There’s a little more than three days until the premiere of Beyond the Rave on MySpace. Join their MySpace now to see it first!

The much cherished Hammer Horror film franchise is back with a very 21st-century tale of vampires.

Hammer Horror is back from the dead. Thirty-two years after its last diabolical despatch from the dark side (Christopher Lee disgracing the cloth as a heretic priest in To the Devil… a Daughter), one of the most cherished franchises in British film history is about to return with Beyond the Rave, a blood-spattered tale of vampires on the rampage among hardcore dance fans.

And, while the setting is bang-up-to-date (it’s infused, too, with allusions to the conflict in Iraq), the film is also at the cutting edge of distribution technology. It will be presented in 20 five-minute “webisodes” on the social networking website MySpace, before an eventual release on DVD, and will also be available to download.

A fresh-faced cast, including Jamie Dornan (Marie Antoinette) and Nora-Jane Noone (The Descent) in the lead roles, is augmented by cameo appearances by Sadie Frost, who appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Dracula, and 70-year-old Hammer Horror stalwart Ingrid Pitt (best remembered for The Vampire Lovers).

Veteran DJ/producer Pete Tong is credited with “curating” the music for the film.

Beyond the Rave is the story of Ed (Dornan), a British soldier due to fly out to Iraq, who spends his last day of freedom searching for his missing girlfriend (Noone), last seen in the company of a dubious band of rave devotees. He ends up at a dance party deep in a remote forest in the dead of night. There will be blood. Lots of it.

Dornan says he enjoyed the contrast with his previous role as Count Fersen in Sofia Coppola’s lavish biopic of the high-spirited French queen. “I had just come out of a nice family period drama, and that was partly why I wanted to do something like Beyond the Rave. I was also intrigued by the whole webisode thing.

“The shoot felt a lot faster than anything I’d done before. There was a real buzz on set because everything was so speedy. But then, if you’re going to make an impression in a five-minute episode, it’s got to be pretty sharp. It was new territory for everyone.”

And what about the lashings of gore and the ultra-violence? “Well, it was quite hard to take it seriously when you’re being attacked by a mad vampire wielding two samurai swords.”

Which again is in sharp contrast to Dornan’s next movie – the “all very pretty” Shadows in the Sun, due later this year and featuring the luminous, legendary Jean Simmons in the lead role.

The director of Beyond the Rave, Matthias Hoene, was faced with a variety of challenges in making the film, but a life-long love of Hammer helped him through his long, dark night of the lost souls. “I grew up watching Hammer,” he says. “It was always exciting to see that mix of horror and sexiness.”

The responsibility of bringing the franchise to 21st-century audiences is, he says, “massive”. “On the one hand there are the old fans who will always think that something new won’t be as good.

But we really wanted to do something fresh that would capture a young audience, so we set out to tell a story that’s thrilling and sexy and a bit shocking.”

In the end, he pushed the envelope a little too far and had to cut a couple of scenes (involving something he describes as “munching”) that were deemed unsuitable for MySpace, even though the site will be sticking to a rolling global watershed when the streaming starts. (The offending footage will, the director promises, be restored for the DVD release.)

However, the biggest problems Hoene faced during production stemmed from the restrictions imposed by the webisode format. “Normally in a feature film, you would spend the first 10 or 15 minutes setting up the characters and the background.

But in this project we had to ensure that every five minutes there would be character development, thrills, fun – the whole package that you’d expect from a full-length film. And, of course, not every episode could end in a cliffhanger – that would be too forced.”

But is there a danger that this sort of filmmaking becomes merely bite-sized entertainment? “I don’t think so,” says Hoene. “If you want to watch something short during your break or while you’re on the bus, if you want to be entertained for just a little while, it’s perfect.

“This is just another way of telling stories. Dickens wrote serialised stories – were they bad for being short? It can be a great format.”

Hoene is a passionate defender of the genre, too. “What I love about horror,” he says, “is that you can take certain serious subjects – political, social – and talk about them in an entertaining way that would be impossible in another sort of drama. You can deliver messages in a horror film that you couldn’t otherwise.

“If you made a straight film about genetic experiments, for instance, no one would go to see it. If you made a horror film with the same theme, a lot of people might. Do it intelligently and you’ll get your message across.”

Its presence on the internet affords Beyond the Rave a huge potential audience. “There is a real global element to it,” says Jamie Kantrowitz, a senior vice president at MySpace. “It is going to be released in 18 countries, in nine languages, at the same time.

“MySpace has 110m users worldwide, and this film is going to hit 90 per cent of our user base at some point or another.

“We are taking a traditional distribution format and turning it on its head. We’re not saying you have to sit and watch [the film] collectively; we’re saying that when you like it, you’re going to take it and make it your own, then your friends will find it. It’s like having a film on 110m cinema screens.”

Simon Oakes, Hammer Films chief and executive producer of Beyond the Rave, dismisses the suggestion that the joint project with MySpace is simply a marketing exercise. “This was not designed cynically; it was designed creatively,” he says.

“And it is not about the death of cinema. It’s actually the reverse. It is about making film available to people who don’t watch movies that often.

“Since the advent of DVD and the internet, cinema audiences have not decreased, they’ve gone up. The internet is a fantastic way of promoting motion pictures – just look at Cloverfield [the blockbuster that established a worldwide fanbase on the net months before it reached the big screen].

“People keep asking if doing Beyond the Rave means Hammer isn’t going to make feature films. The answer is no: our core business is feature films. However, it is essential that we become known to a younger generation.

