Hammer 2.0

[noose]

Throwing my hat into the ring, if I could chose any Hammers to do a tie-in for, it would have to be Straight on Till Morning, Fear in the Night and The House that Bled to Death. I know the latter is from the telly series, but what FUN you could have with it!!!

[andydecker]

A novelisation of Jeckyll and Sister Hyde could have a lot of possibilities

I think this is a bold idea. To do new novelisations of old - and to a modern audience - largely forgotten movies. A couple of years ago Dark Horse books did a few novels about the old Universal Movie Monsters, and they didn´t set the charts on fire (as far as I followed this).

But maybe the will just re-issue the old novelisations?

[dem]

Oct 8, 2010 10:11:58 GMT franklinmarsh said:

I'd love to be involved in Horror Of Frankenstein. I'm sure the book could be even more hilarious. I saw Holiday On The Buses at the cinema, but would much rather leave that one to Steve and have a go at Mutiny On The Buses as it was set in my bailiwick and I have fond memories of Windsor Safari Park (now Legoland) - could perhaps throw in an Omen joke in hindsight. Of course, Love Thy Neighbour would be the ultimate test, if Man About The House were unavailable, and I'd be willing to dash off a Satanic Rites Of Dracula too.

dear God, how twisted the mind that could conceive a Love Thy Neighbour novelisation? mind you, i bet Christopher Fowler would be up for Nearest And Dearest. Dracula AD 1972 has plenty of potential. ideally, i've have given the job to the late, great Sydney J. Bounds provided he agree to write it in the style of his camp classic Young Blood from the 5th Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories.

[Jojo Lapin X]

My credentials are very obscure, but I think this makes me right for PREHISTORIC WOMEN, which I feel has been misunderstood.

[Dr Strange]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11686734

"I'm not going to make velvet-caped heaving-bosomed kitsch Hammer films, because that was then, and this is now." Simon Oakes, Hammer CEO.

"That was then, and this is now" really hit home last night when I grabbed a DVD of "Plague of the Zombies" and saw it had a 12 certificate...

[David A. Riley]

It's true, though. Even by the early seventies that style of filming had begun to outlast its welcome and good ones were becoming few and far between.

Then again, Hammer always did do more contemporary films - and successfully too.

I seem to be in a bit of a minority, but I did enjoy the dvd of the recent Beyond the Rave. I'm certainly looking forward to Let Me In.

[Dr Strange]

I haven't seen Beyond The Rave, but I will be going to the cinema to see Let Me In.

[lemming13]

Finally got my copy of Beyond the Rave (arrived this morning along with The Doll Murderer, Samurai Zombie and Hello Cheeky), so my night is pretty much spoken for. Talking of how times change, though; I just acquired the bluray box Alien Quadrilogy (okay, some are not so great but I thought even 3 had a lot going for it, and my son loves 2 so much he has used soundbites to make a desktop theme for his pc - catastrophic failure is announced by 'Game over, man, game over!') and my 11 year old daughter begged to watch the first with me and her bro. With some trepidation I agreed, recalling how I had twitched when watching it at the movies first time out. She spent most of the time giggling quietly, and at the end she turned to me and said 'That's supposed to be one of the scariest movies ever? Seriously?' But when we watched the BBC Lost Hearts (downloaded from Youtube, sorry, but if they did put it on dvd I would buy it) she was scared stiff. Had to sleep in my bed that night. ;D

[franklinmarsh]

I really enjoyed Beyond The Rave, and so did my 19 year old stepdaughter. Caught Let Me In at the London Film Festival, and thought it v good. Really too American to be thought of as a 'proper' Hammer film . A little more obvious and much less arty than Let The Right One In. When LTROI came out I hired it along with Lesbian Vampire Killers and happened to remark on another forum (where LTROI had become a cause celebre and everyone absolutely loved it) that, on the day, I preferred LVK. That anti-intellectual enough?

