Stream It Or Skip It: ‘House of Hammer’ on Discovery+, A Docuseries That Reveals The Dark Past Of Armie Hammer’s Whole Family

Armie Hammer notoriously fell from grace in 2021 after he became the subject of an LAPD rape investigation. Along with that charge, a flood of kinky, violent messages from Hammer to several women he was involved with was released, revealing a side to him that was unsettling if not downright criminal. But as the attention on Hammer grew, so too did the interest in his wealthy, dysfunctional family, starting with his grandfather, billionaire oil tycoon Armand Hammer. The new Discovery+ series House Of Hammer explores the dark, manipulative backstories of all of the men in the Hammer family, revealing family secrets and generations of abuse that prove that the cycle of abuse in the family has not yet been broken.

HOUSE OF HAMMER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Alright, buckle your seat belt, this is going to be the bet,” actor Armie Hammer’s voice says in a voicemail message. “My bet was going to involve showing up at your place and completely tying you up and incapacitating you and then being able to do anything I wanted to every single hole in your body until I was done with you,” he says. This is one of the many messages and texts sent by Hammer to various women with whom he had relationships with, which was made public once his actions turned non-consensual and more violent, and it’s what kicks off the story of Hammer’s fall from Hollywood A-lister to, well, the subject of a true-crime documentary.

The Gist: “Every generation in my family has been involved in dark misdeeds,” Casey Hammer says. Casey, sister to Michael Hammer, aunt to Armie, wrote a book about her family called Surviving My Birthright, a title that hints at everything you need to know about her experience growing up with these people. With her participation, as well as the participation of women like Courtney Vucekovich and Julia Morrison who had relationships with Hammer, the docu-series details the rise of Armie’s career, his downfall as a result of his violent sexual appetite, and the way the men in his family have behaved contributed to his own “misdeeds.”

While the series promises a look into several generations of abuse and crime within the Hammer family, part one focuses exclusively on Armie. Having seen the texts and heard the voicemails Hammer sent to women, the film gives many of these women a platform to tell their side of the story, explaining how relationships that started of casually and fun eventually turned violent and leading many of them to run after brutal non-consensual sexual encounters. It’s revealed that Hammer’s taste for BDSM was an open secret before he was criminally investigated for rape, and the filmmakers do make a point of acknowledging that kink in its many forms – including being tied up, a particular vice of Hammer – is not in itself a bad thing. But kink is not the greater issue here, consent and violence are. (Gloria Allred, appearing as one of the film’s talking heads, explains, “Kink is not against the law. Rape is.”) One of his former partners, Paige Lorenze, a model, explained that in her opinion, “He used BDSM as a smokescreen to hurt women and inflict pain on women.” That’s it right there, that’s the distinction we needed.

In parts two and three, we hear directly from Casey Hammer about what it was like growing up amid such immense wealth and privilege, and how cruelly her grandfather Armand wielded his power of his family. As she describes in graphic detail being witness to the drug-fueled sex parties her father would throw with under-aged girls, she asks, “How do you know it’s wrong when that’s all you know?” Her family, and more specifically the men in her family, appear to have gone through life with limitless power and no conscience, a combination that, she claims, has perpetuated generations of sinister behavior.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Before the news of Armie Hammer’s behavior and sexual proclivities came out in 2021, Netflix released a documentary called Made You Look: A True Story of Fake Art, in which his father Michael’s New York art gallery was at the center of one of the largest art forgery scandals ever. Though entirely unrelated to Armie’s scandal, it’s a fascinating piece to the Hammer family puzzle. House of Hammer also reminded me of HBO’s The Vow in the way that Armie and his predecessors have used manipulation and their vast resources to control people in a brain-washy, gaslighting way to make them think everything they’re doing is normal and just fine.

Our Take: Part one of this docuseries focuses almost entirely on the scandal surrounding Armie Hammer, and there’s very little information revealed about the rest of his family in the first hour of the show. I’m going to assume that if you’re watching the docuseries, then you at least have a passing knowledge of the accusations against him, including the rape fantasies he described and his admission that he is “100% a cannibal.” While there are vivid firsthand descriptions from women like Courtney Vucekovich and Julia Morrison about their intimate moments with Hammer, the series is respectful toward these subjects and doesn’t ask them to share more than they’re comfortable with, but that also means that at times, there are details about things that Hammer did that are perhaps even more traumatic than we’re being told about.

Parts two and three get into deeper and more surprising revelations. TikTok user Lauren Skae (who goes by the handle @thezenblonde) takes some credit here for reading Casey Hammer’s book and then blasting many of the book’s details about growing up as a Hammer to her followers, resulting in millions of views and raising awareness of the family’s history. This is where we learn that Armand Hammer was a real Forrest Gump, having had ties to everyone important in the 20th century from Princes Charles and Princess Di to President Kennedy to Mikhail Gorbachev. We also learn how his son Julian was a physically and sexually abusive monster, and we dive deep into those gritty details of what it was like to be around such manipulative, powerful people.

What really works in the series are the firsthand accounts from people like Casey Hammer, who grew up in the family, and journalist Edward Epstein who spent quite a bit of time with Armand Hammer. The episodes also relies, perhaps a bit too heavily, on the TikTok videos posted by people like Skae, whose sleuthing certainly helped bring many of these anecdotes about the Hammers to light, but the TikToki-iness of it all takes away from this series feeling like hard-hitting investigative reporting.

Sex and Skin: There are many texts and voicemails depicting graphic, sexually violent fantasies that Armie Hammer sent to multiple women, as well as descriptions of traumatic sexual encounters.

Parting Shot: This is just where it starts to unfold. As part one of the docuseries winds down, we’re introduced to Casey Hammer, finally, who is ready to spill everything about her family’s f—ed up past.

Sleeper Star: Investigative journalist Edward Epstein, who profiled Armand Hammer for the New York Times and eventually would write the book The Secret History of Armand Hammer, is something of an authority on the Hammer family, having spent quite a bit of time with Hammer himself. His participation in parts two and three of the series lent an air of credibility to the stories behind the Hammers, as the access he was granted to them and materials they provided him seem invaluable to the story.

Most Pilot-y Line: “How did Armie Hammer go from Hollywood Golden Boy to alleged abuser?” a commentator asks during a montage of footage displaying Hammer’s texts and Tweets interspersed with red carpet images of him in (seemingly) more innocent times. It’s the question at the heart of the three-episode series, and one that has a darker, more upsetting answer than anyone could have imagined.

Our Call: STREAM IT. But look, this is a tough kind of documentary to recommend without some reservations. There are explicit descriptions of sexual assault. There are many mentions of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of several men in the family. And if you’re already aware of the accusations against Armie, I suggest skipping directly to episodes two and three because that’s where you’ll get to some of the more shocking anecdotes about other family members. But overall, House of Hammer is a fascinating, truth-is-stranger-than-fiction look at the way absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the way it can hurt people when no one calls it out for decades.