It! (1967)

Herbert J. Leder set out to do what any good producer and director should do, which is copy a winning formula and hope to make money off of it. The winning formula in this case was Hammer's brand of horror films. Hammer had not only cornered the market in England - although Amicus and Tygon had a bit of success riding their coattails - but had done so in the U.S. as well, despite heavy competition from American International. The blend of blood and sex was just the thing for a generation that was starting to come into its own and a film industry that was leaving its old ways behind. It! also owes quite a bit to something much older that Hammer. Paul Wegener was an early film director and makeup artist who had a hit in 1915 with his horror film Der Golem . Now lost except for some scenes of the ending, it told of the modern-day rediscovery of a creature that had been created to protect the Jewish ghetto in Prague against a pogrom. In Wegener's movie it...