...THE BAKER, THE HORROR-FLICK MAKER...

RIP to British director Roy Ward Baker, who has passed on at 93. Well-known for such respectable flicks as A Night to Remember (1958), Baker also brought a classy professionalism to many Brit horror efforts, among them Scars of Dracula, The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, The Vault of Horror, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (with the ravishing Martine Beswick as the second of the title characters) and possibly the sexiest of all vampire movies, 1970’s The Vampire Lovers, starring the incomparable Ingrid Pitt.

Baker's best film, however, may have been the moody, unnerving Quatermass feature Five Million Years to Earth. I’ve also always liked his 1969 “moon western” Moon Zero Two. Check out its great theme song here.