Val Guest (born Valmond Maurice Grossman; 11 December 1911 – 10 May 2006) was an English film director and screenwriter.

[2] Guest was born to John Simon Grossman and Julia Ann Gladys Emanuel in Sutherland Avenue in Maida Vale, London.

[3] His father was a jute broker, and the family spent some of Guest's childhood in India before returning to England.

He also appeared in a few early sound film roles, before he left acting and began a writing career.

For a time, around 1934, he was the London correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter (when the publication began a UK edition),[5][6] before beginning work on film screenplays for Gainsborough Pictures.

1 (1936); A Star Fell from Heaven (1936); O-Kay for Sound (1937) for Varnel with The Crazy Gang; Alf's Button Afloat (1938) with Flanagan and Allen.

He followed this with two films starring Vic Oliver and Margaret Lockwood, Give Us the Moon (1944) and I'll Be Your Sweetheart (1945); the latter was the first and only musical from Gainsborough Studios.

They also used him to do The Abominable Snowman (1957), from a Kneale TV play, and a POW movie, The Camp on Blood Island (1958).

Then he made the film version of Expresso Bongo (1959) with Donlan, giving an early role to Cliff Richard.

Guest was one of five credited directors to work on the spoof James Bond film Casino Royale (1967), a critically mauled picture in its day.

Producer Charles K. Feldman asked Guest if he would direct linking material to make what was left uncompleted, after the departure of Peter Sellers from the project, into a coherent narrative.

He made a thriller Assignment K (1968) then a musical Toomorrow (1970) which, according to Christopher Hawtree, it is "a staggeringly dreadful movie".

[1] Guest issued an injunction against Harry Saltzman, the producer, because he had not been paid for his work, and the film was quickly pulled from screenings.

Guest's final feature film work was writing and directing The Boys in Blue (1982), a vehicle for the British comedy double act Cannon and Ball.

[12] His last professional work was as the director of several episodes of the Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense TV series in 1984 and 1985.