Duffle Coats, Double Features and Dracula invades South Wales

Duffle Coat Manor doesn't have that much of a ring to it and yet that was the locally used name for the manor house that Hammer films turned into Bray Studios.

The house had been used immediately following the war to store duffle coats -  but the roof leaked and the coats took in so much water, swelled to blob like propotions, that the weight caused the entire inside of the building to collapse, and when Anthony Hinds visited the building it was little more than a shell.  The film company  took over residence of the manor house in 1951 - Initially the building was rented for studio space but a year later it was purchased and became world famous as the home of Hammer Films. The colourful nickname of Duffle Coat Manor has now been largely forgotten, a footnote in the history of this remarkable studio.

When I was growing up - I was ten years old in 1975 and during this period the movies were regularly shown on late night television, usually as a double bill - my parents took their parental responsibility seriously and I was never allowed to stay up to watch the movies. Maybe they considered the movies too scary, too graphic for my young mind. Though I think the real reason was that they didn't want me staying up after they had retired and munching  all the chocolate biscuits. The reason matteres not but it resulted in the movies taking on the status of forbidden fruit. And we all know that forbidden fruit taste better than any other kind.

BBC2 was the channel and  usually on a Saturday night they would start a horror movie double bill - the channel regularly ran a double bill horror season from 1975 until 1981. The show would start somewhere around 11pm and go on until 1am - then we would get the test card as the station closed down for the night - I shit you, not. TV used to close down in those days. The days of 24 hour TV were still some years away. Often it would be a double bill of the old black and white Universal horrors, and I loved those too, but on times they would select films from studios such as Hammer and Amicus. These two British studios produced films where the blood dripped impossible red and the heaving breasts were bared. I reckon I saw my first pair of tits in a Hammer movie and believe me that leaves a lasting impression - thank you Ingrid Pitt.

'Critical opinion doesn't really concern us at Hammer. We judge our films at the box office. We're a perfectly commercial company. We turn out films we think are fairy tales.' Michael Carreras, Hammer Films.


Hammer movies were my faves - the company had started out during the Thirties, and produced a spooky thriller, The Mystery of the Mary Celeste in 1935 which starred Bela Lugosi - in a sense this was the studio's first brush with Dracula given that Lugosi was Hollywood's best known Count Dracula.During the war Hammer were largely inactive. The company was reformed in 1947 as the production arm of Exclusive Pictures. There's an interesting story there, of how Hammer transfomed from a low budget studio, producing cheap comedies and thrillers to a name that became synonymous around the world with horror movies.

That's a post for another day,though - for now let's go back to those double features.


This LINK will take you to a You Tube video from 1977 of Kenny Rogers talking about the Horror Double Bills.

Now I vividly remember sneaking downstairs one Saturday night after everyone else had gone to bed, and switching on the TV. I kept the volume low and didn't dare turn on the lights and this was my first experience of Christopher Lee as Dracula. Checking back in BBC listings I think this must have been the 14th September 1976, I was two months aways from my 12th birthday, and I think the movie was Dracula: Prince of Darkness. This was the first Hammer movie I'd ever seen and I was transfixed to the screen, which often ran blood red. The reason this sticks so clearly in my mind is because that night I had the most vivid nightmares and my father had to run in when I woke up screaming, pointing, yelling - 'He's behind the door.'  True story that, not a word of a lie and I'm sure my father remembers it. After all he went bat shit crazy the following day when he discovered the dent I'd made in the packet of chocolate biscuits.


Of course today the films have dated, but there's a certain something to a Hammer film that makes them so watchable. Horror films today are far more graphic, the special effects more realistic but give me a Hammer movie over the adventures of Jason or Freddy any day of the week.

Duffle Coat Manor and Dracula in South Wales

Duffle Coat Manor doesn't have that much of a ring to it and yet that was the locally used name for the manor house that Hammer films turned into Bray Studios.

