- Writer, director, and producer Pete Walker was born on July 4, 1939 in Brighton, Sussex, England. The son of musical comedy performer Syd Walker, Pete began his show business career as a stand-up comic at a Soho strip club. Walker went on to play bit roles in a few films prior to starting his own production company. Pete initially made 8mm glamour shorts before graduating to full-length soft-core features in the late 1960's. However, it was in the 1970's that Walker made his strongest and most impressive mark with a series of gritty and hard-hitting horror movies that include the proto-slasher The Flesh and Blood Show (1972), the startling House of Whipcord (1974), the equally shocking Frightmare (1974), and the edgy The Confessional (1976). His horror films frequently centered on the abuse of authority and the ever broadening gap between the young generation and the previous older one who are attempting to maintain order in an increasingly permissive society. After directing the enjoyable all-star horror mystery thriller House of the Long Shadows (1983), Pete retired from filmmaking altogether and decided to pursue a career in property development instead.- IMDb Mini Biography By: woodyanders
- After directing House of the Long Shadows (1983), he decided to retire from filmmaking. He owns a couple of cinemas around England called Picturedome.
- Was originally planning to make a musical film starring Sex Pistols called "The Star Is Dead"; the project got postponed after the group split up.
- Son of Syd Walker
- Mother was a chorus girl.
- Made TV commercials in the mid-60s.
- I was the uninvited guest to the British film industry. Nobody wanted to know me. I knew I wanted to make films, but I would see these serious-looking guys going around with scripts under their arm, spending three or four years trying to get their films made. I couldn't be like that - I had to make a living and I wanted to get behind a camera and shout "action". So I would go out and shoot something like School for Sex (1969) - God, that was a terrible film - and a few weeks later every cinema in the country would be showing it.
- But recently I had to record commentary for the DVD releases [of The Comeback (1978) and House of the Long Shadows (1983)], so I saw the films for the first time since making them, and you know what? They're not as bad as I thought. But searching for hidden meaning . . . they were just films. All I wanted to do was create a bit of mischief.
- I've got to say this and I got to be quite honest: I was never a horror film fan. I never considered myself to be a horror filmmaker. I considered myself to be a terror filmmaker. I never thought of myself as making horror movies. I was making thrillers. If you wanted to say that they were verging on horror, I'd rather use the word terror.
- [ why he liked casting Shiela Keith in his horror films] Sheila Keith was a lady who lived a quiet life with her dogs and her cats and came into work to do, brilliantly, whatever was asked of her. She was like your nice old aunt who would serve you cucumber sandwiches before ripping into a dismembered limb - without complaining.
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