Jimmy Sangster

I interviewed Jimmy Sangster, last year at the 50th Anniversary of the Curse of Frankenstein which he wrote the script for. He starts off by telling me the reference book that I am carrying around with me ‘A Thing of Unspeakable Horror’ by Sinclair McKay is on the whole a good book, but it has one or two glaring errors in it.

Jimmy: Well he’s made a couple of screaming howlers .

Johnny: What were those?

Jimmy: Well, he said ‘the late Tony Hinds’ – I only had lunch with Tony last week! He was late, but only five minutes late, he wasn’t dead late. He also talks about ‘X: The Unknown’ starring Dean Stockwell but it wasn’t Dean Stockwell.(It was Dean Jagger) I started writing these mistakes down; he also says that Tony Keys’ nickname was ‘A Bunch of Keys’ and it wasn’t. There were three Keys brothers Anthony Nelson Keys, Basil Keys (an assistant director) and John Paddy Carstairs (writer, artist and director) were the three sons of Nelson Keys; a 1930’s movie and music hall director, so those three boys were known as ‘The Bunch of Keys.’ So, there were many mistakes and the late Tony Hinds. (laughs)

Johnny: The five minutes late Tony Hinds. (laughter) You came to Hammer with the first film, ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ which you wrote, and it was a film that came out of nowhere, people were still coming to terms with the horrors of coming out of the Second World War. Why did you think that it was time to give this film to the British public in such a brutal and uncompromising way?

Jimmy: I didn’t Jim Carreras did, he asked me if I would like to write it and I said sure.

Johnny: But surely you brought an unflinching rawness to the story.

Jimmy: I read the book and I wrote the best story I could think of. The villain is the Baron and not the monster, which has always been the other way around – but really the monster can’t help himself. Then I wrote ‘Dracula’ and the same thing applied, then I did two more and then I did ‘The Mummy’. No more gothic.

Johnny: Why do you think that people latch onto the Hammer films with such fondness? Here we are at the 50th bash celebrating it and people are as still fanatic and lovingly protective of them as ever.

Jimmy: They were good movies, they were the sort of movies that they don’t make any more. Horror movies these days are slasher movies, I hate slasher movies, these were fairy stories – once upon a time, high on a mountain in a village with a castle in the background etc. They were gentle horror films.

Johnny: Now Hammer Horror has been taken over and there’s talk of maybe of bringing some new films out. Do you think they would have to go back to the period films, or would the only way forward would be to bring new, fresh ideas to the fore?

Jimmy: It would have to be new fresh ideas. You’re never going to be able to improve on the old; a lot of people have tried to – Coppolla and Kenneth Brannagh.

Johnny: Coppolla who did Dracula and Brannagh who did Frankenstein.

Jimmy: They were both terrible. I didn’t see much point in trying to make those because Hammer made them much better.

Johnny: Okay, I’ll leave that there, thank you very much for that.

Jimmy: Not at all. Thank you.

FOOTNOTE:

There were a couple of more questions that I wanted to ask Jimmy but forgot to in all of the excitement of the day, so I sent him an email and these are his answers:

Johnny: How did you get your first break as a director; what were your first films and if you've watched the films recently - is there anything that your older and wiser self would tell or advise the young Jimmy?

Jimmy: I was asked to rewrite a Frankenstein script....I said no thanks. They said I could produce it as well......again, no thanks. Finally they said I could direct it....I said yes. It turned out to be not very good. The next one I directed (LUST FOR A VAMPIRE) turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. And the 3rd, FEAR IN THE NIGHT turned out to be mediocre. So I packed it in and went to America and into TV.

Johnny: Have you had any other instances of biographers getting it wrong when trying to write about the Hammer story?

Jimmy: Everybody gets something wrong someplace.

Johnny: Are you still actively writing nowadays, and if not what pursuits do you enjoy following?

Jimmy: No...I am not still writing. I don't do much of anything. Shit! I'm 80, I'm entitled to put my feet up.

Jimmy has written two books, 'Do You Want it Good or Tuesday' and 'Inside Hammer.'

©allthingshorror 2008

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CONTACT: johnny@allthingshorror.co.uk