Another foundational Hammer trademark was the sex, or at least as much sex as could be gotten away with in 1957. Beautiful women, scantily clad, helped break the domination of the Sci-Fi Horrors of the 1950s, and brought Gothic Horror back to the forefront. Audiences composed primarily of adolescent males came for the Monsters, but they stayed for Yvonne Furneaux, Ingrid Pitt, and Valerie Leon.

    I was introduced to Hammer films at a very young age. By my 7^th birthday, I was a budding Horrorphile, and I was watching every horror movie my local TV stations were airing, including the first cycle of Hammer Horrors—Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, The Brides of Dracula—and their lurid, sensational style won me over as easily as did the Universal Monsters or the giant bugs of the 1950s. My love for Hammer only grew as I grew older, and more appreciative of their more mature aspects.

    Over the past fifty-plus years of my Hammer fandom, many of these films have become, through repeated viewings, a comforting balm to my spirits, chicken soup for the horror lover’s soul, as it were. While the number of Hammer Horror that would fit that description would easily be in the dozens, 13 of them are more. 13 have risen to the level of old friends of mine, friends who are always missed when not around, and always welcome when they are.

    Just as we all have one or two friends who are just a little off-kilter, so too are a couple of the movies on this list. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) is certainly a quirky movie, a curious mix of Hammer Horror and Hong Kong kung-fu. Despite it being undeniably, well, goofy, it’s extremely entertaining. Much like one or two of my flesh-and-blood friends. Vampire Circus (1972) is another movie that fits neatly into this category. A tale of a bite of vampires (if you have a better name for a group of vampires, I’m all ears) masquerading as a circus troupe, Vampire Circus is an atypical offering from Hammer, even considering the weirdness that was the ‘70s. It’s also one of their best vampire films … not starring Lee or Cushing.

    Then, you have your friends of whom you know your mother would not approved. A little rude, a little crude, they’re nonetheless fun to hang around with. Movies such as Twins of Evil and Lust for a Vampire, both released in 1971, marked Hammer’s initial foray into nudity in their films, along with their first such film, Countess Dracula, released the previous year. Gone were the coy, seductive ‘60s. The 1970s arrived with bare breasts and sexual situations, and the adolescent Unimonster couldn’t have been happier. Come to think of it, the 62-year-old Unimonster is thankful for it as well.

    Of course, there’s that main group of friends that are always there, always in the fabric of your life. These are the movies that helped grow my love of Hammer Horror, and by extension the horror genre as a whole. Movies like Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971), The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and The Nanny (1965) demonstrate the breadth of Hammer’s ventures into Horror, everything from the foundation of Gothic Horror, to the contemporary thriller. Taste The Blood of Dracula (1970), earned its spot in my roster of cinematic friends for one reason, and one reason alone—Linda Hayden. The movie wasn’t the best, and it suffered from the absence of Peter Cushing, but that didn’t matter to a 12-year-old Unimonster. I fell in love with Hayden the first time I saw this movie, and though my ardor has waned over the years, she’s still the best part of the movie, and still reason enough to watch it, time and again. Another movie that sits easily in this group is The Phantom of the Opera (1962). Not a great movie, certainly—but a very comforting one. It doesn’t equal the quality of Rupert Julian’s 1925 The Phantom of the Opera, nor is it a lavish, big-budget production like Arthur Lubin’s 1943 version. But it does something that they do not—it makes me happy.

    That brings us to the core group, those friends who are an indispensable part of our lives. They’ve been with us from the beginning, and they’re always there to lift our spirits when we’re at our lowest.

    For the Unimonster, the first of these is Captain Clegg (1962), released in the US as Night Creatures. Strictly speaking this is more an Adventure film than a Horror one, the kind of film Hollywood just doesn’t do any longer. It’s the story of a small village on the southern English coast, across the channel from Napoleonic France. In order to survive in the poor economy, and avoid the onerous import duties, the villagers, led by their parish Vicar, resort to smuggling, particularly French wines. They conceal their smuggling from prying eyes dressed as the marsh phantoms that are reputed to haunt the vicinity. If it sounds familiar, well, that’s because it probably is. You see, Walt Disney made the same movie, released in 1963. Their version was titled Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, and was edited down from three episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney.

    The second of these best friends is, coincidentally, Hammer’s second Gothic Horror film, Horror of Dracula, originally released in the UK as simply Dracula (1958). The studio’s follow-up to the box-office success of Curse of Frankenstein the previous year, it reunited Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in what many, the Unimonster among them, would consider their greatest roles. No matter how bad the series might become, and it would become very bad (can we say The Satanic Rites of Dracula), that was never the fault of Lee or Cushing.

    But at the top of my Hammer friends list is 1959’s The Mummy. Regular readers will be well-aware of my love of reanimated Egyptian corpses, whether the 1932, 1940, or 1999 varieties (we won’t mention a certain abomination starring Tom Cruise), and this film is certainly no exception. Cushing and Lee, Yvonne Furneaux as the female lead, a strong supporting cast, an excellent script by Hammer’s premiere screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, Terence Fisher’s usual masterful direction … this is the best of Hammer, and Hammer at its best. It’s also my favorite Hammer film—my best of a select group of friends.