Hammer Films is back, and Simon Oakes – CEO of the revamped studio – recently sat down to answer a few questions in a meet-and-greet/roundtable discussion at the company’s Beverly Hills digs. The legendary studio, known in its heyday as “Hammer Horror” due to the lengthy series of Gothic fright films it produced mostly during the `50s, `60s and `70s, will be returning after an extended hiatus this year with psychological thriller The Resident, starring Hilary Swank. Also on tap: Let Me In, the Matt Reeves-directed American remake of Swedish art house sensation Let the Right One In, which is currently in post-production.
During the conversation, Oakes took us through the company’s mission, which is to produce quality, mid-to-high budget (for horror) genre films that will stay true to the studio’s origins. So, can we expect a remake of Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde anytime soon? How about The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires? Also, how does he respond to public skepticism regarding Let Me In, which many see as an unnecessary remake to an already very well-known foreign horror film? And just what are his views on “torture porn”? Read on to find out the answers to all these questions, and more. Just remember: he’s a studio executive. Keep your “bullshit radar” on high alert.

Q: I was curious to know whether you think the general public is unaware of Let the Right One In, and that’s why you felt it needed an American remake?

Very good question, and the right one to ask. We saw that very early. I’m English, I’m a European. I see a lot of pictures coming out of Scandinavia, out of France, out of Germany, [as] you can imagine. So we saw it very, very early on. We thought it was astonishing, because we thought it was a love story, we thought it was Stand by Me meets The Exorcist. We thought it was just special and wonderful. We never in a million years thought – or knew – cause you could never guess it would get the critical acclaim that it did. Particularly in the United Kingdom, where it was actually a hit movie. It did great grosses.

But at the same time, the reality is that only I think something like 22 to 23 percent of its entire box-office in the U.S. came from one theater. So I was always of the view that this was a beautiful story. I knew the original book, which was a lot harder, as you guys would know. A lot more risqué if you like, more controversial. The story was so great and so beautiful that it should be seen by a bigger audience. So I was always saying to myself, well, people in Manhattan have seen it, guys like you [referring to myself and the rest of the reporters], you know, because it’s in your wheelhouse. In New York, in Chelsea, in Notting Hill in London, whatever. But no one in Glasgow, or Edinburgh, or Bristol, or, you know, Idaho or Pittsburgh have seen this film. And it’s a story that needs to be seen by a wider audience.

And then it came down to, well, then how do you achieve that, by paying homage to the original? Number one: get a very sensitive, smart director who sort of got it, in Matt [Reeves]. You know, frankly not to muck about the basic tenets of the story, which is important, probably more than anything else. And stay true to the imagery and mystique and mythology of the original. And set it in the right time as well. Not update it in terms of its timing. Set it in…’79 or ’81 or wherever that was…And I think probably then find kids who could stand up to – and if not be as good as – I hate to say, be as good as or better than the wonderful children that were in the original. And we did do that. And it’s quite interesting, had we not done that, it would’ve been a very difficult thing. Could two kids pull it off with that sort of knowingness that those two children had, that sort of quiet knowingness that Oscar had and Abby had. And in Chloe [Moretz]…and Kodi [Smit-McPhee] from The Road and various other things, are absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. So that was the other important thing.

Q: It was interesting how you found a counterpoint in the Southwest setting in the U.S. to the desolate landscape in the first film. That’s interesting, but then also Chloe – you mentioned the quietness of the two leads in the first film – one thing that intrigues me about her is she seems to be kind of like a different take [than the original actress]. Because the screen persona she’s generated has been a little…

Not when you see her in the film. No, because if you think about her in Kick-Ass of course you’d think that, quite naturally. But no, she had the same stillness, same quietness, same control. When it comes to setting, that sort of outskirts of Stockholm, wherever that place is, we thought about that town from nowhere. Do you remember in the scene in E.T., when suddenly this sort of quiet environment is being shattered, when the government guys come with their suits, and suddenly this small little house has got this huge white tunnel where they’re all coming in, and it’s the juxtaposition of the strangeness of that and the very ordinariness of the home environment that the kids lived in. So we wanted to create the same idea that within this very ordinary Southwest [town], extraordinary things were happening. This girl comes into – this vampire – comes into this world and affects a kid in his daily life and his relationship with these bullies…so we tried to find what would that match be? Rather than just say, `well, let’s just go to some snowy environment somewhere’, you know, we will try and place it in that juxtaposition.

Q: You mentioned the provocative elements of the original. What were the adjustments you had to make in adapting it for the U.S. version?

