The Carrara Forum Carreras Appreciation Thread - Inspired by Hammer Films
Diomede
Posts: 15,168
Monster, Horror, and Gothic Renders Welcome
Michael Carreras was a screenwriter and producer for the British film company Hammer Films. For example, Carreras produced Hammer Films anachronistic epic One Million Years BC, starring Raquel Welch and a bunch of dinosaur models. The film was a remake of a B/W Hollywood vehicle starring Carol Landis and Victor Mature. Hammer is probably best known for its Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, and Wolfman type horror movies. Some of their staple actors were Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Ingrid Pitt.
Find out more about Mr. Carreras here. https://headhuntershorrorhouse.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Carreras
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dinos !
Perfect, Misty!!!
Arnie rocked the fur bikini bottom back in the day on the other topic
Carole Landis got a dress and Victor Mature got a skirt.
This is the old Hollywood version that Hammer remade with Raquel Welch in a fur bikini.
NVIATWAS
Natural Vicky Inciting a TRex with a Spear
One fur bikini cavegirl in honor of Michael Carreras and Hammer films
Raquel Welch rocking her cavegirl outfit for One Million BC, written and produced by Michael Carrera
NVIAFWAHC
Hammer films and Christopher Lee made a bunch of dracula movies.
Had to throw together a quick render
Dragons related to dinos?
at the mystic gorge, one day will learn how to fluidos the gorge's waterfall
Great theme for a thread.
I have been a fan of Hammer and Amicus films for a long time, considering that I am now in my 60s. One of my favorite Hammer films is "The Gorgon". Chris Lee has a great "non Dracula" role in at as a crusty old professor.
I am probably wandering too far away from the main Michael Carreras theme, but I have to mention that the third Quatermass film "Quatermass and the Pit" is one of my all time favorite SF films. I attached a scene I snapped, many years ago, from the VHS copy of the film as an inspiration for Stezza's "Wacky modeling". In the scene Quatrmass and some soldiers are attempting to move a dead Martian insectoid that smells like rotten sardines.
Dino
Another Dino
I don't use Carrara and this is with my smart-arse pedant cap on, but in that poster - isn't that a brachiosaur or diplodocus (or similar) with a mouth full of non-herbivore fodder?
Demon Dragon
Oviraptor
I just picked up two really amazing limited edition books focusing on Hammer films that would probably be of interest to anyone trying to recreate scenes from the old Hammer films, both from Peveril Publishing in the U.K. The first is HAMMER'S GRAND DESIGNS, which focuses on the art direction for Hammer films and features hundreds of pre-production illustrations, matte paintings, screen shots and, best of all, the original floorplans for the major sets from most of their films. The other is a little broader in scope - INSIDE BRAY STUDIOS, which focuses on the the studio facility Hammer used for most of it's early films, which was actually a converted mansion and manor whose ornate nteriors were used over and over again as part of the sets, and whose distinctive exterior can be seen in many films, including as Frankenfurter's castle in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the interiors of which were filmed at Bray, as were all of the miniature special effects sequences for Ridley Scott's ALIEN.
@Cybersox - those sound like a really cool books.
I used to have a collection of a dozen or so Hammer horror films on DVD, but I got rid of them during a recent move. Personally, I tend to like Hammer's late 50s / early 60s films more than the 1970s stuff. I'd be curious if it is related to some of their choices for art direction.
Most likely. Part of the earlier Hammer films have that distinctive look and feel is because they were able to use many of the ornate rooms in the manison part of the studios almost exactly as they were with only a little bit of set dressing for very little money, and when they needed big exteriors they used the local farm and woods, bulking them out with set pieces and matte paintings. Once you know what the variopus studio rooms and buildings actually looked like, you can pick them out pretty easily, even when they're heavily disguised with a lot of add-ons like in the two Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies. The later films that were shot in the 70s were more likely to be shot on location or on more temporary sets at other studios, which required shooting at a faster pace. The other big thing that changed, though, is that when Hammer started, film work was more pretigious and most of the main actors were very established performers, but by the later films they were using a lot of younger and less experienced performers... partially becuase they were cheaper, partially becuase they thought they'd be more appealing to the younger crowd that were the main audiences watching the films, and partially because the new actresses were more willing to take their clothes off.
Yep. It's also a scene that never got filmed Ray Harryhusen did build the stop motion model and it made a very quick cameo, but the film ran so far over budget and behind in production that all that ever got made was a few cheesey promo stills. The same thing happened on the followup film, WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, where a major sequence with stop motion ants got canceled even though they'd shot the live action actors interacting with giant ant-props. And then for the THIRD film, CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT, Hammer decided to see if they could get away with no dinosaurs at all. They couldn't.
Diomede wrote "I tend to like Hammer's late 50s / early 60s films more than the 1970s stuff. I'd be curious if it is related to some of their choices for art direction."
I feel the same way about Hammer films, but also about American SF and Horror films. I have to be careful here so that Chohole doesn't yank me away with a cane, or hit the gong.
There is an old book titled, "Doctor Who:The Unfolding Text" and it has an intresting theory about what is behind changes in TV and Motion Picture styles and pop culture content over the years and decades. I agree with some of the ideas behind the theory. Check it out for yourselves if you can find the book.
A lot of earlier Hammer films had better story ideas and screenplay writing and direction than the later films. One word that I can find to express my deep feelings on this is "maturity". Older films had a "maturity" that the newer films don't have or the "remakes" either. Watch the 2 versions of the American film "The Fly" and for me the original has a "maturity" that the remake doesn't. The characters in the remake are all adolelescent minded adults in my opinion.
The "Abominable Snowman" was great, and the twist ending making human beings the bad guys and gals was fun and probably right in the long run. In the USA a lot of fine and excellent low budget SF films were made in the 1950s and early 1960s and my "baby boom" generation tried at times to recapture that style without success in the 1970s and 1980s.
Another of my "manifestos", as someone once called my long bombastic posts, will now end with a tribute to the fine music of James Bernard who was the British version of America's Bernard Herrmann and Les Baxter for great film music scores. My brother's best friend was a sound engineer for the movie studios, and a big fan of James Bernard, and all three of them had dinner together one evening. My grouchy brother complained to James Bernard that his music was too loud in the Hammer "Dracula" films and Bernard agreed but said there was nothing he could do about that.
Very cool thread!
I've always loved Hammer films growing up. I collected Famous Monsters magazines too.
One of the lovely Hammer Babes, Caroline Munro starred in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and helped nudge me toward drawing, painting and sculpting ladies with dragons. The dragons part came from seeing a really cool painting of a dragon. The ladies part, well... I always felt that they are God's work of magnificent art at its best.
Kudos to the amazing costume artist!