The Quatermass Experiment
(DD Home Entertainment Region 2 PAL DVD)
(1955)
review by Blackgloves

In many ways, "The Quatermass Xperiment" could be seen as marking the beginnings of the Hammer story; although it doesn't represent any particular change in the company's policy of the period — which had always relied on film adaptations of BBC radio plays to provide material for the "quota quickie" second features the company was making for its American studio associates — this particular source material was potential dynamite, and Hammer producers Tony Hinds and James Carreras must have known it when they stepped in to buy the film rights from an only too willing BBC, after just three episodes of the TV series had been broadcast.

 

Nigel Neale's seminal "The Quatermass Experiment" was a key work in the development of British television, although it was originally only written to fill a vacant slot in the summer schedules of 1953. Together, producer Rudolph Cartier and staff writer Kneale fought to make television an art form in its own right rather than just "radio with pictures", which had been the unimaginative approach of the BBC to this fledgling media up to that time. Over the course of its six week run, the series gradually became a collective viewing experience for the British public as they settled down to watch each episode broadcast live from Alexandra Palace every Saturday evening. The thing that stood the series apart from American b-movie science fiction of the period was its emphasis on the unknown and an unusual concern with exploring the human element of the material rather than just concentrating on special effects. Kneale exploited fears about what might lie above the skies in a period when rocket development was beginning to make the idea of space travel a possible reality rather than idle fantasy. There was real worry though, about what might happen to people if they dared venture beyond terra firma. Kneale cleverly threaded a story about alien invasion with themes of infection & contamination -- combining them with a traditional "possession" motif to bring an eerie element of horror to the TV screens of an unsuspecting British public.

 

By the time Hammer's adaptation was released in 1955, the public had been well and truly primed for the experience of creeping thrills the film's "X" rating promised them. It proved to be a huge success for the company and paved the way for their full-colour Gothic adaptations. Horror became the key word in the success story of Hammer (until Quatermass, the company had only dabbled occasionally in this kind of material) and it's fair to say that without "The Quatermass Xperiment" the future of the company might have been very different.

 

Despite its rather small £42,000 budget, Hammer was able to bring a much greater cinematic quality to the material than the BBC's studio-bound, live broadcasts could ever have managed — even though a lot of it was filmed at the recently acquired country manor, Down House (re-christened Bray Studios). The opening titles play out over an ominous, darkening sky, full of scudding clouds. Two lovers, enjoying a romantic evening out in the countryside, are witness to the crash-landing of a large rocket. Soon, the quaint '50s fire engine that initially rattles to the scene is joined by representatives of the British army and Doctor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy): an American rocket scientist heading the Anglo-American rocket group responsible for launching the now very-much earthbound rocket in the first place.

 

Here's the first major change (besides the obvious "opened out" aesthetic of the film) initiated by director and co-writer Val Guest: because these early Hammer films were really a way for American studios to thwart the UK's quota policy (where American films had to be paired with a UK produced second feature), American stars were almost always required to play major roles in them since the US studios were providing most of the finance for what were only ostensibly British-made films. When Brian Donlevy was cast in the part of Quatermass — an actor previously known for hard-boiled tough guy roles in various film noir features — Guest changed the fundamentals of the character from a patrician, British Professor to a no-nonsense, down-to-earth American doctor. Most of the characteristics originally assigned to Quatermass by Nigel Kneale's script are instead attributed to his British "sidekick" Briscoe in the movie version — with the result that David King-Wood's secondary character, to anyone raised on the various television versions, actually seems more "Quatermass-like" than the real lead; King-Wood even looks more like Reginald Tate (the actor who played Quatermass in the TV version of Xperiment) than Donlevy, a thick-set pugilist with a pencilled moustache! In fact, it is the refined and thoughtful Briscoe who does most of the brain work in the film — figuring out exactly what is going on at every stage — while Donlevy plays Quatermass as a brash, bureaucracy-cutting "decision man" with little time for more cerebral activity.

