This October... Prepare to be Hammered

October's just around the corner once again and, if you've been with me for the past three years, you'd know that means it's time for my annual month-long series of horror reviews. This year's theme is a very specific one, as we're focusing solely on the horror films produced by one studio: a little British outfit known as Hammer. The Hammer movies have been something I've been meaning to get to for a while as, like the classic Universal movies, they're something I've been fascinated with and have enjoyed from a fairly young age, although, that said, many of them I didn't see or own until I was in my teens or even my twenties. I reviewed a couple of their movies back in 2017, during my first October Fest marathon, but now, I think it's now high time to go full steam ahead and cover the studio's most well-known flicks. If you're a fan of Gothic horror or of British cinema, you've got plenty to look forward to next month. Among what you can expect to see are the many horrific experiments of Victor Frankenstein, plenty of vampire action (Dracula and otherwise), a mummy or two... or three, some zombies, some black-and-white Psycho-style thrillers, more talk of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee than you'll know what to do with, several bizarre adventures with a certain Prof. Quatermass, and much more, finishing it all off with a confrontation with Satan himself (I'll let you figure out which movie that is but, if you're a Hammer fan, you should have a pretty good idea) on Halloween.

Like always, we're going to go in chronological order, but we're doing things a bit differently here. Normally in these marathons, whenever I hit upon some movies that have later sequels or remakes, I usually skip however far ahead afterward, do those other movies, and then get back to going in the proper order. When it comes to this marathon, I've decided to give you a little history lesson of Hammer through the films I've picked out, which means that, while we will go through their Frankenstein and Dracula series, you won't see a whole week of either franchise. Rather, one day, you'll see a Frankenstein review, the next might be a Dracula review, the day after that might be one of their mummy movies, and so on, depending on the year each individual film came out. If that isn't clear enough, I think you'll get it once we get underway.

And on that note, one other thing I would like to say right here is, for any true diehard Hammer fans and experts who might read these write-ups, please go easy on me concerning the information I give about the history and technical details of these movies. I may be a big fan, but I'm hardly an expert, and I tried as hard as I could to make sure that the information I give in these reviews is accurate, but there's a pretty good chance that I probably messed up on more than one occasion. If I did, I apologize, but don't have a conniption about it.

Anyway, this should be a lot of fun, something we could all use after what an unbelievably crappy year this has been. So, get your stakes, crucifixes, and silver bullets ready, and check back in on October 1st, which when we'll kick off "Hammer-Thon."