Australian-born Roy Ashton was the man behind Hammer's most famous
monsters of the 1960's. In Britain from 1932, he attended the School of
Arts and Crafts in London, and then spent five years with Gaumont
British under the tutelage of a German make-up artist from Ufa. In
1942, Ashton qualified for a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music,
which fulfilled a long-standing ambition. He would remain forever
conflicted between his love of singing and his work as a make-up
artist. Following World War II, he became principal tenor at Covent
Garden and an alumnus and co-founder of
Benjamin Britten's Opera Group,
understudy to Peter Pears. At first, his
film work provided the money to allow him to indulge his passion for
performing in concerts, but, by the
mid-1950's, he began to realise that movies provided a more reliable - and substantial - source of income.
Ashton joined Hammer at Bray Studios in 1957, assisting Philip Leakey,
the resident supervising make-up artist on two of the 'big ones':
Frankensteins Fluch (1957)
and Dracula (1958). He succeeded Leakey
as head of the department upon the latter's departure in 1959. During
the next seven years, Ashton worked (often out of his own home in
Surrey) on some of the most fondly remembered Hammer horrors, including
Die Rache der Pharaonen (1959) (for which he created
a concealed zipper at the back of the costume, which enabled
Christopher Lee to extricate
himself from his cumbersome 'bandages'),
Schlag 12 in London (1960),
Der Fluch von Siniestro (1961),
Die brennenden Augen von Schloss Bartimore (1964) and
Das schwarze Reptil (1966) (the scaly
creature make-up for this one came from a plaster cast of genuine Boa
Constrictor skin). He earned his reputation for creativeness and
realism through a well-organised methodology. Detailed conceptual
sketches would follow meticulous anatomical research, long hours spent
examining specimens at the British Museum and the Natural History
Museum on Cromwell Road. That said, Ashton was equally instrumental in
showing Hammer's
'scream queens', especially Barbara Shelley
and Ursula Andress, to best possible
advantage. Ashton left Hammer late in 1965 and free-lanced for other
companies, including Disney. Though he was, reputedly, no huge fan of
the horror genre, he nonetheless proved unable to escape it. Indeed,
some of his best later work included
Asylum (1972) and
Geschichten aus der Gruft (1972)
made for Amicus, and
Nachts, wenn das Skelett erwacht (1973) for
Tigon/World Film. Ashton retired in 1988, having left a legacy as one
of the great innovators in monster make-up.
