The Hammer Story: Revised and Expanded Edition

The only authorised history of Hammer Films draws on exclusive access to the company’s archive of stills and paperwork to give the complete history of the company and its leading figures, a film-by-film analysis of its horror and fantasy titles, and the most complete Hammer filmography ever published.

Nearly seventy years ago, Hammer Films released their very first horror movie, The Quatermass Xperiment. The now-legendary British company went on to make such classics as The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula (and their many sequels), making international stars out of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, changing the face of horror cinema, and inspiring a generation of Hollywood filmmakers, including the likes of George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton. Featuring a design refresh, this new version of The Hammer Story will include 32 additional pages and continue the story of Hammer Films as they came back from the dead in 2007 and began producing new horror films for a modern audience.

Since beginning his career at Marvel Comics, Marcus Hearn has written for The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, as well as contributing to The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and numerous magazines. His books include authorised biographies of filmmakers George Lucas and Gerry Anderson, Saucy Postcards: The Bamforth Collection and Eight Days a Week, the story of The Beatles’ final world tour. The winner of three Rondo Awards, most recently for his feature-length documentary Hammer Horror: The Warner Bros Years, he is currently the Head of Library and Archive for Hammer Films.

Alan Barnes is the author of Sherlock Holmes on Screen, and has co-written (with Marcus Hearn) volumes on the James Bond films and Quentin Tarantino. A former editor of both Doctor Who Magazine and the Judge Dredd Megazine, his fiction writing includes over forty full-cast audio dramas for Big Finish Productions, plus the script for CBBC’s animated Doctor Who adventure, The Infinite Quest. He was part of the dialogue team for Risen 2: Dark Waters, nominated for Best Videogame Script in the 2012 Writers’ Guild Awards. He is married with three children.