Well, without being so pretentious in English, for start[ers]. But frankly not that much, to be honest with you. If you say “remake”, I think that’s true to say. That’s what it is. It’s not a reimagining. [It has] the same beats, maybe the scares are a little bit more scary. We’ve been able to ramp that up quite a lot, obviously for budgetary reasons. We’ve played a little with some of the chronology, without giving too much away. But fundamentally – I mean, [it has] higher production values. You know, Tomas Alfredson did a phenomenal job. I have actually no idea what his budget was in Sweden, but I can imagine what it was…[our movie had] a longer shooting period, more coverage, more effects –

Q: Was there ever any thought to put back in any of the more challenging elements from the book [referring specifically to an explanation in the novel which established Eli had once been a boy but had been castrated] that were kept out of the Swedish film?

I think I know what you mean, and absolutely not. I think in the book it’s very disturbing, the implications. And I think they should be left in the book, which is astonishing. I mean, John [Ajvide Lindqvist, the author] is an amazing writer. I don’t know if any of you have read Handling the Undead, which is his book following this. He’s an original thinker. But I don’t think [the more challenging elements] actually lend anything to the movie. In fact [they] detract from it. I mean, I think there are implications, there are suggestions, aren’t there? I mean, the famous line, “Will you go steady with me?”, [followed by the answer] “I’m not a girl.” Well, that could mean a million things. What she means is…what does she mean? Does she mean she’s not a girl, she’s a vampire? Does it mean she’s not a girl, she was a girl? Was a boy? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think you leave ambiguity there. I think also you don’t talk down and spoon-feed the audience that are going to see this movie. I don’t think that needs to happen…

…I think to start with, a lot of people were sort of quite negative about [the American remake] happening, they loved the movie so much. But gradually as we started – when Matt came on board, and then Kodi and Chloe, and so on – gradually people sort of started to move towards the middle and say, “You know what? This is good, this is great. Let’s reserve judgment until we see the final product.” And I think that’s what’s happening now. And there’s a whole bigger audience out there as well who will have never seen the project anyway. So I’m not too worried about that.

Q: What made Matt [Reeves] the right director?

…We just immediately fell in love with Matt and his take on it. He loved the original. So you felt that he was gonna honor it, which was very important…This needed someone to say, “I love this film, I want to remake this film now, and I want it to be seen by a bigger audience. And I know how I’m gonna do it and have a feel for the material.” He’s astonishing…he’s a fantastic intellect, great imagination –

Q: His pedigree is sort of that “found footage” aesthetic on account of Cloverfield. Was this an opportunity either for him or for you guys to give him a chance to do something different?

I think it’s a very different aesthetic [than Cloverfield]. Because at the end of the day, you could make this movie and never use the word “vampire”. You could say this is a love story between two kids…I think an understanding of genre helps, because there’s obviously some big set piece genre moments in it, and you know that he’s got the chops to do it. But really I think it’s because he’s a storyteller. He knows how to tell a story. I mean, if you think of Cloverfield, and you think of the technical difficulty in maintaining the focus on story in a film like that, with the way he shot it. That was brilliant, to be able to do that. To keep us there. To keep us watching, to keep us engaged, and so on and so forth. So I think one of Matt’s great qualities is that he is a genuinely great storyteller.

Q: What’s the audience that you’re going for with Let Me In?

Well, big as possible. Look, what I think is, I think that the fanboy base, the people that you guys interact with on a daily, weekly basis, they will all come and see this movie. And they will all come with preconceptions – some good, some bad…I think this will be an R-rated picture, I should think. So I’m thinking, you know I’m thinking it’s a pretty young demographic, to be honest with you. But we’re only at the beginning stage of our marketing, because part of it is…getting it out as a love story. You know, a redemptive love story.

Q: Is there a chance that it might be cut down to a PG-13 rating?

I don’t know. I mean, we’re just…in the first week of post. There are different rules as well, you know, in the States…I mean, it’s amazing that Kick-Ass got a “12” [rating in the U.K.]. Just unbelievable. Where you’ve got a 12-year-old girl using the “c” word and cutting people’s heads off. You know what I mean? It’s like, how did that happen? I think in this country, I think it’s slightly more difficult to get the rating that you’d like to get.

Q: When you guys were shooting the violence, was Matt free to do whatever he wanted, or was he directed to tone it down?

No, he could do what he wanted…I think the story lends itself to the right type of action, right type of scares. And also, it’s like, when you’re dealing with that…I mean, we have a picture we’re making this year called The Woman in Black, which is a famous novella, and then a play that’s run forever…Jane Goldman is writing it for us, who did Kick-Ass and so forth. When you’re dealing with something like that, which is a classic ghost story, and you’re dealing with the supernatural, in a sense you can sort of get away with more. You can get a better rating, probably, for your movie, because of the suspension of disbelief. When you’re dealing with a story like this, which although it is a vampire story in part, it’s so realistic – there’s so much super-realism about it – then you’re always gonna have a problem with the rating, because it just crosses that boundary, you know?

