In Remembrance: Val Guest

     Val Guest, the British screenwriter turned director of such films as the cult classics The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961) has passed away on May 10, 2006 in Palm Springs, CA. He was 94.

     Born Valmond Maurice Grossman on December 11, 1911 in London, England, Guest spent part of his childhood living in India. As a teenager, he wrote movie news and gossip columns for various London weeklies and for Picturegoer and Film Weekly magazines. He briefly worked as an actor, appearing with touring companies and in bit roles in a quartet of films before returning to film journalism in 1934 to write for the London edition of the Hollywood Reporter.

     Guest received his first screenwriting job in 1935, after criticizing director Michael Varnel in an interview. Impressed with his forthrightness, Varnel hired Guest to work on the screenplay for his next film No Monkey Business (1935).

     Guest would go on to write at Islington, London’s Gainsborough Studios for such early British film comedians as Will Hay (Ask A Policeman (1938), Where’s That Fire? (1940)) and Arthur Askey (The Ghost Train, I Thank You (both 1941)). Guest made his feature film directorial debut in 1943 with the Askey comedy Miss London Ltd., which he also co-wrote.

     Over his career Guest would direct close to 50 films including such comedies as Penny Princess (1952), thrillers like Hell Is A City (1960) and dramas such as Expresso Bongo (1960) and 80,000 Suspects (1963).

     Guest is also one of the five directors created on the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967). He was tasked by the film’s producers to shoot material that would join the various other segments from the film’s other directors. When offered the unique credit “Co-ordinating Director,” Guest refused, stating that the film’s disjointed nature would not reflect well on him.

     In addition to writing the screenplay for and directing the science-fiction cult classic The Quatermass Xperiment (released in the United States as The Creeping Unknown), in which the lone survivor of an experimental rocket ship which crashes in England is discovered to be possessed by an alien form which begins to horrifically mutate him, Guest also co-scripted and directed its 1957 sequel Quatermass 2. For the original film, Guest insisted on shooting the story with handheld cameras to give the movie a documentary-like feel. The film’s success also helped to establish the long line of science-fiction and horror films its studio, Hammer Films, would become known for.

     In 1961, Guest earned a Best British Screenplay BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television) Award with co-writer Wolf Mankowitz for the script to The Day The Earth Caught Fire. The film, a cautionary fantasy about the Earth being doomed to destruction after simultaneous nuclear test blasts by the United States and the Soviet Union knock the planet out of orbit and towards a collision with the sun, was reportedly a favorite of President John F. Kennedy, who requested a copy which he screened for foreign reporters in Washington.

     In 1974, Guest directed Confessions Of A Window Cleaner, the first in what would prove to be a popular series of sex farces. In addition to his film work, Guest also wrote and directed episodes of the television series The Persuaders!, The Adventurer and Space: 1999.

     Guest’s last film was the 1982 comedy The Boys In Blue, a remake of Guest’s early script Ask A Policeman.