Sir James Carreras; Producer of Low-Budget Horror Movies

Sir James Carreras, founding chairman of Hammer Films, a producer of horror pictures that frightened a generation of filmgoers and launched the careers of several top stars, has died.

A family death notice published Tuesday in London said he was 81 when he died on Saturday of a stroke at his home at Henley-on-Thames, west of London.

A mild-mannered family man, Carreras always said the ghastly monsters with which Hammer Films became associated were harmless, escapist entertainment.

Carreras built his company after World War II, and in the mid-1950s, with his producer-director son, Michael, began making the gruesome, low-budget horror films for which the British studio became famous.

His first big hit and the first Hammer film to be distributed in the United States was “The Quatermass Experiment,” based on a 1954 television science fiction series.

The success of that film inspired Carreras to look for material among the monsters that had been popular with film fans in the 1930s. He reincarnated Frankenstein, Dracula and other creepy characters of legend and novel who had faded from the screen.

“The Curse of Frankenstein” in 1956 struck an immediate chord with the public, who liked its fantastic sets, garish color and melodramatic plot.

Hammer films boosted the careers of two actors who became synonymous with escapist fare--Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

“Dracula,” with Lee in the title role and Cushing as Van Helsing, followed Frankenstein. Several sequels were made to each. Lee played Dracula in nearly a dozen films.

The Hammers also filled the screen with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes in “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

Carreras shunned the creative side of filmmaking, preferring the role of impresario. He inherited his showmanship from his father, Enrique Carreras, the owner of a chain of London movie theaters.

Carreras made inexpensive films that were the objects of critical scorn, but developed a strong cult following. The company did not hold press screenings but devoted resources and imagination to promotion.

In one typical Carreras-inspired stunt, coffins were carried through the streets to promote the opening of a horror film.

The Hammer company also produced pirate adventures, war epics, bloody thrillers and a peculiar prehistoric yarn, “One Million Years BC,” which helped make a star of a little-known American actress named Raquel Welch.

Even in the 1970s, films under Carreras rarely cost more than a modest 200,000 pounds ($336,000 at current exchange rates). At the studio’s height, it produced eight films a year.