THE HAMMER VAMPIRE is an in-depth examination of how a tiny film studio on the banks of the Thames changed a genre forever. Hammer may not have invented the vampire film, but its technicians and actors certainly perfected it. The screen vampire as we know and love it today, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Twilight and True Blood, would not have existed in its present form but for a series of sixteen Gothic horror films produced by Hammer between 1958 and 1974.Hammer's greatest contribution to the vampire film may have been in its evolution of the female of the species the seductive vampire woman, who ultimately proved to be far more deadly than the male...