Derek Ford

Personal Info

Known For Writer

Gender Male

Birthday 1932-09-06

Deathday 1995-05-19 (62 years old)

Place of Birth Tilbury - Essex - United Kingdom

Derek Ford

Biography

Derek Ford (6 September 1932, Essex – 19 May 1995) was an English film director and writer, most famous for sexploitation films such as The Wife Swappers (1970), Suburban Wives (1971), Commuter Husbands (1972), Keep It Up, Jack (1973), Sex Express (1975) (also filmed in a graphic hardcore version), What's Up Nurse! (1977) and What's Up Superdoc! (1978). Ford began as a writer in collaboration with his brother Donald Ford (died 1991), originally for radio before progressing to television (The Saint, Adam Adamant Lives!) and film (The Yellow Teddy Bears, The Black Torment, A Study in Terror and Hell Boats). Ford's first foray into directing, Los Tres Que Robbaran Una Banco, made in Spain in 1961 was an unhappy experience, around the same time Ford entered sexploitation when he was asked to re-edit and film additional sequences for a Swedish sex film called Svenska Flickor I Paris, eventually released as Paris Playgirls. Ford's directing career began proper in the late sixties when he entered into partnership with producer Stanley Long, resulting in three films including the massively successful The Wife Swappers, released in America as The Swappers with the tag line "remember when all the guy next door wanted to borrow was your lawnmower?". Ford's early seventies films were mainly shot in London and Maldon, Essex where he lived, while hardcore scenes meant for the European versions of his films were shot in secret at his own house, with his then wife Valerie acting as assistant, wardrobe & makeup. Interviewed in the book, Keeping the British End Up, fellow director Ray Selfe referred to Ford as "a male nymphomaniac", and themes of swinging, wife swapping and outwardly respectable people living double lives run throughout Ford's work. In the 1970s the two most well-known Ford films in America were Groupie Girl (1970) and Sex Express (1975) starring Heather Deeley. Released as Diversions in the U.S, Sex Express premiered in the Kips Bay area of Manhattan and was nominated for best foreign film by the Adult Film Association of America. In Italy he directed Erotic Fantasies (1978) aka Proibito erotico and back in England he quit as the director of Don't Open till Christmas (1984). In the mid-eighties after his divorce, Ford was left to bring up his two children on his own. At this time he attempted to find more mainstream work and dissociate himself from his past, but what little work came his way would drag him back to exploitation film. He directed La Casa delle Orchidee (The House of Orchids) in Italy in 1983, in which (returning to the themes of The Wife Swappers) a group of Italian women join a 'dare club', and co-directed a Hills Have Eyes rip-off in Sweden called Blood Tracks[1] which also features a brief cameo role from Ford as a location scout for a rock video (Ford's only other known acting role is as "Circus Santa Claus" in Don't Open Till Christmas). He was also involved in writing a never-made softcore sitcom called Park Lane. Ford's final film, The Urge to Kill, starring Peter Gordeno & Sarah Hope-Walker has never been given an official release, although clips from it appear in the 2005 documentary The Wild, Wild World of Dick Randall, and several bootlegs of it have surfaced over the years.[2] The film was eventually given an official DVD release in France on 1 April 2014 by the Uncut Movies label.

Known For

Writer

1995
1989
1978
What's Up Nurse

as Writer

1978
1976
Diversions

as Writer

1974
1974
Venom

as Writer

1974
1972
Suburban Wives

as Writer

1970
I Am a Groupie

as Writer

1970
1969
1968
Corruption

as Screenplay

1967
Son of the City

as Writer

1965
A Study in Terror

as Original Story

1965
A Study in Terror

as Screenplay

1965
1964
1964
The Black Torment

as Screenplay

1963
1962
Stork Talk

as Writer

1962
The Saint

as Writer

Director

1989
The Urge to Kill

as Director

1983
1978
What's Up Nurse

as Director

1978
1978
Forbidden Erotica

as Director

1976
Diversions

as Director

1974
Commuter Husbands

as Director

1974
Keep It Up, Jack!

as Director

1972
Suburban Wives

as Director

1971
Secret Rites

as Director

1970
I Am a Groupie

as Director

1970
The Wife Swappers

as Director

1969
A Promise of Bed

as Director

Editor

1973
The House That Vanished

as Supervising Editor