Val Guest, director of Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass II dies

Variety.com - Val Guest Obituary

It with great sadness that Archeology of the Future was informed this evening of the death of Val Guest, Director of 'The Quatermass Xperiment', 'Quatermass II', 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' and 'The Abominable Snowman'. Val died Wednesday, May 10 in Palm Springs, California at the age of 94.

If you look at his filmography here, you can see that Val had a hand in everything from the bleak majesty of Quatermass, to the youth cult of Expresso Bongo to the ill lit, freezing cold smut of 'Confessions...'. As a writer, director, writer of music, producer and even actor Val was around for almost every weird twist and turn taken by the British film industry from the 1930s onward.

A sad loss that even the hard headed Quatermass of Val's two Quatermass films would have to mourn...

Archeology of the Future offers these two previous articles in memory of his work:

http://archeologyofthefuture.blogspot.com/2006/03/theres-nothing-better-than-apocalypse.html

http://archeologyofthefuture.blogspot.com/2006/05/were-on-verge-of-something-so-ugly.html

Archeology of the Future feels saddened that Val's death seems to have been mentioned nowhere of any note. The UK does have a film heritage, but we seem to want to forget it, as if it makes us uncomfortable because it was different to Hollywood. It's as if we feel that people like Val, who were involved in British commercial cinema for all of their careers, are somehow embarrassing, being a reminder of a time when we thought that as a country we could make films on our own terms.

A sad death, for the most part unremembered in the country and industry where he worked for the majority of his life.

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