News

It's safe to say that The Ugly Duckling (1959), a decidedly weak Hammer films comedy, would have been utterly forgotten, except that it was rumored to be lost for decades. This always seemed both weird and unlikely for a film from the latter half of the twentieth century, and one that had been released by Columbia in the U.K. and U.S., but the film was a flop and was certainly unavailable after its initial release, which granted it a certain mystique.Though a Hammer film, directed by Lance Comfort (who would also make the more earnest horror flick Devils of Darkness), and though based on "ideas stolen from Robert Louis Stevenson"—specifically The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—this is a broad, childish comedy, without many actual laughs, but it does have historical interest, and illuminates certain tendencies of Hammer and British films and society.Hulking...