Q: How do you think Let Me In factors into the spirit that you want to re-launch Hammer with?

Well I think – I talked to some of you guys before about this – I mean, when I bought Hammer, this venerable British studio which basically sort of invented the modern horror film in a way [before] it got taken…over by the “urban myth” films of the `70s like The Exorcist and The Omen, etc. I thought to myself, “Ok, we’re gonna reboot this baby, and we’re gonna make it relevant now for a modern audience. But what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take the tropes that Hammer was famous for.” So things like, what we call the “walking dead” or the vampire lore. Or in fact, the “mini-Hitchcocks” that it made between ’58 and ’63 like The Nanny and Scream of Fear…The Fanatic, et cetera, et cetera. So find a natural DNA link between what Hammer did before and what Hammer will do now.

I know your direct question is on Let Me In, but on say The Resident, for example, that’s part of that “mini-Hitchcock” period. A psychological thriller, “elevated horror” we call it…you may have noticed, I don’t call it “Hammer Horror”, I just call it “Hammer”. So it gives it the breadth to sort of do stuff that maybe we couldn’t do otherwise. And then The Woman in Black would be like the walking dead, and like The Mummy, and all that stuff that happened, you can see it in the book…and then Let Me In [is] a modern take on vampire lore…the idea of a vampire living within the context of an urban environment, and just being there. As opposed to the vampire stories of the `70s, where there was more of a mythological quality to it, like Dracula.

So that was our thinking behind it. And as we go on and we do more pictures, I mean we have a film called The Quiet Ones, which is about a group of scientists in the `70s based in Cambridge…and they’re brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. And they’re supposed to working on DNA, and working on computers, and they [say], “We’re not gonna do this anymore, we’re gonna create a poltergeist. That’s what we’re gonna do…we’re gonna do something that no one else has ever done before.” And that fits into another part of Hammer’s supernatural/sci-fi history through Quartermass and all those sort of [films].

Q: I’m curious to know about Christopher Lee being in The Resident. Is that just a cameo?

It’s a cameo. Chris plays Max’s [Jeffrey Dean Morgan] [grand]father…and it’s funny actually, when we were looking at the cast for this, I was thinking, “We’ve gotta get Christopher to be in the first Hammer picture for 37 years or whatever”…he’s called August. It’s a small part, but it’s not stunt casting. It’s a proper part…he lives in the building in the apartment with him. And it’s great, actually. I don’t want to give it away, but the reveal, when you first see him, is fantastic. People are gonna go crazy, particularly in England.

Q: How much of a focus is there going to be on remaking old Hammer titles?

Almost none at all, in the sense that we would never remake. We might re-imagine. You know, one of the first questions I was asked when we bought the company was, `Are you gonna remake all of those old Hammer films?” And I said, “well, why would you do that?” Because in a sense they almost were of their time. They sort of almost became old-fashioned as they came up to the end of that period of time when they were making those pictures. Because at the same time that Dracula A.D. was being made, The Omen was being made. And think about that difference in terms of style [between the old Hammer films]…and the “urban myth” movies. But there are the most amazing characters in here that we want to re-imagine, like Quatermass, like Kronos.

Q: Kronos is one of the most underrated films ever.

We’re gonna do Kronos, yeah…[but] what would he be like today? What would he look like today? The great thing about him, of course, is that he’s a vampire, but not a vampire. He has all the traits of a vampire, he never ages, [but] not a vampire. So there are so many things you can do with that. So we have some characters in here that we are going to sort of reboot, and those are two of them. And then we’ve got a couple of other titles, like The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, that we’re planning on re-imagining…mind you, [we’re] always open to ideas. Because what we always find is…there’s always people that know more about this than I do. Always. [Like], “ok, have you thought about this?”

Q: The one that I’d like to see is Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

Funny you should say that. [Laughs]…my lips are sealed.

Q: So you’re basically saying that your focus is more taking these characters and –

Repurposing them. Doing a new Quatermass movie, doing a new Kronos movie. You know, not remaking the same film…but saying, “what would the Kronos movie of 2011 look like, or Quatermass of 2012?” Maybe some of these characters should live in television as well, particularly Quatermass, which I’m thinking about at the moment. What I love about Quatermass is that he was the government’s chief scientist. Science is cool. Everyone’s into science, you know? So what would he be doing now? In the original Quatermass…he was sort of like a classic character, like a “Bourne” or a “Bond”, who had two masters, if you like. Both of which are trying to fuck with his head. One are his masters, which in Bourne’s case is the C.I.A., or MI-6 in Bond’s case, and [by] the same token, the enemy, they’re fucking with him. And they end up being this person who’s sort of alone.

