The song is about two actors who are friends. One is playing the lead role in a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a part he's read all of his life and has been waiting for a chance to play. After many rehearsals he accidentally dies and his friend is asked to take over the role,which he does because his own career is on the line. The dead man comes back to haunt him because he doesn't want him to have the role, believing that he is taking away the only chance he ever had in life. The actor is saying, "Leave me alone, it's not my fault. I have to take this role but I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do because the ghost won't leave me alone and is really freaking me out. I see him at every corner."
This was inspired by James Cagney playing the role of Lon Chaney as the hunchback in the silent horror star's 1957 biopic, Man Of A Thousand Faces. "He was an actor in an actor in an actor, rather like Chinese boxes, and that's what I was trying to create," she explained in the Kate Bush Club Newsletter in 1979.
Hammer Film Productions is a British-based company that gained prominence in the mid-'50s for its horror films, such as The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy. While the song borrows its name from the company, Bush says the tune is not really about Hammer Horror films. In fact, the studio never produced an adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in its more than 80-year history.
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