Terence Fisher

Born in London and educated in Sussex, Terence Fisher served an apprenticeship in the merchant marine and as a junior officer for the P & O Lines. He worked briefly as a department-store window dresser, then joined Shepherd's Bush Studios as a clapper boy in 1930. Within six years, he graduated to film editor; 12 years later, he directed his first feature for the Rank Organisation, A Song for Tomorrow (1948). Fisher concentrated on romantic dramas until he joined Hammer Films in 1952, where he forged his reputation as a prime purveyor of low-budget, high-grossing horror pictures. Not all of Fisher's scare flicks were masterpieces, to be sure, but even non-fans of the genre have raised their hats to such stylish efforts as Horror of Dracula (1958), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Mummy (1959), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) and The Devil Rides Out (1960). Before he began keeping regular company with the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Terence Fisher was a prolific TV director, turning out several episodes of the internationally successful Robin Hood series of the 1950s.