John Gilling
John Gilling (* May 29, 1912 in London, † November 22, 1984 in Madrid, Spain) was a British screenwriter and film director.
Career
From the mid- 1930s Gilling worked as an assistant director. In the 1940s he began to write screenplays. His debut as executive director, he was in 1948 with the short film Escape from Broadmoor. Over the next two decades, he succeeded with directorial work in crime, adventure and horror film genre, where he specialized in cheap theater productions for which he variously himself wrote the screenplay. With a variety of work he was represented about Warwick film by Albert R. Broccoli and Irving Allen, and in the 1960s for Hammer Films. Particularly successful was his zombie movie had nights of horror ( The Plague of the Zombies ), who greatly influenced later genre films.
In the course of this decade, he also turned to television. He staged in the years 1962-1969 several episodes of the series Simon Templar, 1969/1970 turned Gilling seven episodes of Department S. 1975 La cruz del diablo appeared with his last film production. This horror film was born in Spain, where he spent his last years. His oeuvre comprises some 40 feature films and over 50 screenplays.