The Quatermass Xperiment review
Yet another horror review, this time looking back to the innocent days of the 1950s
The Quatermass Xperiment
AKA
The Creeping Unknown (US)
Tags
The most fantastic story ever told
Director Val Guest
Writer Nigel Kneale (original TV series), Richard Landau, Val Guest
Stars Brain Donlevy, Jack Warner, Richard Wordsworth, Lionel Jeffries, Margia Dean
Certificate PG
Year 1955
Dastardly Plot
You know something nasty will happen in an English sci-fi movie when a young couple are indulging in a little heavy petting. But before you can say ‘No sex please, we’re British’ the ultimate contraceptive smashes into the lives of a poor chap and the girl he’s after. The earth literally moves from them as a bloomin’ great rocket crashes into their farm. Within hours the countryside is full of Bobbies, firemen and the team of a certain Professor Bernard Quatermass. It turns out that the naughty Professor had fired a UK rocket into space before the MOD gave him permission and now has to pick up the pieces after they lost contact with the pesky thing in orbit of the planet.
However, when they crack open the capsule they find two empty spacesuits and one astronaut who’s been reduced to a vegetable (both mentally and eventually physically.)
Despite the best intentions of the police to get in his way, Quatermass begins to examine the man who has begun to mutate, but the questions pile up. What did they find out there in space? Where are the missing astronauts and, after they’re astronaut-cum-zombie disappears, why are chemists turning up with half their faces missing…
Vicious Verdict
Quant as The Quatermass Xperiment seems today, this black-and-white sci-fi shocker is a little bit of cinema history as it marked Hammer Film’s first foray into big screen horror and so transformed the company that had produced largely mediocre dramas and comedies since 1948 into the studio that dripped blood.
It was also the first conscious effort by Hammer to achieve an ‘X’ certificate, hence the change from ‘Experiment’ to ‘Xperiment’ (clever, eh?).
Yet, there is nothing here that will really shock or titillate, as you’d expect from an X certificate, but hey, we’re talking about 1955 here, what do you expect? Instead we get a tight, if unoriginal, little thriller. As you’d expect a lot of action is lost when a six episode series gets cut down into 78 minutes, so many of the more introspective moment’s of Nigel Kneale’s original script for the BBC TV series is sacrificed on the altar of action. Thankfully the opening half of the movie is satisfyingly eerie, and wonderfully clipped as you’d expect from 1950’s Britain.
Special mention must go to Shakespearean actor, Richard Wordsworth, who is as creepy as hell as the alien-infected astronaut in a performance reminiscent of Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster. To ram the similarity home, the writers even rip off a scene direct from the Universal classic where the increasingly deranged, and mutated, fugitive meets a cute and trusting girl.
Sadly, when Wordsworth is replaced by his ultimate slimy octopus-like incarnation proceedings go downhill fast and the ‘thrilling’ conclusion seems lazy and obvious, especially when compared to the original TV version. Thankfully we have the double act of the snappy and bad-tempered Quatermass in the form of Brian Donlevy and Jack Warner’s Cosy Copper to keep us entertained.
Terrifying Trivia
* Nigel Kneale was none too pleased that his English Scientist hero had been transformed into a bad-tempered, fast mouthed American. He later said, “He was truly terrible. He had no notion of what the character could be and he wasn’t interested.”
* The Monster at the end of the picture was constructed from real tripe and rubber
* Special Effects expert Les Bowie had wanted to set fire to the corn in the field where the rocket landed, just outside the Berkshire Country House that Hammer used as studios. Unfortunately, the British weather had other ideas and torrential rain put pay to the inferno.
* Long before she hosted Songs of Praise specials or frowned at the men-folk of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ the late Dame Thora Hird appears in a cameo as Rosie, a gin-addled tramp who’s a regular in the local nick.
Quaking Quotes
"I'm a scientist, not a fortune teller"
"Quatermass sent it up and he brought it back"
High Points
Well, Kneale might not have liked it, but this reviewer thinks that Donlevy’s crabby American Quartermass is refreshingly dramatic in such a familiar English set-up. However, the star is the eternally spine-chilling Wordsworth and some genuinely unsettling make-up. Those half-eaten faces and crumbling bodies gave me many a night terror as a kid.
Low Points
Margia Dean as the poor astronaut's wife is as wooden as an MFI cupboard and the ending is no match to Kneale’s original which had Quatermass talking the monster down by appealing to it’s residual human nature. The scene of Quatermass striding down a dark street, alone in his scientific quest almost makes up for this, but only just.
