Val Guest began his career as an actor on the British stage and in early sound films. He ran the one-man London office of “The Hollywood Reporter” until an encounter with director Marcel Varnel led to a screen writing job at Gainsborough Studios. Guest’s directing career began in the early 1940s with a Ministry of Information short about the perils of sneezing (!), an inauspicious start to a lengthy roster of films that includes many Hammer classics such as The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), Quatermass 2 (1957) and The Abominable Snowman (1957).
He was married to the actress Yolande Donlan from 1954 until his death in 2006, aged 94.
Val Guest’s Hammer Filmography
Year Released | Production | Role |
1954 | Life with the Lyons | Director & Screenplay |
1954 | The Men of Sherwood Forest | Director |
1955 | The Lyons in Paris | Director & Screenplay |
1955 | Break in the Circle | Director & Screenplay |
1955 | The Quatermass Xperiment | Director & Screenplay |
1956 | Women Without Men | Screenplay |
1957 | Quatermass 2 | Director & Screenplay |
1957 | The Abominable Snowman | Director |
1958 | The Camp on Blood Island | Director & Screenplay |
1958 | Up the Creek | Director & Screenplay |
1958 | Further Up the Creek | Director & Screenplay |
1959 | Yesterdays Enemy | Director |
1960 | Hell is a City | Director & Screenplay |
1961 | The Full Treatment | Director, Producer & Screenplay |
1970 | When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth | Director & Screenplay |
1984 | Mark of the Devil | Director |
1984 | Childs Play | Director |
1984 | In Possession | Director |