The house had been used immediately following the war to store duffle coats -  but the roof leaked and the coats took in so much water, swelled to blob like propotions, that the weight caused the entire inside of the building to collapse, and when Anthony Hinds visited the building it was little more than a shell.  The film company  took over residence of the manor house in 1951 - Initially the building was rented for studio space but a year later it was purchased and became world famous as the home of Hammer Films.The colourful nickname of Duffle Coat Manor has now been largely forgotten, a footnote in the history of this remarkable studio.

When I was growing up - I was ten years old in 1975 and during this period the movies were regularly shown on late night television, usually as a double bill - my parents took their parental responsibility seriously and I was never allowed to stay up to watch the movies. Either they considered the movies too scary, too graphic for my young mind or they didn't want me staying up after they had retired and munching on  all the chocolate biscuits. I don't know what the reason was but this resulted in the movies taking on the status of forbidden fruit. And we all know that forbidden fruit tastes better than any other kind.

BBC2 was the channel on usually on a Saturday night they would start a horror movie double bill - the channel regularly ran a double bill horror season from 1975 until 1981. The show would start somewhere around 11pm and go on until 1am - then we would get the test card as the station closed down for the night - I shit you, not. TV used to close down in those days. The days of 24 hour TV were still some years away. Often it would be a double bill of the old black and white Universal horrors, and I loved those too, but on times they would select films from studios such as Hammer and Amicus. These two studios produced the films where the blood dripped impossible read and the heaving breasts were bared. I reckon I saw my first pair of tits in a Hammer movie and believe me that leaves a lasting impression - thank you Ingrid Pitt.

Now I vividly remember sneaking downstairs one Saturday night after everyone else had gone to bed, and switching on the TV. I kept the volume low and didn't dare turn on the lights and this was my first experience of Christopher Lee as Dracula. Checking back in BBC listings I think this must have been the 14th September 1976, I was two months aways from my 12th birthday, and I think the movie was Dracula: Prince of Darkness. This was the first Hammer movie I'd ever seen and I was transfixed to the screen, which often ran blood red. The reason this sticks so clearly in my mind is because that night I had the most vivid nightmares and my father had to run in when I woke up screaming, pointing, yelling - 'He's behind the door.'  True story that, not a word of a lie and I'm sure my father remembers it. After all he went bat shit crazy the following day when he discovered the dent I'd made in the packet of chocolate biscuits.


Of course today the films have dated, but there's a certain something to a Hammer film that makes them so watchable. Horror films today are far more graphic, the special effects more realistic but give me a Hammer movie over the adventures of Jason or Freddy any day of the week.

Wes Craven RIP

For a period from around the early 80's to the mid 90's director Wes Craven was, at least in horror movie terms, considered one of the best movie makers in the world. As  a teenager I lapped up his output with flicks such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills have Eyes and even The People Under the Stairs. These movies fulfilled a teenage need for celluloid thrills. Craven became a superstar in genre terms and he was always sought after for interviews in film magazines. His best known movie was probably the original Nightmare on Elm Street though ironically his highest grossing was 1996's Scream - that particular movie was a clever post modern parody of the type of movie that made him famous in the first place, and kick-started a franchise to rival the Elm Street series.

On August 30, 2015, Craven died of brain cancer at his home in Los Angeles. He was 76 years old

The Children of the night

As I’ve said in previous posts, horror movies are as old as cinema itself – versions of Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll were made in American as far back as 1908 and vampires first appeared in American movies in 1910 and a few years later the works of Edgar Allan Poe provided the backbone to D W Griffith’s The Avenging Conscience, and if we look at Europe we can find the birth of the modern horror movie with Germany’s Der Student Von Prag in 1913 and Der Golem in 1914. In fact German cinema had a lot to do with the early horror film and in 1919 The Cabinet of Dr Caligari set the blueprint for what was to become the modern horror film. In Dr Caligari a mad doctor invokes and controls a somnambulist, sending him to murder those who have sneered at his work.
These characters – the mad doctor and the monster he has created became the key elements of Hollywood horror.
There were many horror movies made during the silent period but it wasn’t until the coming of sound that the genre really took off.
Universal became the home of horror after a string of horror hits that started with Todd Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein. Bela Lugosi recreated the role he had first played on the stage for Dracula and for a period he became the studio’s biggest money maker, but when Frankenstein which was originally to be directed by Robert Florey fell into the hands of James Whale the first true horror classic was born. And like Dr Caligari both films featured maidens terrorized by monsters before our square jawed hero comes to the rescue….ahh, simpler times! Before anyone knew it mad geniuses were everywhere, even Bela Lugosi’s Dracula can been seen as a mad genius of sorts – Doctor X (1932), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and Island of  Lost Souls (1933) are just three of many movies that expanded upon the formula that had not yet been set in stone.