Skulls out of five
THREE!
The Quatermass Xperiment
AKA
The Creeping Unknown (US)
Tags
The most fantastic story ever told
Director Val Guest
Writer Nigel Kneale (original TV series), Richard Landau, Val Guest
Stars Brain Donlevy, Jack Warner, Richard Wordsworth, Lionel Jeffries, Margia Dean
Certificate PG
Year 1955
Dastardly Plot
You know something nasty will happen in an English sci-fi movie when a young couple are indulging in a little heavy petting. But before you can say ‘No sex please, we’re British’ the ultimate contraceptive smashes into the lives of a poor chap and the girl he’s after. The earth literally moves from them as a bloomin’ great rocket crashes into their farm. Within hours the countryside is full of Bobbies, firemen and the team of a certain Professor Bernard Quatermass. It turns out that the naughty Professor had fired a UK rocket into space before the MOD gave him permission and now has to pick up the pieces after they lost contact with the pesky thing in orbit of the planet.
However, when they crack open the capsule they find two empty spacesuits and one astronaut who’s been reduced to a vegetable (both mentally and eventually physically.)
Despite the best intentions of the police to get in his way, Quatermass begins to examine the man who has begun to mutate, but the questions pile up. What did they find out there in space? Where are the missing astronauts and, after they’re astronaut-cum-zombie disappears, why are chemists turning up with half their faces missing…
Vicious Verdict
Quant as The Quatermass Xperiment seems today, this black-and-white sci-fi shocker is a little bit of cinema history as it marked Hammer Film’s first foray into big screen horror and so transformed the company that had produced largely mediocre dramas and comedies since 1948 into the studio that dripped blood.
It was also the first conscious effort by Hammer to achieve an ‘X’ certificate, hence the change from ‘Experiment’ to ‘Xperiment’ (clever, eh?).
Yet, there is nothing here that will really shock or titillate, as you’d expect from an X certificate, but hey, we’re talking about 1955 here, what do you expect? Instead we get a tight, if unoriginal, little thriller. As you’d expect a lot of action is lost when a six episode series gets cut down into 78 minutes, so many of the more introspective moment’s of Nigel Kneale’s original script for the BBC TV series is sacrificed on the altar of action. Thankfully the opening half of the movie is satisfyingly eerie, and wonderfully clipped as you’d expect from 1950’s Britain.
Special mention must go to Shakespearean actor, Richard Wordsworth, who is as creepy as hell as the alien-infected astronaut in a performance reminiscent of Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster. To ram the similarity home, the writers even rip off a scene direct from the Universal classic where the increasingly deranged, and mutated, fugitive meets a cute and trusting girl.
Sadly, when Wordsworth is replaced by his ultimate slimy octopus-like incarnation proceedings go downhill fast and the ‘thrilling’ conclusion seems lazy and obvious, especially when compared to the original TV version. Thankfully we have the double act of the snappy and bad-tempered Quatermass in the form of Brian Donlevy and Jack Warner’s Cosy Copper to keep us entertained.
Terrifying Trivia
* Nigel Kneale was none too pleased that his English Scientist hero had been transformed into a bad-tempered, fast mouthed American. He later said, “He was truly terrible. He had no notion of what the character could be and he wasn’t interested.”
* The Monster at the end of the picture was constructed from real tripe and rubber
* Special Effects expert Les Bowie had wanted to set fire to the corn in the field where the rocket landed, just outside the Berkshire Country House that Hammer used as studios. Unfortunately, the British weather had other ideas and torrential rain put pay to the inferno.
* Long before she hosted Songs of Praise specials or frowned at the men-folk of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ the late Dame Thora Hird appears in a cameo as Rosie, a gin-addled tramp who’s a regular in the local nick.
Quaking Quotes
"I'm a scientist, not a fortune teller"
"Quatermass sent it up and he brought it back"
High Points
Well, Kneale might not have liked it, but this reviewer thinks that Donlevy’s crabby American Quartermass is refreshingly dramatic in such a familiar English set-up. However, the star is the eternally spine-chilling Wordsworth and some genuinely unsettling make-up. Those half-eaten faces and crumbling bodies gave me many a night terror as a kid.
Low Points
Margia Dean as the poor astronaut's wife is as wooden as an MFI cupboard and the ending is no match to Kneale’s original which had Quatermass talking the monster down by appealing to it’s residual human nature. The scene of Quatermass striding down a dark street, alone in his scientific quest almost makes up for this, but only just.
Skulls out of five
THREE!
posted by Cav at
2:50 PM
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