It was a drawn-out, agonising, dramatic death - for the Hammer studio, that is. From the time they decided to go in for vampire movies, they managed a couple of respectable hits, and then just one flop after the next, viewed by half-asleep audiences on a wet Sunday in the boondocks.
That they did even as well as this was due largely to the arrival of the unknown Christopher Lee - in his own words 'tall, dark and gruesome' - who replaced Bela Lugosi as the only Dracula the public could believe in. But he soon grew tired of his banal dialogue and demanded to be killed off. Ludicrously, he was then lured back for a film that had already started shooting, and had to be re-titled 'Dracula has Risen from the Grave'!
Another casting anecdote was the signing-up of the shapely young Caroline Munro because Hammer's chairman kept seeing her on a well-placed supersite poster for Lamb's Navy Rum, and eventually demanded to meet her. (Outshining the product, the admen call it!)
The planning of these movies had a lot to do with blending the horrific with the erotic, and 'The Vampire Lovers' daringly ventures into lesbian territory, though I don't think scriptwriter Tudor Gates is quite correct when he claims it was a first. (Try 'Dracula's Daughter' from 1936.)
Meanwhile a colourful cast of actors reminisce, mainly with affection, about their Hammer days, though some of them seem to be putting on an exaggerated performance while they're at it. One who doesn't is John Forbes-Robertson (a surname with distinguished echoes on the London stage), an engagingly modest interviewee in what would sadly turn out to be his final appearance. And this large sample is unanimous that Peter Cushing was the most agreeable and considerate actor to work with.
For one moment, I thought I was looking at a clip from 'Carry on Screaming', but Pinewood Studios were obviously using the same props (much better than usual for the bargain-basement carry-ons) that Hammer had left behind from one of their better efforts, set in Edwardian days.