[David A. Riley]

I'm glad somebody else enjoyed Beyond the Rave. It's got a lot of snooty thumbs down from people, but I thought there was a lot going for it and, to be honest, had a Hammer feel to it, especially some of the dark humour.

Looking forward to catching Let Me In. The original, Let the Right One In, is amazing and I love it, but I am more than prepared to give this English-language remake a chance.

I have no snobbery when it comes to films.

[lemming13]

To be honest, I'm no snob (witness some of the utter trash I admit elsewhere to loving), but having just had a Freezing My A*se Off Book and Movie marathon for three days and finally watched Beyond the Rave, I was rather disappointed. I can cope with it being delivered in ten minute bursts, though I'm not one of the ADD generation and can actually sit through hours of film without needing a pop tune or a sudden change of scene, but having been a roleplayer for many years, I was less than thrilled to find it blatantly rips off various Vampire The Masquerade scenarios even down to character names. It had its moments, but it really wasn't that good. What was all the cobblers about the mystic island off the coast of Africa, anyway? I thought Madagascar was a haven for cartoon animals, not vampires. Hope Let Me In is better. Wasn't all gloom, though - watched a jolly little Thai portmanteau film, Phobia, which took me right back to the good old days of seventies Amicus and Tigon. Low budget, but genuinely enjoyable. And then there was the restored blu ray of M, which was fabulous; Vampire Girl Versus Frankenstein Girl, which is very funny and rather sick; and French zombie flick The Horde, which is also low budget but fun. As well as a random assortment of favourite old Hammers and J-horrors, and episodes of Poirot and The Omega Factor in between. My brain hurts, but it was worth it to avoid the tinsel-draped crap peddled in our city centre and on tv. Oh, but, Black Death? Gave me buboes it was so poor. Humph. Bah, humbug, even.

[Dr Strange]

Dec 23, 2010 13:32:01 GMT lemming13 said:

Oh, but, Black Death? Gave me buboes it was so poor. Humph. Bah, humbug, even.

Yup. Massive disappointment. One of the most muddled plots I've seen in a long time, it seemed that everything else was sacrificed for the sake of the "message". Which is kinda ironic when you think about it...

[Dr Terror]

March 10th launch for Hammer Publishing.

[andydecker]

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

This is a very muted website. It doesn´t bother me to search for the books, but no link to Amazon or at least an ISBN may be lead to much shrugging and don´t bother for others.

[Dr Strange]

Says there that "Francis Cottam has penned the novelisation of The Resident". Now, I am pretty sure that he is one-and-the-same with "F.G. Cottam" - whose The Waiting Room I am currently about a quarter of the way through.

Under the name "F.G. Cottam" he's also published 3 other books (The House of Lost Souls, Dark Echo, and The Magdalena Curse), all of which I've read, and he has a very definite formula for those - which can effectively be summarised as "action-man adventurer type finds himself taking on occult/supernatural threat". Think maybe a 21st century Robert E. Howard... well maybe not exactly, but there's something in that - in 3 of those 4 books the hero is ex-special forces and there's a fair bit of gun-toting and explosions, and in the other the hero was a very promising amatuer boxer and still pretty handy with his fists. Also, The House of Lost Souls is the one with a cameo appearance from Dennis Wheatley, among others, that I've mentioned before (and which Dem included in a recent post on books where horror authors appear in the story).

I also know that, before any of those books, "Francis Cottam" published Slapton Sands - I haven't read that one, but I gather it was an attempt at something that was maybe a bit more "literary" than what came after, and is more of a "traditional" sort of ghost story. Whether the fact that he has reverted to that name gives us any clue to his approach to The Resident, I don't know, but I think I will definitely want to find out.

I might also try to post something on The Waiting Room - so far we have an ex-special forces guy (told you) who has somehow found his way into a TV career as a (entirely fraudulant) "ghost hunter", and who has been asked to do some highly paid private investigations for a retired rock star who thinks there is something nasty lurking in a derelict Edwardian railway waiting room located on his country estate...