Val Guest was an English film director and screenwriter. Beginning as a writer of comedy films, he is best known for his work for Hammer, for whom he directed 14 films, and for his science fiction films. He enjoyed a long career in the film industry from the early 1930s until the early 1980s.
The Small Back Room is a 1949 film by the British producer-writer-director team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger starring David Farrar and Kathleen Byron and featuring Jack Hawkins and Cyril Cusack. It was based on the 1943 novel of the same name by Nigel Balchin.
Graham Victor Harold Moffatt was an English comedic character actor. He is best known for a number of films where he appeared with Will Hay and Moore Marriott as 'Albert': a plump cheekily insolent street-savvy youth.
The Killer That Stalked New York is a 1950 American film noir directed by Earl McEvoy and starring Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin and William Bishop. The film, shot on location and in a semi-documentary style, is about diamond smugglers who unknowingly start a smallpox outbreak in the New York City of 1947. It is based on the real threat of a smallpox epidemic in the city, as described in a story taken from a 1948 Cosmopolitan magazine article.
Russell Waters was a Scottish film actor.
Mae Clarke was an American actress. She is widely remembered for playing Henry Frankenstein's bride Elizabeth, who is chased by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and for being on the receiving end of James Cagney's halved grapefruit in The Public Enemy. Both films were released in 1931.
Lawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe was an English actor known for playing suave roles such as doctors, lawyers and army officers. He was also sometimes cast in working-class parts.
Yolande Donlan was an American-born British-based actress who worked extensively in the United Kingdom.
The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a 1961 British science fiction disaster film directed by Val Guest and starring Edward Judd, Leo McKern and Janet Munro. It is one of the classic apocalyptic films of its era. The film opened at the Odeon Marble Arch in London on 23 November 1961. In August 2014 a restored version was screened at the British Museum's summer open air cinema.
John Longden was a British film actor. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1926 and 1964, including six films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Jean Donahue was an American film and television actress. She appeared in approximately 65 films in her 38-year career.
Jigsaw is a 1962 British black and white crime film directed by Val Guest and starring Jack Warner and Ronald Lewis. The screenplay was by Guest based on the 1959 police procedural novel Sleep Long, My Love by Hillary Waugh, with the setting changed from the fictional small town of Stockford, Connecticut, to Brighton, Sussex, while retaining the names and basic natures of its two police protagonists and most of the other characters.
A Matter of WHO is a 1961 British comedy thriller film directed by Don Chaffey and starring Terry-Thomas, Julie Alexander, Sonja Ziemann, Alex Nicol, Richard Briers, Honor Blackman and Carol White.
The Weapon is a 1956 black and white British thriller film directed by Val Guest and starring Steve Cochran, Lizabeth Scott, Herbert Marshall, and Nicole Maurey. It was made by Republic Pictures.
What a Carve Up! is a 1961 British comedy-horror film directed by Pat Jackson and starring Sid James, Kenneth Connor, and Shirley Eaton. It was released in the United States in 1962 as No Place Like Homicide. It was loosely based on the 1928 novel The Ghoul by Frank King. A previous version, titled The Ghoul, was filmed in 1933 by Gaumont-British Pictures.
Penny Princess is a 1952 British Technicolor comedy film written and directed by Val Guest and starring Yolande Donlan, Dirk Bogarde and A. E. Matthews. It was made by Guest for his own production company, Conquest Productions. The film stars his future wife Donlan, who was Guest's production company partner, and features Reginald Beckwith, the other partner in Conquest Productions. It was released by General Film Distributors. It was distributed in America the following year by Universal Pictures.
Dancing with Crime is a 1947 British film noir film directed by John Paddy Carstairs, starring Richard Attenborough, Barry K. Barnes and Sheila Sim. A man hunts down the killer of his lifelong friend.
The Brain, also known as Vengeance and Ein Toter sucht seinen Mörder, is a 1962 UK-West German co-production science fiction thriller film directed by Freddie Francis, and starring Anne Heywood and Peter van Eyck. It is adapted from the 1942 Curt Siodmak novel Donovan's Brain, and in this film, differing from earlier adaptations, the dead man seeks his murderer through hypnotic contact with the doctor keeping his brain alive.
They Can't Hang Me is a 1955 British drama film directed by Val Guest and starring Terence Morgan, Yolande Donlan and Anthony Oliver. It was based on a novel by Leonard Mosley. It was shot at Shepperton Studios near London. The film's sets were designed by the art director Joseph Bato.
Expresso Bongo is a 1959 British drama musical film directed by Val Guest, shot in uncredited black & white Dyaliscope and starring Laurence Harvey, Cliff Richard, and Yolande Donlan. It is adapted from the stage musical of the same name, which was first produced on the stage at the Saville Theatre, London, on 23 April 1958.
