Terence Fisher

Baron Frankenstein escapes from the guillotine and goes to Germany. There, he names himself Dr. Stein and plans to restart his experiments by using parts of dead bodies.

Dr. Henry Jekyll is a dull, bookish scientist who spends more time with his lab animals testing theories of alternate personalities than with his beautiful, young wife. Kitty Jekyll has given up trying to find any passion in her distant, preoccupied husband and is involved in an affair with one of Jekyll's old 'friends,' Paul Allen, a weak slacker and wastrel who relies on Jekyll to pay his numerous gambling debts. After experimenting on himself, the bearded, tweedy Jekyll transforms himself into the young, dynamic, and self-confidant Edward Hyde.

When his father Professor Jules Heitz and brother Bruno die under mysterious circumstances, Paul Heitz travels to a small town to determine what is going on. It's the early 1900s and he finds villagers who are wary of strangers and apparently live in fear, particularly when there is a full moon. He hears of the legend of Megaera, a Gorgon so hideous that to look at her will turn you to stone. Of particular interest to him are Dr. Namaroff and his attractive assistant Carla Hoffman.

"Phantom of the Opera" is director Terence Fisher's remake of the classic French novel. In this version the Phantom is played by Herbert Lom. The make up isn't as memorable as Lon Chaney's and the changes in the plot along with the smaller scale of the production makes this one that gets overlooked. Although it wasn't the huge financial hit that Universal had hoped at the time and the action lags a bit at the beginning, "Phantom" still remains a terrific bit of entertainment and has a number of marvelous set pieces directed by Fisher.

Vampire hunter Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) returns to Transylvania to destroy handsome bloodsucker Baron Meinster, who has designs on beautiful young schoolteacher Marianne. One of the last Hammer films shot by the marvelous Jack Asher.

"Curse of the Werewolf" features Oliver Reed in the title role. Set in Spain, Reed plays Leon a young man adopted when his mother a mute servant girl dies giving birth. We know very little about the father except that the girl was raped. As a youth Leon exhibits the traits of the werewolf while hunting and the curse continues to haunt him as he grows older.

Hammer Studios' greatest nemeses, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, once again square off in this reworking of Universal's The Mummy (with elements of The Mummy's Tomb and The Mummy's Ghost thrown in for good measure). Cushing stars as archeologist John Banning, whose dig for a lost tomb results in untold treasures but leaves his father a mumbling madman and marks the rest of the company for death.

After Hammer Studios' tremendous success with The Curse of Frankenstein, they struck a deal to adapt Universal's catalog of classics and set their sights first on Dracula. Christopher Lee removes the monstrous makeup from the earlier film and makes his entrance as an elegant, confident, altogether seductive Dracula, a frightening figure of flashing eyes and erotic allure. Peter Cushing, with his hawklike profile and piercing eyes, turns his rationalist intensity to Van Helsing: man of science as crusading vampire hunter.

Peter Cushing delivers his most cold-blooded portrayal of the mad Baron in his fifth turn as Dr. Frankenstein. Abandoning his latest experiment after a drunk stumbles into his secret lab (upsetting a severed head) he hurriedly finds new lodgings with a sweet young thing (Hammer glamour babe Veronica Carlson) whose boyfriend (Simon Ward, in his film debut) works in the local sanitarium.

Britain's Hammer Studios had been making films for decades before they suddenly redefined themselves with this lurid remake of the Universal Studios horror classic. Prohibited by Universal from copying their blocky makeup (and their script, for that matter), Hammer returned to Mary Shelley's novel for inspiration, and then went in its own direction. Peter Cushing plays Dr. Frankenstein as the rational scientist turned cold-blooded criminal in his campaign to discover the secret of life, committing murder to further his ends, or to remove an inconvenient mistress.