Hammer Film Productions is a British film production company specializing in the horror genre. They’re most known for their works produced in and around the 60s, one of which being their series on Dracula. Beginning with Dracula in 1958 and ending with The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires in 1974, Hammer revitalized the character for the modern audience and then proceeded to milk that cash cow until the modern audience no longer cared. Though despite how it ended, Hammer Dracula was incredibly influential on the pieces of Vampire fiction following it.

One notable feature with Hammer’s treatment of Dracula is how well they vilified him. Vampires since the beginning have often been established as tragic creatures. However, pieces featuring Dracula often treat him as an unsympathetic villain, something not started but definitely encouraged by Hammer. In these films, Dracula is a monster. He’s an entity where destroying him is treated as an objective good. This isn’t seen with many other stories considering how often vampires are romanticized.

An important part to the establishment of Dracula’s evil in Hammer is his actor, Christopher Lee. The performance Lee gave the character showed how vile and nasty he saw the being. Compared to the suave, charismatic treatment given by some other famous portrayals, Lee performed Dracula as if he was a feral monster. And in many instances, he was.

However, despite how the films treated it, Dracula’s evil was not immortal. There was a gradual decline in interest toward the series going alongside the gradual decrease in quality. Horror films in the early 70s were seen more as something to be on in the background while teens hung out rather than something to be viewed artistically. So less effort was put in to the dismay of horror enthusiasts and some actors. Lee was especially upset by this, mostly because he had to be in the movies. He wanted to retire his Dracula before it was subjugated to more terrible scripts, but was forced to stick with the role due to contractual obligation and guilt-tripping from the company.

Hammer Horror is post the Victorian era, but it’s such an important part of vampire history that it can’t be looked over. The works that predate it have subtle influences toward the lore used and the setting the stories take place in. However, Hammer’s Dracula disregarded the need to be accurate to those stories, including the very book it is based on. They wanted to do their own thing and did so with a certain degree of success. Rather than just being the result of the previous vampire history, Hammer’s Dracula series pushed vampires forward into the next era.

Hammer isn’t brought up often in conversation even when discussing horror media. When it comes to the “classic” monster movies, most look at the Universal films that come before it. However, even though conversation about it is lacking, Hammer has had an important influence on both the film industry and the horror genre. Hammer is something that cannot be forgotten.