Hammer Humour

Robert Ross celebrates the horror great's comedy films

- Robert Ross

It may surprise many to discover the most profitable Hammer Films production in British cinemas was not a Gothic tale of Frankenstein or the Mummy but the featurelength comedy of On the Buses. Yes, it was the screech of brakes rather than the screech of an owl that really set the box office turnstiles spinning.

Even though the jobsworth Inspector "Blakey", as played by Stephen Lewis, was nicknamed Dracula by the cheeky driver Stan (Reg Varney) and conductor Jack (Bob Grant), On the Buses was such a departure from the current crop of colourful horrors that it was heralded as: "A Hammer Special Comedy Presentation".

Mind you, Hammer Films had been built on comedy. The company's cofounder Will Hinds had been part of a music hall double act, Hammer and Smith. When Hinds went into cinema, the Hammer name stuck, and that first film was a comedy. The Public Life of Henry the Ninth (1935) was a timely pastiche on the Oscar-winning Alexander Korda epic The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), starring Charles Laughton as the much-married monarch. The Hammer film starred radio comedian Leonard Henry as a cockney busker.

Hammer Films swiftly bought up the rights to the most popular radio programmes of the day, including Life With the Lyons, which starred Hollywood royalty Ben Lyons and Bebe Daniels. They had settled in Britain during the war and made a huge impact on BBC radio from 1950. Their domestic antics were brought to the big screen in 1954. Written and directed by Val Guest, a sequel The Lyons in Paris followed in 1955.

Hammer was quick to recognise the clout of television too, and capitalised on its success by producing I Only Arsked!, the 1958 film version of the hit Granada Television sitcom The Army Game. It recruited the series cast Alfie Bass, Charles Hawtrey, Michael Medwin, Geoffrey Sumner, and Hammer contract player Bernard Bresslaw, whose gormless catchphrase inspired the title.