Rungs on a Ladder
Hammer Films Seen Through a Soft Gauze
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Book Presentation:
Rungs on a Ladder looks at part of the movie industry from a unique perspective. Christopher Neame, son of director Ronald, started his career (in the early 1960s) at the very bottom, but determinedly made his way to the top. Neame fondly recalls his learning years at Bray Studios and beyond. Simply and often amusingly, he recounts his days with Hammer Films and observes many of the characters both in front of and behind the camera-names synonymous with those classic tales of Gothic horror: director Terrence Fisher, producers Anthony Hinds, Michael Carreras and Anthony Nelson Keys, screenwriter/producer Jimmy Sangster, and of course, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Along the way, he encounters those less obviously connected to Hammer like Joan Fontaine, Joseph Cotten, Norman Lloyd, and Bette Davis. Never the one to reserve his critical eye for others alone, Neame willingly says mea culpa when deserved. The book begins with his rude awakening to the "string and sealing wax" world of Dracula Prince of Darkness and follows his journey through sixteen subsequent productions including three Frankensteins, The Devil Rides Out (which American distributors thought was going to be a Western!), and a couple of Mummy films. Neame also shares stories of his participation in non-genre ventures like Quatermass and the Pit, The Anniversary, Demons of the Mind and Fear in the Night.
Includes 16 pages of photos.
About the Author:
Christopher Lee (born 1941) is a British writer, historian and broadcaster. A former BBC defence and foreign affairs correspondent and Quatercentenary Fellow in Contemporary History and sometime Gomes lecturer at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he is author or editor of 26 books and is the originator and writer of the BBC Radio 4 trilogy This Sceptred Isle, which recounts the history of Britain from the Romans to the death of Queen Victoria, the 20th century and the British Empire. His recent books include the three accompanying volumes of This Sceptred Isle. In 2011 he published a single-volume abridgment of Winston Churchill's four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
Press Reviews:
"...brilliantly informative...Buy the book - it's highly recommended." ―The House That Hammer Built
"...one of the best books yet about the company, written by someone who was actually there working behind the scenes during the period when they were producing some of their best films....essential if you're a fan of Hammer." ―Www.Hammerbooks.Net
"A must for those into vintage fantastic films." ―Uk Science Fact and Science Fiction News
> On a related topic:
Hammer Goes to Hell (2024)
The House of Horror's Unmade Films
Hammer Complete (2023)
The Films, the Personnel, the Company
The Women of Hammer Horror (2021)
A Biographical Dictionary and Filmography
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