“Hammer’s heyday was at a time when there was a real can-do attitude in British filmmaking,” says Oakes. And, with the rise of the internet as a means of distribution, he believes, there’s plenty of life in the undead yet.

‘Beyond the Rave’ will be broadcast on MySpaceTV from April 2. The DVD will be released in June.

Jamie Dornan is desperate to star in a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie.

The Northern Irish heartthrob – the ex-boyfriend of British actress Keira Knightley – revealed the ‘A Mighty Heart’ actress is his perfect leading lady.

He told BANG Showbiz: “I’d love to do a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie – she’s kind of flawless to me. I don’t think she’d want to do a romantic comedy with me though – I’m not sure that would be her bag!

“Sometimes I think it’s harder to be a leading man in a romantic comedy if you’re not English. I think the English do that really well – that sort of slightly camp, slightly pathetic thing. I’m not saying Colin Firth or Hugh Grant are pathetic – far from it! I think they are both great. But I would like to have a crack at it.”

Despite starring in Hammer Films’ first movie for 30 years, ‘Beyond The Rave’ – which is being shown in ‘webisodes’ on myspace.tv – Jamie insists he is not a fan of the horror genre.

He added: “No! I’m not a horror fan at all. I mean, I like them, but I would never go out of my way to see them, and would never call myself a horror fan. I enjoy the odd film. Now and again I see one I enjoy, I rarely watch one I don’t enjoy, but it’s just not really my scene. I’m not really as dark as that.”

Jamie Dornan is desperate to star in a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie.

The Northern Irish heartthrob – the ex-boyfriend of British actress Keira Knightley – revealed the ‘A Mighty Heart’ actress is his perfect leading lady.

He told BANG Showbiz: “I’d love to do a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie – she’s kind of flawless to me. I don’t think she’d want to do a romantic comedy with me though – I’m not sure that would be her bag!

“Sometimes I think it’s harder to be a leading man in a romantic comedy if you’re not English. I think the English do that really well – that sort of slightly camp, slightly pathetic thing. I’m not saying Colin Firth or Hugh Grant are pathetic – far from it! I think they are both great. But I would like to have a crack at it.”

Despite starring in Hammer Films’ first movie for 30 years, ‘Beyond The Rave’ – which is being shown in ‘webisodes’ on myspace.tv – Jamie insists he is not a fan of the horror genre.

He added: “No! I’m not a horror fan at all. I mean, I like them, but I would never go out of my way to see them, and would never call myself a horror fan. I enjoy the odd film. Now and again I see one I enjoy, I rarely watch one I don’t enjoy, but it’s just not really my scene. I’m not really as dark as that.”

The executive producer of the first Hammer horror film in more than 30 years has urged fans to move with the times.

Hammer Films chief executive Simon Oakes, who bought the company in May last year, promised to protect its cinematic legacy but insisted that the “nostalgic folklore” of 1950s horror films had to give way to modern trends.

Accordingly, instead of playing on big screens, new movie Beyond The Rave will air from April 17 in five-minute instalments on MySpace – as a joint venture with the social networking site – before being released as a feature film on DVD.

It is expected to reach some 100 million people in 19 countries and in nine different languages, and while the Hammer horrors of the 1950s and 1960s made household names of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in classics like Dracula, the new film – shot as a full-length film but released twice weekly on the internet – features Sadie Frost and sets vampires against a backdrop of a drug-fuelled rave.

Oakes defended the modern production, saying: “We have an opportunity to recalibrate the DNA of Hammer Films for the MySpace generation.

“Hammer will make theatrical motion pictures but an important part of our strategy is what we are doing with MySpace.”

Beyond The Rave’s cast also includes Jamie Dornan, Nora-Jane Noone, and Football Factory actor Tamer Hassan, who described his character as “like George Clooney’s in From Dusk Till Dawn”.

There is also a contribution from 1960s Hammer Films star Ingrid Pitt, who embraced the renaissance of Hammer Films, saying competition from American horror movies had “killed” the British company in the 1970s.

The 70-year-old said: “Hammer to me was my life and to see it in a completely different mode is a great idea.

“Hammer went very wrong when America made horror films – now it’s going to be completely different. We have a new baby.”

Next month sees the rebirth of one of British cinema’s most famous exports, Hammer Horror. The legendary studio, which hasn’t produced a movie for 30 years, has joined forces with MySpace to create a groundbreaking web event. The studio’s new movie Beyond The Rave will be premiered on the popular social network in a series of 20 ‘webisodes’ that collectively make a 90 minute movie, which will be released on DVD in June. The film, which stars Jamie Dornan, Sadie Frost and Hammer scream queen Ingrid Pitt, will be chock full of songs by the likes of Justice, Teenage Bad Girl, Deadly Avenger, Dustin Swint, along with original music by Pete Tong. This is Tong’s first foray into film music, who previously worked as music supervisor on Human Traffic, as well as producing the film It’s All Gone Pete Tong.

Hammer Studios’ Beyond The Rave launches globally on MySpace in April.

Early in 2008 the world will watch as soldier Ed’s nightmare unfolds in 20 terrifying episodes! You can watch the teaser trailer NOW! Hammer films presents a Pure Grass Films production ‘Beyond the Rave’. Ed is flying to Iraq in the morning and he wants to have it large and boy, is he gonna get it! After tracking his girlfriend, Jen down to a secret rave deep in the forest he realizes the terrible truth about the hard core party organizers too late.. Sex, death and bloodsucking rave tunes, ‘Beyond the Rave’ is a high-octane blend of kick-ass music and gruesomely enjoyable online terror.