The Apprentice

This chapter provides a background on Terence Fisher's career that is regarded by most as that of a journeyman director and by French critics that argued that Fisher was a master filmmaker since the 1950s. It looks at the efforts of David Pirie and others who brought about the first serious critical appraisal of Fisher's work beginning in the late 1960s. It also describes Fisher as the greatest Gothic filmmaker of the second half of the 20th century and British equivalent in terms of style and seriousness of the great American myth-master, John Ford. The chapter mentions The Curse of Frankenstein, in which Fisher creates a real, believable world, and does superb work with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and the other members of the cast. It talks about Fisher's admission toward the end of his life about he had very little affection for science fiction.

Gainsborough

This chapter mentions Portrait from Life from 1948, a low-budget production that was made for Gainsborough and represented another step up for the young Terence Fisher. It talks about how Gainsborough referred to Portrait From Life in their publicity materials as Fisher's first full-length feature that hit the 90-minute mark. It also discusses Louise Heck-Rabi's excellent Women Filmmakers: The Critical Reception, which provides an invaluable overview of the Gainsborough production process. The chapter recounts how Sydney Box joined Gainsborough in August 1945 as head of production after its independent success as the producers of the 1945 smash hit The Seventh Veil. It discusses how Gainsborough became associated with productions in two distinct film genres: starry-eyed soap opera romances and topical films that exploited recent events in the news.

The First of Hammer

This chapter reviews Terence Fisher's initial work for Eros Films Ltd. on the production of Home to Danger, that starred Guy Rolfe. It discusses how Fisher embarked on a long period of highly uneven filmmaking after leaving behind the Gainsborough glossies, bouncing from one small company to another and making everything from domestic comedies and crime films to science-fiction dramas. It also looks at the period Fisher began his first work for Hammer, which used to be a very small British production company that relied upon co-production deals arranged by Robert Lippert. The chapter discusses Home to Danger, a successful program picture that is considered a modest and unpretentious crime thriller. It describes Fisher's crisp and authoritative compositions that favors neatly composed low-angle shots, which emphasized the grandeur of Barbara's home in Home to Danger.

The Gothic Impulse – Vampirism

This chapter analyses how Terrence Fisher's and Hammer Studios's use of a mechanistic medium to distribute film mirrors the use of the printing press to first publish the “Penny Dreadfuls” in Victorian England. It mentions James B. Twitchell, who notes in his study Dreadful Pleasures that the key to the central elements of the Gothic mythos for the public is “repeatable image-making”. It also notes Fisher as the first Gothicist to have precisely the right censorial climate and the sensibility to be able to translate the term “implicit” to the screen. The chapter discusses how Fisher adamantly stated in a 1975 interview that he had not originated either Dracula or The Curse of Frankenstein as a project. It looks at Fisher's insistence to have very little input on casting in Dracula, which was subordinate to his interests in the narrative.