Customer Reviews

Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wayne Kinsey's books on Hammer Films (The Bray Studios Years and The Elstree Studios Years) together form the essential reference on the short-lived British studio that brought us the greatest horror films of the 60's and 70's. The books are well-researched and packed with behind-the-scenes stories and photos. If you love Hammer, you need to own these books.

I was under the impression that the first volume, Hammer Films: The Bray Studios Years, was out of print, because I had tried ordering it from several online dealers that were unable to obtain the title. However, Amazon's sellers just delivered a new copy to my doorstep recently. Snatch up these books while you can!

I haven't put this book down since I first picked it up six months ago. Kinsey's history of Hammer's Bray years (i.e. until 1967) is full of fascinating details I have not encountered elsewhere. He really manages to inspire an affection and enthusiasm for both the films and the Bray studios themselves.

By far the best section, and the reason I keep returning to the book, is the multi-page illustrated tour through the history of Bray's backlot, packed with rarely seen photos of Hammer's most memorable sets.

Essential reading for Hammer fans.

I have to commend this book for the sheer wealth of information packed within its pages . . . one gets the sense that it took a lifetime's worth of research to be able to compile and compose it. BUT, the amount of detail comes at a price: it's very boring. The author's writing has no sense of style or enthusiasm. All it does is throw fact after fact after fact at you, and not very many of them come off as being particularly interesting. Scholarly or not, this book could have used some serious editing.
I respect what Mr. Kinsey set out to do with this book, but I'm afraid the end product isn't nearly as satisfying as one would hope. Do check out Marcus Hearn's 'The Hammer Story' (and its companion piece 'Hammer Glamour,' which focuses on the all the leading ladies of Hammer Films) for a far more enthralling, albeit less thorough, history on the studio and its films.

Who doesn't love Hammer Films? The author, Wayne Kinsey, a true fan, has devoted this book to the classic Hammer Years, at Bray Studio, a veritable Shangri-La, or mythical place, only this was real. On this lot Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and dozens more gave their finest performances in a variety of monster, slasher, terror, sci-fi and less easily classifiable films, for a parade of studio execs who sometimes resembled a kind of family--ever the more so in retrospect. Kinsey presents a film by film breakdown, in chronological order, with many lurid and comical photos. My, there were some beautiful starlets working for Hammer, and they seemed to take off their clothes at a moment's notice. As for the men, maybe not so intriguing outside of Cushing and Lee, but those two alone account for a huge variety of eccentric tics and tragedies.

What I didn't like was the repetitiveness of the formula. each film discussed in exactly the same way, and then the details of the film censors checking every script ahead of time and issuing stern warnings about "do not do this or that." OK, a bit of this is worthy of perusal, but too much and the reader deducts a star. And this was too much. All in all, this book merits a "4" on the KINSEY SCALE.