Hammer turned ninety in 2024, and we made a film about it.
Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters is a feature documentary marking the studio’s ninetieth anniversary. Ben Field directed. I produced and executive produced. It went out on Sky Arts and screened at Sitges the following year.
Hammer is one of those companies everybody thinks they already know. Say the name and people picture a particular red, a particular scream, a particular crypt. That version is real enough, and it is also about a fifth of the story. What the studio actually did was work out how to make films that punched a very long way above their budget by being braver than anyone else about tone and colour.
There was a symmetry to it that I did not see coming. I have spent a good deal of my career looking after one British studio’s legacy. Making this taught me a great deal about looking after another, and about how differently two archives can age.
Not long afterwards Deep Fusion ended up under the same roof at John Gore Studios, which was certainly not the plan when we started shooting.
Related: Ithaqua, the first Hammer film since John Gore Studios took the company on.
