Hammer Complete: The Films, the Personnel, the Company

This tome contains everything anyone would want to know about the British company Hammer Film Productions, founded in 1934 and legendary for its gory horror films made between the 1950s and 1970s. These movies were among the first to feature old-school creatures such as the Mummy, Frankenstein's monster, and others in color. The best-known Hammer film is Dracula (1958), starring young actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Freelance entertainment journalist and devoted Hammer film fanatic Maxford states in the introduction that it took him 15 years to put this book together, and his love for his subject is palpable. The entries vary in length; those devoted to movies are up to several pages long, while those focusing on cast or crew are generally limited to a paragraph. Numerous black-and-white photographs provide a sense of the period and people involved. A hefty read, however, this thorough work isn't for casual browsers. Those interested in reading more about Hammer should seek out Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes's The Hammer Story or Sinclair McKay's A Thing of Unspeakable Horror.