How it began.
In 1934 William Hinds, a businessman and theatre impresario founded his film production company,
“Hammer Productions Ltd.”
Working out of a three-room office suite at Imperial House, Regent Street, London.
The company name came from Hinds' stage name, "Will Hammer" from when he had a short-lived stint as a stage comedian as part of a duo named Hammer & Smith,
The name was taken from the area of London where they lived, "Hammersmith."
Work began immediately!
Making the film,
“The Public Life of Henry the Ninth” (1935)
The film was made at ATP studios in West London. (This is the studio that went on to be the legendary “Ealing Studios” of “Ealing Comedies” fame)
The film tells the story of Henry Henry, An unemployed London street musician,
The title was a "playful tribute" to Alexander Korda's film “The Private Life of Henry VIII” (1933). Sadly Hammer’s first ever film is now lost.
On completion of that film, Hinds met Spanish businessman émigré Enrique Carreras,
a former cinema owner, they went on to form the film distribution company
“Exclusive Films Distribution” based in an office at 60-66 National House, Wardour Street, London.
Hammer then produced four films to be distributed by Exclusive Films:
"The Mystery of the Mary Celeste" (1935)
AKA "Phantom Ship" featuring Bela Lugosi
A comedy named "Sporting Love" (1936)
and a film called "Song of Freedom" (1936)
featuring Paul Robeson
and a picture "The Bank Messenger Mystery" (1936) which is also now lost to time, we don't even seem to have a poster.
Unfortunately, an unexpected slump in the British film industry forced
“Hammer Productions Ltd.” into bankruptcy, and the company went into liquidation in 1937.
Luckily for Hinds & Carreras “Exclusive Films Distribution” survived and on 20 July 1937 they purchased the leasehold on 113-117 Wardour Street, London and continued to distribute films to cinemas made by other film companies.
The following year, 1938 Enrique Carreras son James Carreras, joined “Exclusive Films”, closely followed by William Hinds' son, Anthony.
Unfortunately the outbreak of World War II set back their movie business dreams,
James & Anthony enlisted and fought in the war, After demobilisation, James Carreras rejoined the company In 1946 in a mission to resurrect “Hammer” as the film production arm of “Exclusive Film Distribution” intending to supply 'quota-quickies', cheaply made B movies designed to fill gaps in cinema schedules but were also British made pictures, There was an Act of parliament passed that meant a percentage of all films shown in British cinemas needed to have been produced in the UK or a country within "The Commonwealth" and in 1946 the percentage was 20%.
Anthony Hinds rejoined the company, and “Hammer Film Productions” were back!
The pair got to work on films like,
“Death in High Heels”(1947) and “The Dark Road” (1948)
Working on a budget Hammer managed to acquire the film rights to BBC radio series such as “The Adventures of PC 49”, “Dick Barton: Special Agent” and “Dr Morelle – The Case of the Missing Heiress” these properties had already been successful on the radio and already had name recognition and a fan base,
All these early post-war productions were filmed at “Marylebone Studios” in 1947.
The following year they were making “Dick Barton Strikes Back” (1948) they had booked a big country house for location filming and they realised the company could save money by shooting in country houses instead of paying to rent film studios.
For their upcoming productions Hammer rented a 23-bedroom mansion called 'Dial Close' located beside the River Thames, at Cookham Dean, Maidenhead.
The boys were obviously doing well making these 'quota-quickies'
In February 1949 "Hammer Film Productions" was registered as a separate company from “Exclusive Film Distribution” with father-son duos Enrique and James Carreras & William and Tony Hinds as company directors.
Hammer Film Productions also took over office space in the “Exclusive” offices in 113-117 Wardour Street, and the building was rechristened "Hammer House".
In August 1949, noise complaints from residents regarding night filming forced Hammer to leave Dial Close and move into another mansion,
Oakley Court, also on the banks of the Thames between Windsor and Maidenhead.
They shot five films there:
Man in Black (1949),
Room to Let (1949),
Someone at the Door (1949),
What the Butler Saw (1950),
The Lady Craved Excitement (1950),
1950 saw Hammer need to up-sticks and move yet again to another big old house,
Gilston Park, a country club in Harlow, Essex. Once set up they banged out
“The Black Widow”, “The Rossiter Case”, “To Have and to Hold” and “The Dark Light” all completed in 1950. (please note that is six features made in 1950 and they moved house)
In 1951 Hammer signed a one-year lease on a dilapidated old manor house called,
‘Down Place’ on the banks of the Thames.
The house required substantial work and they found out it did not have any of the construction restrictions that had prevented Hammer from remodelling any of the previous mansions they took over.
A decision was made to extensively renovate 'Down Place' into a substantial, custom-fitted studio complex that they renamed "Bray Studios" after the nearby village of Bray.
