Hidden Hammer

Before Hammer studios were the bringers of stylized Suspense and Victorian Horror, and at a time when they were still being  backed by Exclusive Films, a company that began their operations in 1935 and would endure a long lasting marriage with Lady Hammer. The studios would endure a five year period between 1950-55, and in this lustrum they would be hopelessly devoted to making noir.

How did it happen?


Producer Robert L Lippert who had one of the most expansive resumes in the industry , prolifically producing a plethora of B-status films (and often ones that came from  planet weird), approached the  Hammer gang, being fond of their signature, and suggested they go the shadow and fog route. This would come at the time when British studios were eager to hop on the last train to noirville. And now Hammer, would be all aboard, albeit to this day  never properly acknowledged for their excursion into the genre . One of the stipulations of the studios arrangement with Lippert, was that American actors would star, usually ones that were already established in American crime films. Actors such as Lizabeth Scott (no that cockney accent wasn't hers) in 1952's Stolen Face and earlier Robert Preston who would become River City's infamous bandleader , and also starred with Barbara Stanwyck in the low-key noir The Lady Gambles,  would also grace himself in Hammer's Cloudburst (1951).

                   Diana Dors was Manbait in Hammer's maiden noir voyage.
                                               




Although Hammer studio's noir releases garnered very little appreciation, they offer all the fixings of a noir traditional. There are tell-tale references in their overall mien and a motif of the same usual desperate suspects, now in a slightly more baronial atmosphere. In the Hammer entries when we willfully revisit those same old song quandaries and existential expressions we find the reality as tragic in that this period of Hammer releases have been kept on the burner all the way in the back of the celluloid oven.