The Disquieting Guest — A Few Thoughts On ‘The Quiet Ones’
The Marvel logo that introduces the company’s movies (and their respective trailers) is a pretty sharp piece of work. That flipping by of comic book images primes the viewers, gesturing toward the history of all that came before. I bet that many viewers feel a bit of a thrill the moment that logo appears, even if — when seeing a trailer for the first time — they don’t know what movie is coming up after those images. I have much the same reaction to the new Hammer logo, which you can check out here. Hammer Studios are a storied institution. They brought Quatermass to the big screen and revived Gothic horror with 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein. That first pairing of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee has a hallowed place in horror history, as do the films that followed. But the late-sixties and early-seventies brought difficult times to Hammer. Films such as Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist changed the face of the horror film. Hammer’s period pieces, which had been so radical with their colour, gore and sexuality (tame though those elements appear today), now seemed quaint. Attempts to modernize (Dracula A.D. 1972) were met with mixed success (to put it kindly). The last theatrical hurrah was To the Devil… A Daughter in 1976, an attempt both to follow up the earlier success of The Devil Rides Out and mimic The Exorcist.
