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 like 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, 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, and his films have developed a cult following culminating in 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. 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 computers hard drive.
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[edit] Filmography
- The Millionairess (1960) (runner)
- The Dock Brief (1962) (third assistant director)
- Shellarama (1965) (assistant editor)
- Fragment (1965)
- Her Private Hell (1967)
- Loving Feeling (1968)
- Rod the Mod (197?) (assistant editor)
- Oink! (197?) (editor)
- Satan’s Slave (1976)
- Prey (1978)
- Outer Touch (1979)
- Terror (1979)
- Inseminoid (1981)
- Warbirds Air Display (1984)
- Gunpowder (1987)
- Bloody New Year (1987)
- Christopher Lee: A Life in Films (2003) (post-production supervisor)
- Corridor Gossip (2007)
- Haunted Memories (2007)
- Making Space (2007)
[edit] Availability
With the exception of Her Private Hell (1967) and Gunpowder (1987) all of Warren’s feature films are available either on Region 1 or Region 2 DVD.
[edit] References
- Sheridan, Simon 2005. Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema 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
