David Lean 1955, Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios; in 1970, however, the critical failure of his film "Ryan's Daughter" led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he planned a number of film projects which never came to fruition. In 1984 he had a career revival with "A Passage to India", adapted from E. M. Forster's novel; it was an instant hit with critics but proved to be the last film Lean would direct. Lean's affinity for striking visuals and inventive editing techniques has led him to be lauded by directors
Scream, Pretty Peggy the "Los Angeles Times" deemed the film a "routine shocker," noting that "writers Jimmy Sangster and Arthur Hoffe have come up with such silly, trite dialog and situations that it's too bad that director Gordon Hessler... didn't play their script for laughs." Film writer Jerry Roberts notes in "Encyclopedia of Television Film Directors" that the film is "a patchwork artifact of what filmmakers in the movie-of-the-week era considered the ingredients for concocting a "Psycho"-like thriller." Scream, Pretty Peggy Scream, Pretty Peggy is a 1973 American made-for-television horror film directed by Gordon Hessler and starring Bette Davis, Ted Bessell, and Sian