‘Listen to them, children of the night. What music they make.’
It was during this period that the first horror superstars were born, actors who would forever be associated with the genre. Lon Chaney was originally to have played Dracula in 1931 but the when the actor died the role fell into the hands of Bela Lugosi and the actor also inherited Chaney’s crown as the king of horror. Boris Karloff was excellent as the monster in James Whale’s Frankenstein. John Carradine made a far less effective Dracula than Lugosi but after he played the character he too was forever a horror actor. As was Lon Chaney Jr who carried the Chaney name forward while Vincent Price put the ham back into horror. It was not until the Hammer cycle of movies that actors would be so associated with the genre when Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing became the new icons. And since that period perhaps only Robert Englund and Bruce Campbell have attained the same level of genre identification.

So the next time you sit down to watch a horror movie, just remember that it’s roots stretch back to the dawn of cinema itself.

Evill Dead -the video nasty remake

Details of the project are still vague but we do know that there will be no Ash character, but instead the plot will focus on the house in the woods and introduce an all new batch of characters. However word is now that Bruce Campbell will take a cameo in the movie playing one of the evil dead. The film will start shooting next March for release by the end of the year and all indications are that this will be no horror comedy but play things seriously. The plot, or at least the parts we know about, goes like this – Mia and David,siblings who have recently lost their mother  have reunited. Along with several friends that take a break but make a bad choice of venue with that old cabin in the woods.  Mia is a drug addict who decides to finally go cold turkey during the trip but soon discovers that this is a bad time for cleaning up her act. Of course the Necronomicon , book of the dead,  is soon discovered in the old cabin and someone just has to go and read it out.

Halloween Movies - Creepshow

The three men had come together to discuss the possibility of making a movie version of The Stand. Stephen King, George Romero and producer Rik Rubinstein spent several weeks during the summer of 1981 talking about the pros and cons of adapting what was, up until that time, King’s most ambitious novel. George Romero had long been eager to work with King and had narrowly missed out on directing Salem’s Lot before the studio decided to pull the plug on plans for a big screen movie and go with a television mini series instead.
The three men realised that making a movie of The Stand would prove far too expensive and after looking at several other projects, it was decided to make an all original horror story based on the comic books that had influenced the young Stephen King – the project would end up being called Creepshow.

‘King was like a big kid,’ Rik Rubinstein commented during a documentary shot to accompany the special edition DVD of the movie. The author threw himself into the production and not only starred in one of the segments, as the moronic Jordy Verrill but also roped in his son Joe King (these days known as writer, Joe Hill) to play the young boy reading the Creepshow comic in the movie’s prologue.

The movie was made up of five stories plus the prologue and epilogue – two of the stories, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill and The Crate were based on King stories, while the remaining three stories were written for the movie. All of the tales had something of the flavor of the old horror comics about them which was intentional although some critics seemed to misunderstand this point and found many of the performances over the top. King’s performance ( mouth agape and bulging eyes) in the Jordy Verrill story is perfect, even if the author does these days seem embarrassed by his acting. Sure it’s comic book and OTT but then the film’s meant to be that way – a celluloid version of a comic book and on that level it succeeds fully.

Creepshow is both a horror movie and an affectionate almost loving tribute to the tacky horror comics of the 50′s and 60′s. It’s not meant to be taken seriously but to be fun and it sure enough is.
The currently available two disc special edition DVD is superb. A rich clean transfer backed up by a wealth of special features, including a fascinating making of documentary as well as a commentary by George Romero himself.