Hammer is back - with a premiere on MySpace
From The Curse of Frankenstein to Quatermass, its catalogue of more than 150 classic British films often portrayed the horrific consequences of meddling with science in glorious, gory Technicolor.
And yesterday it was announced that the first production from the recently revived Hammer Films would attempt to similarly marry old and new to shocking effect by premiering on MySpace in a series of 20 four-minute "webisodes". The film, Beyond the Rave, will be the first UK co-production by the social networking site's recently launched video arm, MySpaceTV.
Starring Sadie Frost alongside a largely unknown cast and with a score chosen by DJ Pete Tong, it will chart 24 hedonistic hours in the life of a young soldier before he goes to Iraq. Inevitably, things soon take a sinister turn.
Simon Oakes, chairman of Hammer Horror, promised it would mix the defining elements of its catalogue - blood, sex, death, vampires - with a 21st-century setting and sensibility. "It's suspenseful, with plenty of blood, but it's not 'gore-nography'," he said.
The company, revived this year after 25 years by a consortium headed by Big Brother creator John de Mol, is also planning to release the film on DVD after it has been shown on MySpace. Oakes insisted that the film would not be too violent to be shown to a general audience, but the DVD release would probably be re-cut as an 18-certificate movie. Hammer also has two more conventional movies going into production next year but Oakes said Beyond the Rave was a way of getting its first production out quickly and bringing the name to a new audience.
"There's a demographic out there that don't know Hammer in the way my generation do. I saw that MySpace could bring us to a global audience online and it's also a great way of finding new young talent."
MySpace has become synonymous with new musical talent and wants to play a similar role in video. It recently showed an episode of the Channel 4 drama Skins before it was aired on TV.
Oakes said he wanted to make Hammer resonate for a new generation in the way the original films, which made stars of the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, became a byword for psychological terror and were later imitated and parodied.
MySpace, still the most popular social networking site in the world with 110m users despite the higher profile of late of rivals like Facebook and Bebo, is constantly looking for new ways to keep its users on the site for longer.
Like its rivals, it predicts video content will be a key factor.
Owen Gibson, media correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday December 13 2007
Guardian Unlimited
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
From The Curse of Frankenstein to Quatermass, its catalogue of more than 150 classic British films often portrayed the horrific consequences of meddling with science in glorious, gory Technicolor.
And yesterday it was announced that the first production from the recently revived Hammer Films would attempt to similarly marry old and new to shocking effect by premiering on MySpace in a series of 20 four-minute "webisodes". The film, Beyond the Rave, will be the first UK co-production by the social networking site's recently launched video arm, MySpaceTV.
Starring Sadie Frost alongside a largely unknown cast and with a score chosen by DJ Pete Tong, it will chart 24 hedonistic hours in the life of a young soldier before he goes to Iraq. Inevitably, things soon take a sinister turn.
Simon Oakes, chairman of Hammer Horror, promised it would mix the defining elements of its catalogue - blood, sex, death, vampires - with a 21st-century setting and sensibility. "It's suspenseful, with plenty of blood, but it's not 'gore-nography'," he said.
The company, revived this year after 25 years by a consortium headed by Big Brother creator John de Mol, is also planning to release the film on DVD after it has been shown on MySpace. Oakes insisted that the film would not be too violent to be shown to a general audience, but the DVD release would probably be re-cut as an 18-certificate movie. Hammer also has two more conventional movies going into production next year but Oakes said Beyond the Rave was a way of getting its first production out quickly and bringing the name to a new audience.
"There's a demographic out there that don't know Hammer in the way my generation do. I saw that MySpace could bring us to a global audience online and it's also a great way of finding new young talent."
MySpace has become synonymous with new musical talent and wants to play a similar role in video. It recently showed an episode of the Channel 4 drama Skins before it was aired on TV.
Oakes said he wanted to make Hammer resonate for a new generation in the way the original films, which made stars of the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, became a byword for psychological terror and were later imitated and parodied.
MySpace, still the most popular social networking site in the world with 110m users despite the higher profile of late of rivals like Facebook and Bebo, is constantly looking for new ways to keep its users on the site for longer.
Like its rivals, it predicts video content will be a key factor.
Owen Gibson, media correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday December 13 2007
Guardian Unlimited
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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