Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker was an English film director born in London on 19 December 1916. His best known film is A Night to Remember which won a Golden Globe for best foreign English language film in 1959. His later career was varied, and included many horror films and television shows. Baker's early career, from 1934 to 1939, was spent working for Gainsborough Pictures, a British film production company based in Islington, North London, famous for its prestige productions. His first jobs were menial - making tea for crew members, for example - but by 1938 he had risen through the ranks to work as assistant director on Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. He served in the army during World War II, until transferring to the Army Kinematograph Unit in 1943 in order to make better use of skills developed in his pre-war career producing documentaries and teaching materials for troops. One of his superiors at the time was novelist Eric Ambler. It was he who gave Baker his first big break directing The October Man, from an Ambler screenplay, in 1947. Ambler also adapted Walter Lord's A Night to Remember for Baker's 1958 screen version. During the early 1950s, Baker worked for three years in Hollywood where he directed Marilyn Monroe in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and Robert Ryan in 3D film noir Inferno (1953). He returned to the UK for the latter part of the decade, but defected to television in the early 1960s. He directed episodes of The Avengers, The Saint and The Champions - all adventure series created with an eye on the American market. The low-budget ethic of television production made him well-suited to his next career move into cheaply produced but lavish-looking British horror films. He directed, amongst others, Quatermass and the Pit (1967) The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Scars of Dracula (1970) for Hammer, and Asylum (1972) for Amicus. In the latter part of the 1970s he returned to television, and throughout the 1980s continued to work in Television. He retired in 1992.
Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror
(Self)
Von Werra
(Self)
Inside the Fear Factory
(Himself)
The Saint Steps In... To Television
(Himself)
Fists of Fire
(Himself)
Hitchcock: The Early Years
(Self)
Sodankylä Forever
(Self)
Hitchcock: Alfred the Great
(Himself)
A History of Horror
(Self)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
(Self)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
(Self - Assistant Director, The Lady Vanishes)
Night Without Sleep
(Director)
A Night to Remember
(Director)
Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde
(Director)
Don't Bother to Knock
(Director)
The Vampire Lovers
(Director)
Asylum
(Director)
Moon Zero Two
(Director)
Quatermass and the Pit
(Director)
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
(Director)
Scars of Dracula
(Director)
The Masks of Death
(Director)
And Now the Screaming Starts!
(Director)
Inferno
(Director)
The One That Got Away
(Director)
Mission: Monte Carlo
(Director)
Morning Departure
(Director)
The October Man
(Director)
The Monster Club
(Director)
Death Becomes Me
(Director)
The House in the Square
(Director)
Tiger in the Smoke
(Director)
The Vault of Horror
(Director)
The Anniversary
(Director)
Highly Dangerous
(Director)
The Singer Not the Song
(Director)
The Singer Not the Song
(Producer)
The Fiction Makers
(Director)
The Valiant
(Director)
Paper Orchid
(Director)
Jacqueline
(Director)
Two Left Feet
(Director)
Foreign Exchange
(Director)
The Spy Killer
(Director)
Passage Home
(Director)
Flame in the Streets
(Director)
Night Train to Munich
(Second Unit Director)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
(Director)
Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror
(Thanks)
The Weaker Sex
(Director)
The Lady Vanishes
(Assistant Director)
Read All About It
(Director)
First Offence
(Production Assistant)
Tudor Rose
(Production Assistant)
What's the Next Job?
(Director)
The Switch
(Director)
Flame in the Streets
(Producer)
Heat Wave
(Production Assistant)
Q.E.D.
(Director)
Minder
(Director)
The Baron
(Director)
Department S
(Director)
Gideon's Way
(Director)
The Saint
(Director)
The Protectors
(Director)
Journey to the Unknown
(Director)
The Irish R.M.
(Director)
Saracen
(Director)
Danger UXB
(Director)
The Flame Trees of Thika
(Director)
Tales from the Crypt
(Director)
The Champions
(Director)
The Avengers
(Director)
The Persuaders!
(Director)
Return of the Saint
(Director)
Jason King
(Director)
The Human Jungle
(Director)
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
(Director)