reputation for reliability. Working from a script by Jimmy Sangster that re-imagined the lengthy original novel as a gruesome, morally ambiguous chamber piece, the film saw British TV star Peter Cushing cast as Baron Victor Frankenstein whilst the then little-known supporting actor Christopher Lee portrayed the Creature. It was a handsome-looking, quality production and an international box office smash; alarming British critics and raising the standard for what was acceptable in terms of on-screen violence and gore, the film established Hammer as a leading brand name in the British film industry. Hammer had even more financial success with Fisher's second gothic horror film Dracula (1958), starring Lee in the title role and Cushing as his adversary Doctor Van Helsing. Once again reducing the scope of its source novel in line with Hammer's budgetary constraints, the screenplay minimised both the geographical settings and the number of characters, and the result was a compact, atmospheric and action-packed chiller in which Lee portrayed the figure of the vampire Count Dracula as having an animalistic sexuality that had never before been presented on screen. It is today regarded as a trailblazer in the horror film genre, the archetypal Hammer film, and the greatest of Fisher's directorial efforts. For the rest of his career, Fisher worked almost exclusively within the horror genre. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), with Cushing, Lee, and André Morell was an adaptation of the famous Sherlock Holmes novel given a horror slant, whilst Cushing and Lee also starred in The Mummy (1959), a pastiche of the Universal Mummy movies of the 1940s. The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), with Cushing and Francis Matthews, was a successful sequel to The Curse of Frankenstein, whilst The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) was a remake of The Man in Half Moon Street (1945), and featured Lee in a more heroic role than usual, opposite Anton Diffring. Fisher directed another hit sequel, The Brides of Dracula (1960) starring Cushing, Freda Jackson, Martita Hunt and David Peel, whilst The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) had Paul Massie in the title role with Lee and Dawn Addams in support, but it was one of the first Hammer horrors to perform disappointingly at the box office. However, Hammer didn't only assign him to gothic chillers; The Stranglers of Bombay (1959) was a different kind of horror, a tale of the thuggee cult in Imperial India starring