British actress Veronica Carlson died at 77. She has been popular for starring in numerous Hammer horror movies, most famously with actor Christoper Lee in ‘Dracula Has Risen From The Grave’ and alongside actor Peter Cushing in ‘Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed’. Carlson died of natural causes at her home in Bluffton, South Carolina, her daughter, Carly Love, told The Hollywood Reporter.
For the unversed, London based Hammer Film Production Ltd. is a British film production company. It was founded in 1934, it best known for horror and fantasy films which were made in mid-1950 till 1970s. Classic horror characters such as Baron Victor, Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy. Hammer reintroduced vivid colour films for the first time.
The actress was born on Sept. 18, 1944, in Yorkshire, England. Carlson attended art school and graduated from High Wycombe College of Technology and Design. She had appeared in the 1967 films 'Casino Royale' and 'Smashing Time' when she was noticed by Hammer executive Jimmy Carreras, she had recalled the same in a 2014 interview.
She recalled in the 2014 interview, “I had a photograph of me coming out of the waves in a white bikini on the front page of a tabloid newspaper,” she said. “Jimmy Carreras saw that photograph and said he wanted me in his next ‘Hammer’ movie. So, I went for an audition and I ended up with ‘Dracula Has Risen From the Grave’.”
"Cushing got me through that awful rape scene that was thrown into [the movie],” she said talking about the famous scene from ‘Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed’. She added, “We worked on that together, and he resolved the problems as best he possibly could.”
She was also seen in a 1969 episode of actor Roger Moore‘s ‘The Saint’, starred on the 1972 ITV crime series ‘Spyder’s Web’ and worked with actor David Niven in the spoof ‘Old Dracula’ (1974).
