Director Don Sharp 1922-2011

Hammer stalwart dies, aged 89The director Don Sharp, whose extended career incorporated a string of Hammer classics, has died aged 89.Born in Tasmania, Sharp headed for England after the second world war, beginning around the film and television career that spanned 4 decades. He started by helping cover their acting roles like the Cruel Sea as well as the famous BBC radio sci-fi series Journey Into Space, but soon switched to writing and pointing.Following some domestic dramas, crime thrillers and teen rock'n'roll movies inside the fifties, he acquired his first job with Hammer on 1963's Hug In The Vampire, the studio's second work for balance a Dracula follow-up without Congressman Congressman Christopher Lee (or indeed Dracula). He did however get moving with Lee round the subsequent The Demon Ship Pirates and Rasputin The Mad Monk, and from Hammer, the pair also labored with round the initial few films inside the Fu Manchu series, just before the reins wound up to Jesus Franco.For television, he directed cases of Ghost Squad, The Avengers, The Champions and Hammer House Of Horror, which he'd further cinema accomplishments with Psychomania (George Sanders versus. satanic bikers!), Hennessy, Callan as well as the Robert Powell version in the Thirty-Nine Steps, having its infamously thrilling clock-dangling finale.Powell also starred in Sharp's final film, What Waits Below, in 1985, and Sharp's last pointing work for television was round the Barbara Taylor Bradford series An Action Of Will, in 1989.