Val Guest

British director Val Guest is the original multi-hyphenate entertainer; over the course of an incredibly eclectic and often low-budget career, Guest directed, produced, wrote, composed music for, and acted in almost 100 films. He spent his early career acting in local London plays, transitioning to writing screenplays and directing after a brief stint as the London correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter. Guest freely admitted he had no formal training or experience in filmmaking, and it showed; many of his films, like the splashy "London Town," about a washed-up comedian looking for a second chance, and the supernatural smuggling mystery "The Ghost Train," were box office disasters. By the early '50s, he had formed a partnership with the highly influential British production studio Hammer Films, which specialized in high-impact, low-budget horror and science-fiction films. In 1955, Guest wrote and directed his most famous movie, "The Quatermass Experiment," about an astronaut who becomes possessed by an alien; the film was successful enough to spawn two sequels, "Quatermass II: Enemy from Space" and "Quatermass and the Pit," helping to usher in a golden age of"'Hammer Horror." In 1957, Guest scored his next hit with the adventure film "The Abominable Snowman," about an anthropological expedition to find the legendary Himalayan creature, featuring many of the actors who had appeared in the original BBC teleplay. He later wrote and directed the award-winning sci-fi disaster film "The Day the Earth Caught Fire," about the disastrous consequences of nuclear testing.