Spirituality in horror films remembered

Hammer Films, the iconic British company known for its Gothic horror films in the 1960’s is back on screen. The vampire movie Let Me In was released this weekend, the first movie bearing the Hammer name in over 30 years. Yet many critics claim the new film does not have the same depth of the films released in the studio’s glory days.

“You could think of [the earlier Hammer films] as allegories. They have both the element of fantasy, but also the element of spirituality,”says Reverend Paul Leggett, the author of Terence Fisher: Horror, Myth and Religion and a pastor at Grace Presbyterian Church in Montclair, New Jersey.

Terrence Fisher was a prominent director at Hammer Films.

Reverend Leggett says Fisher, a devout Anglican, thought he was making fairy tales for adults.

“Fisher has this kind of view that the world has been redeemed by Christ, but evil is still very active in it,” he says. “In Fisher’s world, the Cross is everywhere – which is interesting – the Cross comes out of everywhere: candlesticks, windmills, swords.”

Reverend Leggett says newer horror films have left in Evil, but forgotten about the Good.

He told Vatican Radio the earlier Hammer Films “came out of a world where Christianity was being questioned. We live in a world where Christianity is being ignored… I think you end up with a very perverted kind of view if you think that only evil is real.”

Listen to Rev. Paul Leggett's full interview with Charles Collins: