Screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster has died, aged 83.

Sangster is best known for his work with Hammer Films – it was his work that made Hammer into a byword for horror and revolutionised a genre that was thought by many to be over.

He was already a long term Hammer employee, working as assistant producer and director before being offered the screenwriting job for X – The Unknown, Hammer’s follow-up to the success of The Quatermass Xperiment. When the studio decided to make a glossy, colour version of Frankenstein, Sangster was again hired to write it. The Curse of Frankenstein became a huge global hit, make stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and director Terence Fisher instant horror icons.

Sangster, Fisher, Lee and Cushing would team again for Dracula and The Mummy, and Sangster also wrote other early Hammer classics like The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Man Who Could Cheat Death and The Brides of Dracula. Outside the studio, he was the man behind impressive shockers like The Trollenberg Terror, Blood of the Vampire, The Hellfire Club and Jack the Ripper.

In the 1960s, Sangster wrote a series of underrated psychological thrillers for Hammer, starting with Taste of Fear and including Paranoiac, Hysteria, Maniac, Nightmare and The Nanny, with Crescendo and Fear in the Night (which he also directed) coming at the start of the 1970s. Other Hammer titles of the period were a varied selection of impressive movies – Devil Ship Pirates, Terror of the Tongs and Dracula – Prince of Darkness.

He turned director for Horror of Frankenstein and Lust for a Vampire in the Seventies, but as Hammer began to decline, he moved to the USA where he would work primarily in television. As well as TV movies like A Taste of Evil, Good Against Evil, Scream Pretty Peggy and No Place to Hide, he contributed to shows as varied as The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak – The Night Stalker, Wonder Woman, Ghost Story and Cannon.

His later film work included British horror movie The Legacy and John Huston’s Phobia.

In 1997, his autobiography, Do You Want It Good or Tuesday? was published.

Sangster’s contribution to British horror cinema cannot be underestimated, and he will be missed.