Dr CP Lee
University of Salford
Human Flesh As The Currency of Discourse – Restraining Hammer's Horrors
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Scoring flesh, binding flesh, flogging, flailing and flensing flesh - key components of Hammer's ten year Gothic oeuvre - and yet, the torture and blood letting in many ways is as sedate as a vicar's tea party. This paper examines Hammer's horror output from two directions - Firstly, the aesthetic demands imposed upon the film-makers by the British film censor, and secondly through a socio-historical perspective which argues that socially, Britain during the period of the film's creation, was as constricted and strait-laced as any of the victims in Hammer's bloody out-put. Our conclusion might be that the mise-en-scene of the movies is little different from that of the English S and M scene of the time and by including a brief appraisal of contemporary bondage flicks of the period we will find links that are compellingly similar.
