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Curse of the Werewolf, The Brides of Dracula, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell – some films from the height of Hammer Films’ prolific output in the late 1950s and 1960s. Many of the musical soundtracks were composed by leading British modernists of the late 20th century.

Hammer’s music supervisor Philip Martell hired the avant-garde composers of the day – the likes of Malcolm Williamson (later Master of the Queen’s Music), Elisabeth Lutyens, Benjamin Frankel and Richard Rodney Bennett all made a living scoring horror films alongside their concert hall work.

Prising open Dracula’s coffin to unearth the story of Hammer’s modernist soundtracks, composer and pianist Neil Brand explores the nuts and bolts of scary music – how it is designed to psychologically unsettle us – and explores why avant-garde music is such a good fit for horror.

On his journey into the abyss, Neil visits the haunted mansion where many of the Hammer classics were made, Bray Studios in Berkshire, and gets the low-down from Hammer aficionado Wayne Kinsey, film music historian David Huckvale, composer Richard Rodney Bennett, and one of Hammer’s on-screen scream queens, actress Madeline Smith.

Producer: Graham Rogers

First broadcast on Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio 4 in October 2022.