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Rating: 
Summary: Essential introduction to Hammer horror
Review: From the mid-'50s until the mid-'70s, the British Hammer Studios specialized with great success in producing gothic horrors, with great success. Showcased here are three of their early productions, all directed by stalwart Terence Fisher.The seminal Curse of Frankenstein contains all the sophistication, irony and terror that made the Hammer Frankenstein series so successful and memorable. Peter Cushing plays the villianous Baron magnificently, and Christopher Lee presents us with an original and sympathetic portrayal of the creature. Production design is stunning, especially some of the lush matte paintings, and veteran James Bernard supplies one of his best scores. Horror of Dracula is generally regarded as Fisher's masterpiece. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are pitted against each other as vampire-hunter Van Helsing and the nefarious Transylvanian aristocrat respectively. Fisher brings style and depth to the Dracula myth, and is fortunate to have the brilliance of composer James Bernard and designer Bernard Robinson at hand. Here we are presented with some of the cinema's most memorable images of vampirism of all time. The Mummy never quite reached the heights attained by Frankenstein and Dracula, but it remains an entertaining piece of vintage Hammer.
Rating:
Summary: Hammer Horror Classics
Review: I am a big fan of the Hammer horror films. While, the scripts were adequate, the actors were brilliant and top-rate, and managed to inject complete believability into what they had to work with. In my opinion, however, the primary genius behind these films was director, Terence Fisher, who managed to give these films a look and style quite apart from anything that had ever been done before, which very few people have managed to match in today's "quick cutting, camera-whipping to the point of nauseum, get-as-much-information-as-you-can-to-the-audience" filmmaking. Great horror is not about overt blood-letting, it's about classy style. Fisher, his crew and cast, had style.
Rating:
Summary: Hammer Horror Classics
Review: I am a big fan of the Hammer horror films. While, the scripts were adequate, the actors were brilliant and top-rate, and managed to inject complete believability into what they had to work with. In my opinion, however, the primary genius behind these films was director, Terence Fisher, who managed to give these films a look and style quite apart from anything that had ever been done before, which very few people have managed to match in today's "quick cutting, camera-whipping to the point of nauseum, get-as-much-information-as-you-can-to-the-audience" filmmaking. Great horror is not about overt blood-letting, it's about classy style. Fisher, his crew and cast, had style.
Rating: 
Summary: Three movies that are so incredibly bad.
Review: The one thing that all three of these movies have in commen is that they were the first of what seemed like endless sequals where the same story was recycled over and over again. Hammer made their movies quickly and cheaply, thus they use the same sets over and over again. There were never more then 10 to 20 people making the movie from behind the camera, the creature make-up always looked fake, and the production values were not much better then what Roger Corman or Irwin Allen did in their movies, or what Kevin Smith uses now in his movies. End result, Low Budget Movies will always be very bad film making.
Rating:
Summary: Three of the Best
Review: These are the films that took the three classic movie monsters brought them into the world of color. They each spawned several sequels of various quality ( the Hammer Mummy films coming off worst)but they all changed the way that we view horror today. Made on the high end of a low budget the films look great.The acting is wonderful, Cushing's Frankenstien is masterful portrait of evil and Christopher Lee's Dracula rightly made him famous the world over. It should also be remembered that as tame as they seem by todays standards there was a great out cries about the horror and shock content of the films upon their first release. The films while not nearly as terrifying as they once were are still really good thrillers. The discs themselves are quite good, although sorely lacking in extra material. Why no effort was made to put something together by Warner is beyond me, especially since Christopher Lee has been doing commentaries for the other Dracula films over at Anchor Bay.But that's a minor sticking point since the films themselves are what matter and in this case the transfers are wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Hammer Forever
Review: This collection is a must for any fan of classic horror films. Yes, Hammer films were modest in budget, and compared to the pyrotechnics of contemporary horror films they seem downright quaint. However, at their best (and these are three of their finest) they redefined the horror genre for an entire generation. These are B movies with class. Great acting. Great scripts. Great talent. Christopher Lee as Dracula, the Mummy AND Frankenstein's monster. Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Frankenstein (not to mention Peter Banning, the Mummy's nemesis). Terence Fisher directing. It just doesn't get any better.
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