjacent horror movies plus we’ve had the Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters documentary get an excellent Blu-ray release, and there is plenty more to come.
Part of that is The House of Hammer Vol. 1, the first in a series of Blu-ray releases that feature specially curated features, interviews and documentaries that will build into a library of knowledge covering the heritage of British horror that will hopefully compliment the releases that Hammer have lined up over the coming months.
For this first package Masques, Monsters and Madmen is a feature-length documentary about American International Pictures and, more specifically, the movies that Vincent Price starred in for them. Price himself never appeared in a Hammer film, although he did appear with Hammer stalwarts Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in various other projects for different studios, but AIP were associated with Hammer in other ways and this film features such learned folk as author/historian Jonathan Rigby, filmmaker Chris Alexander, screenwriter David Pirie and Vincent Price’s daughter Victoria discussing the studio, its output and influence.
Also on this first disc is Off the Leash, where Jonathan Rigby takes a deep dive into the career of Michael Gough, an actor who wasn’t always that complimentary about horror movies but seemed to appear in several of them, plus The Land Demands Blood, a look at how Cornwall has been used as a setting not only by Hammer but also by contemporary filmmakers such as Dean Puckett and Mark Jenkin. It isn’t all talking heads, though, as also included is Ticket to Happiness, a short film made by Hammer back in 1959 that was thought lost and stars Michael Goodliffe, who also appeared with Christopher Lee in The Man with the Golden Gun and Hammer’s To the Devil a Daughter – those connections just keep on coming.
Disc two starts off with a Deep Cuts, feature-length documentary about censorship in the US and UK, and about how it changed during the 1960s and into the ‘70s. Featuring the same talking heads from the Masques, Monsters and Madmen documentary, it is a fascinating look at how and why the boundaries changed and may give insights that previous films about the subject didn’t quite hit.
This is followed by Making Monsters, an interview with special effects duo Dave and Lou Elsey, and then Symphonies of Shudders, where writer/researcher David Huckvale goes through the history of music in film and focuses on Hammer composer James Bernard with his signature techniques of using the movie title in his scores. There is also a 1995 interview with AIP legend Roger Corman at the 1995 Festival of Fantastic Films and footage from the recent restoration screening of The Curse of Frankenstein in London featuring actor Melvyn Hayes, critic Kim Newman and writer David Pirie amongst others.
Overall, this is a stacked Blu-ray package and in terms of value for fans and collector’s it delivers, especially when compared to Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters as there was very little in that documentary that connoisseurs wouldn’t already know. There is plenty in The House of Hammer Vol. 1 to keep fans and casual viewers intrigued for hours, but despite this release being curated to coincide with the Hammer Presents release of Cry of the Banshee, it does have the feel of a collection of Blu-ray special features put together in one convenient package. It doesn’t help that Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price are all over the artwork despite only Price featuring heavily, but once we get volumes two and three then hopefully it will start to look like a more cohesive collection that will feature the other veterans of the genre (a Michael Ripper retrospective would be very nice, thank you very much). Nevertheless, despite the seemingly random nature of what is included, The House of Hammer Vol. 1 should hopefully keep the rejuvenated interest in Hammer and its associated studios going while Hammer itself keeps putting out those lavish box sets.
Flickering Myth Rating – ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
