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British Cult Cinema:
HAMMER FANTASY & SCI-FI

British Cult Cinema:
THE HAMMER FRANKENSTEIN

In 1957, Hammer released The Curse of Frankenstein and changed the face of horror cinema forever. Hammer Horror was born, and the film made international stars of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. In the years that followed, the company made six more Frankenstein films and a television pilot, all but two of them starring Cushing as the callous and amoral Baron Frankenstein–a very different character to that created by Mary Shelley in her 1818 novel. Author Bruce Hallenbeck explores in detail the many cinematic experiments of the baron who, along the way, made ‘Creatures’ of Lee, Don Megowan, Michael Gwynn, wrestler Kiwi Kingston, Susan Denberg, Freddie Jones and David Prowse in a series unique in the annals of British horror.  

    240pp plus 8pp in colour. Fully illustrated throughout.

MERCHANT OF MENACE:

In 1953, Vincent Price adopted the mantle of the macabre which had been left vacant by Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff to play a deranged sculptor in House of Wax. As a result, he became the face of film fright for a generation of moviegoers. For more than twenty years afterwards, Price embodied the spirit of the Hollywood horror film in almost 60 features, from House on Haunted Hill and House of Usher in the 1950s to Witchfinder General and The Abominable Dr Phibes in the 1960s and ’70s.
      Merchant of Menace is a celebration of this legendary actor’s remarkable life and work; it covers the entirety of Vincent Price’s film career with a wealth of fascinating detail and explains why, to many fans of the genre during the 1960s, Vincent Leonard Price was the horror film.  

     This new Hemlock edition of Denis Meikle’s acclaimed biography of Vincent Price has been completely revised and expanded and now contains well over 300 illustrations!

    390pp, 8pp in colour, fully illustrated.

MR MURDER:

MR MURDER-The Life and Times of Tod Slaughter is the definitive biography of Gosforths’s most famous son. For the first time in print, and with the participation of Tod Slaughter himself (featuring exclusive extracts from his unpublished autobiography), this intensively researched and lavishly illustrated book by the leading authorities on Slaughter details the life and work of one of the neglected stars of the British screen.

Hardback, 280 pages, fully illustrated throughout, 8 pages in colour.

EXCLUSIVE TO HEMLOCK BOOKS!

JAMES CAMERON: Innovator

James Cameron - director of The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, Titanic and Avatar - dubbed himself ‘King of the World’ at the 1998 Oscar ceremony. As far as movie critics are concerned, there are two James Camerons: there is the director who did more than any other to layer his high-concept movies with a degree of human interest, and there is the director who did more than any other to bury his characters beneath a deluge of special effects and artifice. But for those working on James Cameron films, there is ‘Jim’, the personable, charmingly boyish director, as excited by the making of his films as he hopes audiences will be when they see them. This is the James Cameron who strives to do fantastic work, who wants everything to be perfect, and who innovates in the technology of filmmaking every time he commits to a project. Brian Robb’s richly detailed and thorough biography brings the Cameron story bang up to date and provides a remarkable insight into the mind of a man who started out creating special effects for Roger Corman but went on to be one of the foremost film artistes of the age.

280pp, fully illustrated; 8pp in colour.

RIDLEY SCOTT: Promethean

After making his feature film debut with The Duellists in 1977, Ridley Scott's unique vision transformed a B-movie project into the seminal sci-fi opus Alien in 1979, and he followed that with Blade Runner in 1982. Since then, his films have included Legend (1985), Conquest of Paradise (1992), Thelma and Louise (1991) and Gladiator (2000). Along the way, he has produced as well as directed, and he remains to this day the most prolific filmmaker in Britain; among his latest ventures are Alien: Covenant and All the Money in the World, an account of the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III. Ridley Scott: Promethean is an exhaustive study of the man and his films, which brings the Scott story bang up to date.

286 pages, 8 pp in colour, fully illustrated throughout!

RETRO SCREAMS

In Retro Screams, Christopher Koetting casts his eye over the biggest horror remakes of the past decade, and the iconic films that inspired them. By comparing each of them in turn, he examines whether this fad for ‘re-imagining’ the screen’s greatest terror triumphs is a worthy sub-genre in its own right...or simply evidence of the modern horror film’s lack of imagination...

FRIGHT FILMS

HITCHCOCK'S BLONDE

He was the most celebrated director of his generation, but his murder mysteries and thrillers hid the secrets of his own sexual repression. She was the most beautiful female star of her day, known on-screen for her glacial aloofness and off-screen for her sexual appetites. Together, they made three celebrated movies and Grace Kelly’s influence on Alfred Hitchcock was as profound as it was disturbing.. For the first time in print, their work together is examined in detail, their relationship with each other is explored in depth and Hitchcock’s darkest fantasies are revealed..

250pp plus 8pp in colour. Fully illustrated throughout.

MIND WARP!

The year is 1969. After making his hugely-successful series of Poe movies with Vincent Price, producer-director Roger Corman set up shop as New World Pictures. For the next thirteen years, Corman was the driving force behind some of the best-known fantasy and exploitation films of the 1970s and early '80s - while his company kicked off the careers of directors like James Cameron, Jonathan Demme and Ron Howard. Mind Warp chronicles the amazing history of Corman’s ‘New World’ – the films, the facts and the fantastic feats of budget ingenuity! The ultimate guide to drive-in thrills and chills at their best.

280pp plus 8pp in colour. Fully illustrated throughout.

URBAN TERRORS

Urban Terrors is the first book to fully examine the British horror film revival, documenting and analysing the more than 100 movies that were commercially released between 1997 and 2008. It reveals how the changes in technology have enabled more people to make films, how changes in distribution - from VHS to DVD to VOD - are enabling more people to watch them, and how the mainstream media has failed to spot and comment upon this largely-undocumented phenomenon. And it examines how these new kinds of horror films have dealt with issues like disenfranchised youth, class division and social exclusion...

294pp plus 8pp in colour. Fully illustrated throughout.