Roy Baker served a 13-year apprenticeship, first with Gainsborough
Films between 1934-1939, then making wartime films for service personnel
during World War II. He emerged during the post-war years as one of
Britain's most solid stylists and began his directorial career with
The October Man
(1947). He moved to Hollywood for a period during the early 1950's
before returning to Britain.
Many of his films were the most popular successes of the British cinema
during the post-war years, including Morning
Departure (1950), A
Night to Remember (1958) and The
One That Got Away (1957). From 1960, however, he was hard at work
on television, in such series as Danger Man, The Saint and The Avengers.
On his return to the cinema in 1967, billed as Roy Ward Baker, he no
longer seemed the same director, and indeed directed entirely different
kinds of subjects, mainly horror films. Of these, only Asylum
(1972), Quatermass
and the Pit (1967) and Dr
Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) carry a genuine charge of fear.
