|
Dracula (Hammer Film Series)
''Dracula'' is a British horror film series produced by Hammer Film Productions. The films are centered on Count Dracula, bringing with him a plague of vampirism, and the ensuing efforts of the heroic Van Helsing family to stop him. The original series of films consisted of nine installments, which starred iconic horror actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Count Dracula and Doctor Van Helsing, respectively. The series is part of the larger Hammer horror oeuvre. List of films * ''Dracula'' (1958)Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) begets the ire of Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) after he accepts a job at the vampire's castle under false pretenses, forcing his colleague Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) to destroy the predatory villain when he targets Harker's loved ones. * ''The Brides of Dracula'' (1960)Following the death of Count Dracula, the film continues the adventures of Dr. Van Helsing as he faces a different set of vampires, Baron ( David Peel) and Baroness Meinster ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terence Fisher
Terence Fisher (23 February 1904 – 18 June 1980) was a British film director best known for his work for Hammer Film Productions, Hammer Films. He was the first to bring gothic horror alive in full colour, and the sexual overtones and explicit horror in his films, while mild by modern standards, were unprecedented in his day. His first major gothic horror film was ''The Curse of Frankenstein'' (1957), which launched Hammer's association with the genre and made British actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee leading horror stars of the era. He went on to film several adaptations of classic horror subjects, including ''Dracula (1958 film), Dracula'' (1958), ''The Mummy (1959 film), The Mummy'' (1959), and ''The Curse of the Werewolf'' (1961). Given their subject matter and lurid approach, Fisher's films, though commercially successful, were largely dismissed by critics during his career. It is only in recent years that Fisher has become recognised as an ''auteur'' in his own r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Forbes-Robertson (actor)
John Forbes-Robertson (10 May 1928 – 14 May 2008) was a British actor best known for being the only actor other than Christopher Lee to play Count Dracula for Hammer Film Productions. He was born in Worthing, Sussex. He was not the son of actor-manager Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, as erroneously stated in the press at the time of his death; he was the grandson of one of Sir Johnston's brothers. He began his acting career on the stage, starting at the Intimate Theatre in Palmers Green, before pursuing a film and TV career in the 1950s and 1960s, usually in minor roles, in films such as '' The Battle of the River Plate'' (1956), '' Bunny Lake Is Missing'' (1965) and '' The Spy with a Cold Nose'' (1966). He made two films for Hammer A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nail (fastener), nails into wood, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly 20th Century Fox, is an American film studio, film production and Film distributor, distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the Disney Entertainment business segment of the Walt Disney Company. It is headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles, which is leased from Fox Corporation. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by this studio in theatrical markets. For over 80 years, 20th Century has been one of the major film studios, major American film studios. It was formed in 1935 as Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation by the merger of Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures, and one of the original "studio system, Big Five" among eight majors of Hollywood's Cinema of the United States#Classical Hollywood cinema and the Golden Age of Hollywood, Golden Age. In 1985, the studio remov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Associated British Picture Corporation
Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), originally British International Pictures (BIP), was a British film production, distribution and exhibition company active from 1927 until 1970 when it was absorbed into EMI. ABPC also owned approximately 500 cinemas in Britain by 1943, and in the 1950s and 60s owned a station on the ITV television network. The studio was partly owned by Warner Bros. from about 1940 until 1969; the American company also owned a stake in ABPC's distribution arm, Warner-Pathé, from 1958. It formed one half of a vertically integrated film industry duopoly in Britain with the Rank Organisation. History From 1927 to 1945 The company was founded during 1927 by Scottish solicitor John Maxwell after he had purchased British National Pictures Studios and its Elstree Studios complex and merged it with his ABC Cinemas circuit, renaming the company British International Pictures. The Wardour Film Company, with Maxwell as chairman, was the distributor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Universal Pictures
Universal City Studios LLC, doing business as Universal Pictures (also known as Universal Studios or simply Universal), is an American filmmaking, film production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered at the 10 Universal City Plaza, Universal Studios complex in Universal City, California, and is the flagship studio of Universal Studios, Inc., Universal Studios, the film studio arm of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers (producer), Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane and Jules Brulatour, Universal is the oldest surviving film studio in the United States and the fifth oldest globally after Gaumont Film Company, Gaumont, Pathé, Titanus and Nordisk Film, and is one of the Major film studios, "Big Five" film studios. Universal's most commercially successful film franchises include ''Fast & Furious, Jurassic Park'', and ''Despicable Me''. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Rank Organisation