And that’s what Quatermass was always like, he was always prescient. He was always ahead of his time. A lot of Tom Kneale’s [aka Nigel Kneale, the creator of the Quatermass films] work was about the damaging of the environment, and he used the alien thing as a sort of metaphor to say what we’re doing to our planet. Which is quite interesting. I met him shortly before he died – and I’m friendly with his widow – and it’s amazing…so there’s a lot of rich material in there that we can re-think. But the issues he’d be dealing with in 1957, compared to what they would be today. That’s the thing. That’s where we have to use our imagination.

Q: Do you control the entire Hammer library?

What we do is we control everything in the sense that we also have blocking rights. So in some cases we control titles entirely, and in some cases other people have distribution rights of which we’re a beneficiary, but we don’t distribute ourselves. In some cases, we have co-ownership of rights with studios. Because the company is so old, you can imagine, [if] you made a picture in the `50s, and that company that made the picture got sold to that company, and to that company, and to that company. And suddenly you find you end up with a picture with Warner Bros., Canal and Fox. That can happen. So I’ve taken a very practical view about it. If there’s a title that we co-own with the studios, if we put a package together that is so compelling that there would be no reason why you wouldn’t say, “let’s go and make this”, then [we’ll] do so. But otherwise, just let it lie. Let it lie where it is, and move on. There are a few things like that.

Q: Does that extend to the home video aspect of it as well?

No, various different companies have home video rights. Warner Bros. have some, Optimum have some in the U.K., Canal have some. And we always encourage them to sort of get out and get these out as box sets and so forth. I mean, we’re putting together at the moment – I don’t know whether you saw the box set of the 21 Classics – we’re putting together some new box sets in themes right now. And what we’re doing is we’re pulling them from the various distributors. For them, we’re doing the work. It’s found money, but what it does is it gets the brand out there again.

I mean, one of the other things that I’m fascinated by, and the space that you guys are in, is that, you know, 16, 17 year old, 18 year old, 19 year old, young kids in the U.S. [starting] to look at Hammer. And they go, “What’s this? No one told me about this. What’s this company?”…you know. Obviously some of the real fans will know about it, but a lot of people will never have heard of it, and they’ll go, “Well, what’s that movie? What’s The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires? What’s Jekyll and Sister Hyde? What’s The Quatermass Experiment?” You know, woah. That’s really cool I think. I love to know whether or not that’s…because part of the thing is to…with the movie’s we’re making, and we’ve got two big Hammer films coming out this year in the U.S., [is] how we maximize getting that message across, that this is a great studio that we’re rebuilding. A great brand that we’re rebuilding.

Q: Any chance we might finally see Vampire Circus on DVD?

[He looks to his associate behind him] You wanna make a note of that? I will let you know…we will get a copy for you. [Laughs]

Q: You’ve said before that Hammer will not make torture porn.

Yes.

Q: Can you elaborate on that philosophy?

Well first of all…look, I saw the first Saw and that was great. And then it became a franchise, and then it’s become what it’s become. And I’m very friendly with John and Lionsgate and all that, and it’s fine. I just don’t think it’s what Hammer does. I don’t think it’s what Hammer ever did. I don’t think it’s within the genres that Hammer created if you like, or was part of. So I don’t see what I call “gore-nography”, or torture porn, or slasher pictures, I don’t think…I also think, to be honest with you, my personal view is that it’s a footnote in the genre, in the horror genre. To me, it’s a footnote. I think, you know, [in] 20 or 30 years time it will be forgotten by comparison to the other…it’s a broad genre, you know. It’s Polanski, it’s Hitchcock, it’s Kubrick. And onwards. So that’s just my personal view.

Q: When I think of Hammer horror films, I think of very personal stories, character-driven stories. But we’re sort of in an era where it has to be a blockbuster to get in all the theaters, etc. So I’m wondering what the new Hammer’s focus is gonna be. Because Let Me In, if you’ve seen the original, it’s an art film. But in this day and age, I guess fanboys are worried that Let Me In is gonna become a “googolplex” film. Can you speak to that?

Well look, you know, I think that movies find their own feet in a sense. And I think The Resident, for example, is a commercial psychological thriller. I think Let Me In…you know, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Cause I said Stand By Me meets The Exorcist. It’s got art house credentials, but it’s got a commercial filmmaker at the helm. And it’s also got a great story. And I think it will be…I don’t think it’s…again, I don’t want to speak for our U.S. distributor Overture, where I’ve just been this morning. But I think it will be a wide release, but it’s not gonna be 3