The expansive grounds were used for much of the location shooting in the mid 50's to mid 60's films Hammer were producing, Bray Studios became the key to the 'Hammer look' and remained Hammer's principal base until 1966.
Shooting at Bray kicked off Immediately in 1951 with the film “Cloudburst” Hammer went on to release 30 films between 1951 and 1955 and 22 of them were shot at Bray Studios.
Now! I will address the elephant in the room Hammer Productions between 1935-1955
made 56 films. These films were Comedies, Dramas and Thrillers and they dipped their toes in to Sci-Fi with two movies released in 1953, “Four Sided Triangle” & “Spaceways”.
So you may notice there is a distinct lack of a certain genre up until now…
In 1955 Hammer Film Productions were doing well and so was the UK in general!
In the mid to late 1950s in Britain, there was a significant cultural shift.
For the first time in the post-war era, things were on the up! Food rationing had ended in 1954, Towns and cities were being rebuilt and local and national governments were investing heavily in new infrastructure projects and public services including rolling out the new NHS.
With the strong trade union movement in the UK at the time the country had great jobs and low unemployment and ordinary people for the first time in a long time had
“Disposable Income” and there was the birth of “The Teenager”
(But you can look into this yourself this is a movie blog, not a social history blog)
But in a nutshell, In the second half of the 1950's in the UK, there were young people with money in their pockets who were looking for entertainment that was for THEM, seeking pop culture that was “Not their parents'entertainment” and in cinemas there was an increasing demand for more transgressive films that pushed the established norms.
The films that were made that filled that void tended to end up being classified by the BBFC as an “X” certificate.
The old "H" Certificate
The British “X” certificate,
The X certificate was introduced by the British Board of Film Censors in 1951, It replaced and extended the remit of the pre-existing “H” certificate which existed to slap on horror films. The new “X” allowed the BBFC to pass films for public exhibition that featured the newly permissible amounts of violence, horror, revolt & sexuality that could be shown on screen. The age restriction for the “X” was 16 and over between 1951-1970 it was increased to 18 and over in 1970, It was then ditched in 1982 and replaced with the now familiar “18” certificate.
Keen to capitalise on the demand for X-Certificated motion pictures Hammer developed,
The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)
Directed by Val Guest, Screenplay by Richard Landau & Val Guest, Based on the 1953 BBC TV serial “The Quatermass Experiment” by Nigel Kneale, Produced by Anthony Hinds, Music by James Bernard, Cinematography by Walter J. Harvey & Edited by James Needs. Starring Brian Donlevy, Richard Wordsworth, Jack Warner, David King-Wood, Margia Dean & Maurice Kaufmann.
An astronaut returns to Earth after an experimental space flight afflicted by a strange fungus that transforms him into a murderous monster. After bullets and bombs fail to stop the creature, brilliant scientist Professor Quatermass becomes mankind's last hope of survival.
First of all, Hammer were so into getting the “X” rating the even incorporated X into the title spelling "Experiment" as "Xperiment!"
This film firmly established Hammer's transition from making the B-movie thrillers that were their bread and butter to out-and-out horror/science fiction.
Hammer made this one for £42’000 (£910’000 in 2024) It was very successful in British cinemas and in the spring of 1956 United Artists purchased the rights to distribute the film in North America paying Hammer $125’000/£44’960 (£930’000 in 2024) The film was released in the States as “The Creeping Unknown”
Hammer followed up “The Quatermass Xperiment” with…
X the Unknown (1956)
a science fiction horror film directed by Leslie Norman and written by Jimmy Sangster. starring Dean Jagger and Edward Chapman.
Again cleverly using X in the tiles so people knew what they were getting.
Sadly in 1957 William "Will Hammer" Hinds founder of Hammer Film Productions died following a cycling accident. Aged 69
Hinds was a lifelong cycling enthusiast and in addition to being co-owner and founder of Hammer Productions he also owned and operated a chain of bike shops and 25 jewellery stores and where possible he operated Barbers shops out of retail space above or adjacent to the Jewellery shops if available.
ANTHONY AND WILLIAM (Hammer) HINDS.
Following Williams death the decision was made to shut down "Exclusive Film Distribution" The father-son duo Enrique and James Carreras & Tony Hinds had a lot of money tied up in Hammer and especially in owning their own actual brick and mortar movie studio!
So they made the decision to streamline their business by not distributing their own films in the UK since they were already licencing out the international rights to their productions so now they could concentrate on making the films and leaving global distribution to other companies.
It was with Hammers next film, directed by Terrence Fisher and written by Jimmy Sangster
released in 1957 Hammer unknowingly began to unleash a series of films that will not only come to define the "Hammer Studios" brand in popular culture forever as well as influencing film makers and entertaining film fans on both sides of the Atlantic and throughout the World to this day.
