Return of the heyday of horror - as Hammer films rises again

It means that new movies - and a prime-time television series - will be shot based on the Hammer Film Productions back catalogue. Hammer, Britain's oldest movie studio, has films going back to the Thirties.

Simon Oakes, one of the executives behind the takeover, told me how, when he was researching Hammer, he found hand-written documents from Arthur Conan Doyle in 1930 giving the company the right, at that time, to make the "moving motion picture of The Hound Of The Baskervilles".

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In its heyday between the mid-Thirties and early Eighties, Hammer made The Curse Of Frankenstein, Dracula, Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb and The Devil Rides Out, helping to turn Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee into stars.

Hammer also produced Quatermass And The Pit - and let's not forget One Million Years BC, with Raquel Welch.

There's gold in red blood.

"There's a tremendous opportunity to re-imagine the classic films with new productions," Oakes told me.

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Oakes and partner Marc Schipper will pump $50 million into Hammer productions thanks to a mammoth injection of capital from John de Mol, the savvy billionaire who developed Big Brother.

And many of the films and TV shows Oakes wants to make won't just be blood fests.

"The Hammer DNA is very broad - it's not just gorenography," he insisted. "Horror was also about fear and psychologiocal drama."

He and his associates, top movie producers Guy East and Nigel Sinclair, want to build up a list of star names to become synonymous with the reborn Hammer brand.