Norman J. Warren  

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Norman John Warren, born 25 June 1942 in London, is a British film director best known for 1970s horror films such as Satan’s Slave (1976), Prey (1978) and Terror (1979). An avid film fan from childhood, Warren entered the film industry as a runner on The Millionairess and as an assistant director (The Dock Brief, 1962) before directing the short film Fragment in 1965. Calcutta-born Bachoo Sen (1934-2002), owner of the Astral cinema in Brewer Street who had an interest in film production, saw Fragment and subsequently hired Warren to direct two feature length sex films. Both (Her Private Hell, Loving Feeling) were huge successes, but Warren saw little of the profits.

Not wanting to be typecast as a sex film director, Warren turned down a third directing offer from Sen (which would have been 1969’s Love Is a Splendid Illusion) and had to wait several years before being able to raise the capital to make Satan’s Slave, the first of a series of horror films that Warren would direct. Along with Peter Walker, Warren’s films are sometimes dubbed “New Wave” British horror, on account that they upped the ante in terms of explicitness, were set in modern day 1970s Britain and centered around 20-30 aged protagonists, differing them from the predominantly period piece horrors of Hammer Films Productions that had gone before. Warren’s final two films, Bloody New Year and Gunpowder (both 1987), were hampered by severe low budgets imposed by producer Maxine Julius.

Although Warren has not directed a feature film since, he continues to work directing music videos and educational shorts like Person to Person, a BBC film designed for English language students, and his horror films have developed a cult following resulting in ‘Evil Heritage’, a documentary about Warren made in 1999 and a DVD box set of his films being released in 2004. In 2007 Warren worked on the supplementary features for the Region 1 DVD releases of First Man into Space, Corridors of Blood and The Haunted Strangler. A regular guest at Manchester's Festival of Fantastic Films, Warren suffered from polio as a child and as a result only has one functioning arm. A 2006 biography of Warren had to be abandoned when the author’s cat destroyed his computer’s hard drive.

Two of Warren’s actresses would later become the subjects of high profile separation/divorce cases. Glory Annen aka Glory Ann Clibbery who appeared in Warren’s Prey (1978) and Outer Touch (1979) was involved in the landmark Family Law case “Allan v. Clibbery”. While Tricia Walsh (aka Tricia Walsh-Smith) who appeared in Terror (1979), recently became an internet star on account of her Youtube videos attacking her estranged husband. A framed still of her bloody demise in Terror can be seen hanging on her office wall in one of her Youtube videos.

Filmography

• Incident (1959, completed 2007) (director / editor)
• The Millionairess (1960) (runner)
• The Dock Brief (1962) (third assistant director)
• Shellarama (1965) (assistant editor)
• Fragment (1965) (director / editor)
• Night of the Generals (1966) (third assistant director)
• Sailor from Gibraltar (1967) (third assistant director)
• Her Private Hell (1967) (director / editor)
• Loving Feeling (1968) (director / editor)
• Rod the Mod (197?) (assistant editor)
• Oink! (197?) (editor)
• Satan’s Slave (1976) (director / editor)
• Prey (1978)
• Outer Touch (1979)
• Terror (1979) (director / sound editor)
• Inseminoid (1981)
• Warbirds Air Display (1984) (director / editor)
• Person to Person (1985)
• Gunpowder (1987)
• Bloody New Year (1987)
• Meath School' (1992) (producer / director)
• Buzz' (1993) (director / editor)
• Doing Rude Things (1995) (interviewee)
• Evil Heritage (1999) (interviewee/subject)
• Christopher Lee: A Life in Films (2003) (post-production supervisor)
• Corridor Gossip (2007)
• Haunted Memories (2007)
• Making Space (2007)
• Horror Icon (2007) (interviewee)
• Into the Dark: Exploring the Horror Film (2008) (interviewee)
• Norman J. Warren Presents: Horrorshow' (2008) (host)

Bibliography

• Gods In Polyester, Or, A Survivors' Account of 70's Cinema Obscura (2004/Succubus Press)

-Warren contributed pieces on Satan's Slave, Terror, Prey and Inseminoid.

• Gods In Spandex, Or, A Survivors' Account of 80's Cinema Obscura (2007/Succubus Press)

-Warren contributed pieces on Bloody New Year and Gunpowder.

References

• Sheridan, Simon 2007. Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema (third edition) (Reynolds & Hearn Books) ISBN 1-903111-92-7
• McGillivray, David 1992. Doing Rude Things: The History of the British Sex Film 1957-1981 (Sun Tavern Fields Books)
• Fenton, Harvey 2001 Ten Years Of Terror: British Horror Films of the 1970's (FAB Press, Guildford)