Christopher Wicking 1943-2009

Christopher Wicking, screenwriter, critic and teacher has died at the age of 65. There are obituaries in The Independent, The Times and by Gavin Gaughan in The Guardian.

Wicking's speciality was reordering conventional narrative structure, while adhering to the horror/thriller genre, as with Scream and Scream Again (1970), with Price, Lee and Peter Cushing.

He reteamed with Hessler for Cry of the Banshee (1970), again starring Price, then a remake of Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971). His Hammer debut was the troubled Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971), on which Cushing withdrew after one day's filming due to his wife's terminal illness (he was replaced by Andrew Keir), and the director Seth Holt (described by Wicking as "an English Jean-Pierre Melville"), collapsed into cast member Aubrey Morris's arms, dying on set.