Jimmy Sangster

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James Henry "Jimmy" Kinmel Sangster (born December 2, 1927 in Kinmel Bay, Wales , † August 19, 2011 in London ) was a British director , screenwriter and writer , who was mainly through his manuscripts for the central horror film productions of Hammer Film Productions got known.

Life

Sangster came to film in 1941 as a second camera assistant. From 1946 to 1954 he worked on numerous films (including for Ealing Studios ) as an assistant director, including no fewer than 29 B-productions for Hammer, before he was promoted to production manager . After the enormous success of the SF thriller Schock , in which he had worked with the second unit for a few nights , he sat with the hammer producers Anthony Hinds and Michael Carreras and discussed possible further science fiction plots. Thirty minutes later he was hired by Hinds as a screenwriter for XX unknown : "If we like it, we'll pay you. If we don't, tough shit. You're still on the payroll as a production manager so what have you got to lose. "

With his manuscripts for the remakes of famous horror film classics such as Frankenstein's Curse , Dracula and The Revenge of the Pharaohs , which were staged by Terence Fisher , he was instrumental in the success story of the small British production company towards the end of the 1950s. Fisher paid him respect in the early 1970s. Regarding the great success of the Gothic horror film Frankenstein's Curse , he said: "The greatest credit ought to go to Jimmy Sangster, who wrote the scripts and managed to make the original story so cinematic".

Early on, Sangster, who occasionally wrote scripts for other production companies, switched to writing psychological thrillers for Hammer that gave him more pleasure than the Gothic horror films. His first script in this direction was The Snorkel in 1958 . Films such as A Dead Plays the Piano or House of Horror followed , often directed by Sangster's close friend Freddie Francis . His sixth and final "Mini-Hitchcock" for Hammer was The Fear , which Sangster himself directed. The film was also Sangster's third and last directorial work after the parodistic Frankenstein's horror , the script revision of which he had only taken on under the premise of being allowed to produce and direct, and Only Vampire Kiss Bloody , where he stood in for the accident Terence Fisher at extremely short notice and had no influence on the script or cast. All three directorial works by Sangster are considered to be of little significance.

In the early 1970s, Sangster moved to Los Angeles, where he worked primarily as a script consultant and occasionally as a screenwriter on television series such as Cannon , The Boss , Columbo , The Night Hunter and The Six Million Dollar Man . From time to time he also wrote television and feature films before more or less retired in the 80s. He had already started writing detective novels in the 1960s, two of which were filmed for American television. By 1987 a total of eight novels from his pen appeared. Touchfeather (1968) and Touchfeather, Too (1970) have also appeared in German under the titles Die Lady flieg zum Hölle and Die Lady im Goldsarg .

In 1977 Sangster was awarded the Golden Scroll, the predecessor of the Saturn Awards , by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for his career as a screenwriter .

In the 1990s, a German production company acquired an old, unfilmed script from Sangster, which he slightly revised. After another extensive revision by Natalie Scharf , with which Sangster was only partially satisfied, the German thriller Flashback - Murderous Holidays 2000 came into the cinemas with modest success.

Jimmy Sangster, whose first marriage to Hammer hairdresser Monica Hustler and third marriage to actress Mary Peach , wrote an autobiography that appeared in 1997 and a book published in 2001 of his memories of working for Hammer Film Productions.

Filmography

bibliography

  • 1967: Private I
  • 1968: Foreign Exchange
  • 1968: Touchfeather (dt. The lady flies to hell )
  • 1970: Touchfeather, Too (German: The Lady in the Gold Coffin )
  • 1971: Your Friendly Neighborhood Death Pedlar
  • 1986: Snowball
  • 1987: Blackball
  • 1988: Hardball
  • 1999: Do You Want It Good or Tuesday? From Hammer Films to Hollywood! A Life in the Movies (autobiography)
  • 2001: Inside Hammer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cifinow.co.uk
  2. ↑ Anthony Hinds quoted. to: Jimmy Sangster: Do You Want it Good or Tuesday? From Hammer Films to Hollywood. A Life in the Movies . Midnight Marquee Press, Baltimore 1997, ISBN 1-887664-13-0 . P. 31.
  3. ^ The House of Horror. The Story of Hammer Films. Edited by Allen Eyles, Robert Adkinson, Nicholas Fry. London 1973. p. 14.
personal data
SURNAME Sangster, Jimmy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sangster, James Henry Kinmel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Kinmel Bay, Wales
DATE OF DEATH August 19, 2011
Place of death London