Hammer House of Horror
| Hammer House of Horror | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Roy Skeggs |
| Starring | various |
| Theme music composer | Roger Webb |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 13 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Hammer Films/ITC Entertainment |
| Running time | 51 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | ITV |
| Original release | 13 September – 6 December 1980 |
Hammer House of Horror is a British television series made in 1980. An anthology series created by Hammer Films in association with Cinema Arts International and ITC Entertainment, it consists of thirteen 51-minute episodes, originally broadcast on ITV.
Each self-contained episode features a different kind of horror. These vary from witches, werewolves and ghosts to devil-worship and voodoo, but also include non-supernatural horror themes such as cannibalism, confinement and serial killers. In 2003 Channel 4 placed Hammer House of Horror at #50 in its "100 Scariest Moments" show. The clip shown was the children's party scene in "The House That Bled to Death".[1]
Episodes were directed by Alan Gibson, Peter Sasdy and Tom Clegg, among others, and the Story Editor was Anthony Read.
List of episodes
| Title | Directed by | Written by | Cast | UK Transmission Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Witching Time" | Don Leaver | Anthony Read | Jon Finch, Patricia Quinn, Prunella Gee, Ian McCulloch, Lennard Pearce | September 13, 1980 | |
| A 17th-century witch uses her craft to transport herself to the 20th century. She brings spine-chilling terror to the present-day occupants of the old farmhouse in which she lived. She puts her mark on the man now living in the farmhouse while his wife tries to save him. | |||||
| "The Thirteenth Reunion" | Peter Sasdy | Jeremy Burnham | Michael Latimer, Julia Foster, Dinah Sheridan, Richard Pearson, Norman Bird, Warren Clarke, Kevin Stoney, Gerard Kelly, James Cosmo, George Innes | September 20, 1980 | |
| A reporter investigating a health farm stumbles upon a horrifying truth behind a secret society that is connected to it and must now fear for her life. | |||||
| "Rude Awakening" | Peter Sasdy | Gerald Savory | Denholm Elliott, Lucy Gutteridge, James Laurenson, Pat Heywood, Gareth Armstrong, Eleanor Summerfield | September 27, 1980 | |
| Denholm Elliott plays a lecherous estate agent who has recurrent dreams about his seductive secretary, a mysterious house and an even more mysterious encouragement to murder his wife. | |||||
| "Growing Pains" | Francis Megahy | Nicholas Palmer | Gary Bond, Barbara Kellerman, Norman Beaton, Geoffrey Beevers | October 4, 1980 | |
| After the death of their young son, a scientist and his wife adopt a new son, but it coincides with a series of odd events and disasters for the father's research. | |||||
| "The House that Bled to Death" | Tom Clegg | David Lloyd | Nicholas Ball, Rachel Davies, Brian Croucher, Patricia Maynard, Milton Johns | October 11, 1980 | |
| After buying it for a good price, a couple and their young daughter move into a house that was the scene of a macabre murder. A series of terrifying events eventually force them to flee for their lives, but all is not as it seems. | |||||
| "Charlie Boy" | Robert Young | Bernie Cooper & Francis Megahy | Leigh Lawson, Marius Goring, Angela Bruce, Frances Cuka, Michael Culver, Jeff Rawle, David Healy, Janet Fielding | October 18, 1980 | |
| An ancient African idol possessed by the spirit of an evil sorcerer seems to take on a life of its own. | |||||
| "The Silent Scream" | Alan Gibson | Francis Essex | Peter Cushing, Brian Cox, Elaine Donnelly | October 25, 1980 | |
| Peter Cushing plays an elderly pet shop owner who is secretly a former Nazi concentration camp guard, intent on continuing experiments on human victims. His plan is to create prisons with no bars, for which he captures a former prison inmate and his wife. | |||||
| "Children of the Full Moon" | Tom Clegg | Murray Smith | Diana Dors, Christopher Cazenove, Celia Gregory, Robert Urquhart | November 1, 1980 | |
| A couple head off on holiday to the West Country but get stranded. They find sanctuary at a house in the woods where a woman (played by Diana Dors) cares for a number of children whom he believes to be werewolves. After an accident, the husband wakes in a hospital to be told the werewolf children were all a dream. However his now-pregnant wife has changed, developing a taste for raw steak among other things. | |||||
| "Carpathian Eagle" | Francis Megahy | Bernie Cooper & Francis Megahy | Suzanne Danielle, Anthony Valentine, Siân Phillips, Jeffry Wickham, W. Morgan Sheppard, Pierce Brosnan | November 8, 1980 | |
| A young woman, convinced she possesses the reincarnated spirit of a murderess, walks the night seeking out new victims to fill an ancient prophecy for death. Features Pierce Brosnan in one of his early screen roles. | |||||
| "Guardian of the Abyss" | Don Sharp | David Fisher | Ray Lonnen, Barbara Ewing, John Carson, Rosalyn Landor, Paul Darrow | November 15, 1980 | |
| Human sacrifice as part of an ancient rite is the unexpected consequence when an antiques dealer unwittingly buys a mirror with mysterious evil power. | |||||
| "Visitor from the Grave" | Peter Sasdy | John Elder | Kathryn Leigh Scott, Gareth Thomas, Simon MacCorkindale | November 22, 1980 | |
| A psychologically fragile woman accidentally kills an intruder who is about to hurt her. Her husband buries the body in the woods, but she continues to see the man in various places, leading her to seek help from a psychic. Worse is to follow as she becomes the victim of a macabre plot. | |||||
| "The Two Faces Of Evil" | Alan Gibson | Ranald Graham | Gary Raymond, Anna Calder-Marshall, Philip Latham, Jenny Laird, Brenda Cowling | November 29, 1980 | |
| Setting off on their holidays, a family give a lift to a sinister hitch-hiker. After the car crashes, one man is dead and one man is injured. But which one? | |||||
| "The Mark of Satan" | Don Leaver | Don Shaw | Peter McEnery, Emrys James, Georgina Hale, Peter Birrel, Conrad Phillips | December 6, 1980 | |
| A worker in a hospital mortuary becomes convinced that a conspiracy of evil has chosen him as the Devil's disciple. Those around him remain sceptical, believing that his rantings are a sign of insanity rather than a desperate cry for help from an innocent soul marked for Satan. | |||||
DVD release
The series was released on DVD in the UK (region 2) in October 2002 by ITV Studios. It was released as a four-disc set featuring all thirteen episodes, and includes stills galleries and cast biographies as extras.
A re-mastered version was released in the US (region 1) on 11 September 2012 by Synapse Films. It was released as a five-disc set and features an animated stills gallery, episode introductions from film historian Shane M. Dallman, and featurettes including "Grave Recollections: A Visit With Kathryn Leigh Scott" and "Hammer Housekeeping: A Visit With Mia Nadasi".[2]
The series was shot on 35mm film; the negatives cannot currently be located by ITV, thus preventing the series being re-mastered and released on Blu-ray in high definition.
References
- ↑ Channel 4 - 100 Scariest Moments, #50
- ↑ Lambert, David (July 9, 2012). "Hammer House of Horror - Pierce Brosnan, Peter Cushing, Denholm Elliott in 'The Complete Series: Collector's Edition'". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Retrieved July 16, 2012.