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Icons of Horror: Hammer Films (2-disc) (The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb / The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll / Scream of Fear / The Gorgon) | 
 enlarge | Director: The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll Directed By
Actors: Paul Massie - The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyl, Terence Morgan - The Curse Of The Mummy', Peter Cushing - The Gorgon, Susan Strasberg - Scream Of Fear
Studio: SONY PICTURES
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.96
Buy New: $16.99
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 4047
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 2
Running Time: 324
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: COLD27107D
UPC: 043396271074
EAN: 0043396271074
ASIN: B001B9ZVVC
Release Date: October 14, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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Product Description
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 10/14/2008
Amazon.com
Though perhaps not as iconic as their Dracula and Frankenstein pictures, this quartet of fright flicks from England's Hammer Films deliver enough Saturday afternoon creature feature thrills to please devotees of the legendary studio's output and vintage horror fans alike. 1964's The Gorgon will be the title to attract the most immediate attention due to the presence of Hammer's biggest stars, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, in its cast, and its most celebrated director, Terence Fisher, behind the camera. It's an atmospheric and offbeat entry in the Hammer canon, with one of its most unusual villains: a snake-haired fiend from Greek mythology who turns men into stone. Cushing and Lee are typically fine (both are on the side of the angels for once), and the picture's sole stumbling block is the lackluster makeup for its monster. Lee is also present in supporting roles in two other films in the collection: Scream of Fear (1961), one of several competent psychological suspense features made by Hammer in the wake of Psycho, with Susan Strasberg as a fragile young woman plagued by terrible visions and a house full of suspicious types; and Fisher's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), a revamp of the Stevenson story with Paul Massie as the dour scientist whose personality experiments unleash a virile but unhinged alter ego. Hardcore Hammer aficionados will be thrilled to discover that the DVD version is uncut and preserves much of the (mildly) salacious material trimmed for its release in America under the title House of Fright. The final film on Icons of Horror is Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, with Hammer exec Michael Carreras (son of company founder James Carreras) behind the camera for a featherweight monster romp that doesn't hold a candle to Terence Fisher's Mummy in 1959. Unlike previous Icons of Horror DVDs, the supplemental features here are slim--just the theatrical trailers for each film--though they do offer their own degree of charm, especially the ballyhoo-heavy tone of Mummy and the oddly elegant and unnerving preview for Scream of Fear, which is centered solely around an image of Strasberg's face. --Paul Gaita
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Columbia's 2nd Hammer Set... December 1, 2008
Nice selection of horror films (not Hammer's best). Terrific quality prints. Best ever on each of these titles.
 Superb Hammer set from Sony. November 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a superb Hammer horror DVD set from Sony. The studio is really doing a great job with classic titles at the moment, and this set is a prime example! Four classic Hammer films and a great looking cover (yes, I was one of the fans who voted for it..). Recommended!!!
Good transfers, o.k. movies. November 12, 2008
The transfers are very good of these movies.
The trailers are the only extras.
The movies themselves are o.k. nothing that you will want to watch over and over again.
good nonscary monster movies November 10, 2008
These old Hammer movies are good films, not very scary to today's movie watcher. They all offer interesting takes, especially the Jekyll/Hyde tale. I found them all enjoyable and so did my wife. It is hard to find horror movies we can watch together since she is not a fan.
The "Scream of Fear" is a very different Hammer film. It is a suspense mystery with some good twists. It is the only B&W film in the package.
Four horrors from Hammer November 9, 2008
While Universal succeeded in making horror a successful film genre in the 1930s with their series of flicks featuring Dracula, the Wolf Man and other monsters, by World War Two, its output had declined both in quantity and quality. In fact, in the 1940s, outside of Val Lewton's films (Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, et al), horror was pretty much a spent genre. In the 1950s, however, Hammer Films in England resurrected horror in a big way, bringing back the Universal monsters in new versions of familiar tales. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee took the place of Lugosi, Karloff and Chaney; perhaps more significantly, color replaced black-and-white, allowing a more vivid depiction of violence that may seem tame nowadays, but was shocking at the time.
The biggest of these Hammer horror films include Curse of Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Horror of Dracula. The Hammer Films - Icon of Horror Collection, however, contains some lesser known efforts, with four movies on two discs.
Disc One has The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll and The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb. The former movie is another re-telling of the familiar Jekyll-and-Hyde story; while it pales in comparison to the Frederic March version, this movie does offer a couple twists. In particular, in this case Hyde is actually the better-looking of the pair, a suave though completely amoral playboy. Jekyll is married to a faithless wife who loves Christopher Lee, another suave and amoral playboy who is also Jekyll's best friend, setting up an interesting triangle (or is it a square?).
The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is another version of the familiar mummy tale with the mummy wreaking vengeance on those who violated its tomb. The twist regards the human villain who guides the mummy; though most viewers will have this character pegged quite early, his motives take a while to be revealed. This movie is also the only one in the set not to have Lee in the cast.
Disc Two has The Gorgon and Scream of Fear. The Gorgon has not only Lee in a rare heroic role, but also Peter Cushing. The title monster is a sister of the more famous Medusa but with a similar look and powers. Similar to a werewolf, the Gorgon only appears at the full moon. Cushing is the local doctor who knows more about the Gorgon than he is willing to say, and Lee is a professor who helps solve the mystery.
While these three films fit into the standard Hammer monster stories, Scream of Fear is distinctly different, a non-supernatural horror mystery. Hammer did several of these movies that were all in black-and-white and were reminiscent of Hammer's pre-horror days when it made B-film noirs. Other examples include Nightmare and Paranoiac. In Scream of Fear, Susan Strasberg plays a young wheelchair-bound woman moving back to her father's home after a decade abroad. When she gets back, her father is gone on a trip, leaving her only with his new wife. After some strange goings-on, including seeing what she believes is her dad's corpse, she suspects something sinister afoot; can she, with the help of the chauffeur, figure out what's going on? Lee is in this movie as a local doctor who seems to get along a little too well with the step-mother. Though it is the atypical member of this set, Scream of Fear is also the best in the set.
As seems typical with most Hammer DVD releases, these films come with little in the way of extras, merely the theatrical trailers. None of these movies are bad, though the Disc One films are slower-moving; the Disc Two films, however, are pretty good. In fact, though these are clearly lesser Hammer movies, this is still a fun set that should be enjoyed by most Hammer fans.
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