The Rank Organisation (founded as the J. Arthur Rank Organisation) is a British entertainment Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1937 by industrialist J. Arthur Rank. It quickly became the largest and most vertical integration, vertically integrated film company in the United Kingdom, owning production, distribution, and exhibition facilities as well as manufacturing projection equipment and chairs. It diversified into the manufacture of radios, TVs and photocopiers (as one of the owners of Rank Xerox). The company name lasted until February 1996, when the name and some of the remaining assets were absorbed into the newly structured Rank Group, Rank Group plc. The company itself became a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox and was renamed XRO Limited in 1997. The company's logo, the Gongman, first used in 1935 by the group's distribution company General Film Distributors [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shaw Brothers Studio
Shaw Brothers (HK) Limited () was the largest film production company in Hong Kong, operating from 1925 to 2011. In 1925, three Shaw brothers— Runje, Runme, and Runde—founded Tianyi Film Company (also called "Unique") in Shanghai, and established a film distribution base in Singapore, where Runme and their youngest brother, Run Run Shaw, managed the precursor to the parent company, Shaw Organisation. Runme and Run Run took over the film production business of its Hong Kong–based sister company, Shaw & Sons Ltd; in 1958, a new company, "Shaw Brothers," was set up. In the 1960s, Shaw Brothers established what was once the largest privately-owned studio in the world, Movietown. The company's most famous works include '' The Love Eterne'' (1963), '' Come Drink with Me'' (1966), '' The One-Armed Swordsman'' (1967), '' King Boxer'' (1972), '' Executioners from Shaolin'' (1977), '' The 36th Chamber of Shaolin'' and '' Five Deadly Venoms'' (both 1978). Over the ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions Ltd. is a British film production company based in London. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic horror and fantasy films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involve classic horror characters such as Victor Frankenstein, Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy (undead), Mummy, which Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, Thriller film, thrillers, film noir and Comedy film, comedies, as well as, in later years, television series. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was, in part, due to its distribution partnerships with American companies such as United Artists, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, American Internationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Cacavas
John Harry Cacavas (August 13, 1930 – January 28, 2014) was an American composer and conductor probably best known for his television scores, such as '' Kojak'', and ''The Time Machine,'' for which he was the chief composer. He also composed '' Kojak's'' second main title theme for its 5th and final season in 1977-1978. Early life and education Cacavas was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1930. His father was an emigrant from Greece and his mother was born in North Dakota. He had a fraternal twin sister, Jeanne, and three other siblings: Peter David, b. 1928; Penelope, b. 1932; and Adrian G., 1933. Their father's younger brother Chris had also immigrated to South Dakota and lived in Aberdeen, where he married and had a family. John and his siblings attended local schools; he displayed an early talent for music, forming a local band at age 14, at 16 he started a school dance band named “The Golden Blues," he left after having a falling out with his band teacher after which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Vickers
Michael Graham Vickers (born 18 April 1940) is an English musician who came to prominence as the guitarist, flautist, and saxophonist with the 1960s band Manfred Mann. Early life Vickers was born in Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey. At the age of seven, his family moved to Scotland, and when he was eleven, to Southampton, where he attended King Edward VI School. Career Manfred Mann Vickers originally played flute and saxophone, but with the increasing popularity of guitars in bands, it was decided that Manfred Mann should have a guitarist in their lineup. Vickers volunteered for this role, though he always preferred playing woodwind. His tough flute soloing on hard blues tracks, such as "Without You", prefigured the work of Ian Anderson with Jethro Tull five years later. As the group were all multi-instrumentalists, multi-tracking was used to allow Vickers to perform on guitar and woodwind on the same recordings, while drummer Mike Hugg similarly doubled on vibraphone. He was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Williamson
Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson, (21 November 19312 March 2003) was an Australian composer. He was the Master of the Queen's Music from 1975 until his death. According to ''Grove Music Online'', although Williamson's earlier compositions aligned with Serialist techniques, "he later modified his approach to composition in the search of a more inclusive musical language that was fundamentally tonal and, above all, lyrical. In the 1960s, he was commonly referred to as the most often commissioned composer in Britain, and over his lifetime he produced more than 250 works in a wide variety of genres." Life and career Williamson was born in Sydney in 1931; his father was an Anglican priest, Rev. George Williamson. He studied composition and horn at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His teachers included Eugene Goossens. In 1950 he moved to London where he worked as an organist, a proofreader, and a nightclub pianist. In 1952 he converted to Roman Catholicism. Fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Bernard (composer)
James Michael Bernard (20 September 1925 – 12 July 2001) was a British film composer, particularly associated with horror films produced by Hammer Film Productions. Beginning with ''The Quatermass Xperiment'', he scored such films as ''The Curse of Frankenstein'' and ''Dracula''. He also occasionally scored non-Hammer films including '' Windom's Way'' (1957) and '' Torture Garden'' (1967). Early years and World War II Bernard was educated at Wellington College, previously attended by Christopher Lee, who starred in many of the Hammer horror films Bernard scored. In an interview late in his life, Bernard recalled that in his mid-teens three of his favourite books were '' The Devil Rides Out'', ''She'', and ''The Hound of the Baskervilles''. While still a schoolboy, Bernard met Benjamin Britten when the composer came to consult the school's art master, Kenneth Green, about the stage designs for ''Peter Grimes''. Britten took interest in an inter-house music competition, and advi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