 

The main problem with this rejigged characterisation is that Quatermass really does become incredibly unsympathetic, and spends most of his time marching around barking orders at people and generally behaving like a hectoring, ignorant, ill-tempered bully! It feels like, in order to appeal to US audiences, Guest and co-writer Richard Landau have reverted to b-movie clichés that rely on how scientists are familiarly perceived in science fiction and horror, and inadvertently given their main character all of the negative characteristics usually associated with this b-movie "breed": megalomania, intellectual arrogance and casual disregard for other values other than those that impact on their own narrow field of concern. There is also the suspicion that US audiences are being asked to cheer for the no-nonsense robustness of their American lead against the bumbling, small town provincialism of the British authority figures in the film; although a careful balancing act has to be negotiated in order to avoid alienating the British audience completely. With that in mind, Hammer thoughtfully cast Jack Warner in the role of Lomax -- the police sergeant who seems to put up with Quatermass's constant lecturing and bluster with remarkably good grace throughout the film. Warner was the quintessential British Everyman of the '40s & '50s and the screenplay gives him lots of mildly comic scenes that illustrate his gentle down-to-earth, softly, softly approach, contrasting it against his brash American counterpart — although the two never seem to clash despite Quatermass's "suffer no fools" attitude. This allows British audiences who identify with Jack Warner's screen persona to congratulate themselves on their tolerance for their arrogant yank cousins! 

 

When Quatermass, Briscoe and Lomax enter the crashed rocket, they find that two of the three astronauts have completely disappeared (leaving behind only their empty space suits). The only surviving member, Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), has been left in a zombie-like state, and when Briscoe examines him he finds that Carroon's cellular structure appears to be changing and can hardly be identified any longer as being human. Lomax attempts to take the survivor's fingerprints and discovers that they too have disintegrated. A film reel is found onboard the rocket which shows the other two astronauts apparently disappearing into thin air!

 

It doesn't take long for Briscoe to realise that the two missing astronauts have been absorbed by an alien organism that is using Carroon as its host in order to spread itself. However, by this time, Carroon has already escaped from hospital (with the aid of his uncomprehending fiancé who has grown tired of Quatermass's unsympathetic attitude to her husband's sad plight) and has, in the meantime, absorbed a cactus and several hospital workers, giving him a half-human, half-plant appearance! Quatemass and his associates discover that the transforming Carroon is shedding spores that, themselves, grow into horrible, gelatinous monstrosities that can also absorb the life force from living matter. They realise that the alien organism might soon gain the power to absorb every living creature on earth if it is not stopped from spreading in time. 

 

Richard Wordsworth's performance as the unfortunate Victor Carroon helps bring some of the humane sensibilities of Nigel Kneale's original teleplay to this glossy film version that would have been largely absent otherwise. This revered '50s stage actor manages to bring a great deal of pathos and humanity to what could have been a very hammy monster mash. His depiction of the fruitless struggle going on within the mind of the transforming astronaut, who's consciousness is gradually being taken over by alien urges, brings the film back to Neale's original high-flown intentions, when the base American influences threatened to obliterate them completely. The excellent make-up of Phil Leaky works with, rather than against, Wordsworth's horrifically real performance: the hollow, gaunt-eyed look of Victor in the initial stages of his transformation, and the ravaged, diseased, plant-like qualities of the creature (while it still retains human form) are rendered with ghastly immediacy while still allowing Wordsworth the facial freedom to give a proper performance. There is a memorable sequence which recalls a similar scene from the '30s Universal adaptation of "Frankenstein" with Boris Karloff, where Carroon, while taking refuge in waste-ground near an abandoned canal, comes across a little girl who tries to engage him in her infant play with a rather bedraggled toy doll. There's great poignancy represented in Victor's final failed struggle to bring the last vestiges of his human personality to the fore — but he is now more monster than man and the girl is left to contemplate her broken doll which Victor crushes into the muddy embankment. (Incidentally, the little girl is played by Jane Asher.)

 

Hammer made much of the film's "X" certificate (although, in reality, the script was pre-censored by the BBFC as was the usual practice of the day. Many scenes were cut at this stage). The "X" of the title can be mainly attributed to the special effects of Les Bowie, who comes up with a panoply of unpleasant monster effects for the creature and its various offshoots: bubbling, undulating blobs of slithering, slimy gunk and the desiccated, lifeless corpses of the creature's victims after they've been drained of "life force", all helped to force the hand of the disapproving censors and provided the film with a thrill of the unpaletable. They still look rather good even today.

 

The climax of the film illustrates again the deficiencies in the character of this version of Quatermass. When Victor has completely physically transformed into a tentacled, pulsating blob (with curiously unpleasant hairs sticking out of it in gruesome clumps!), Quatermass and his British associates eventually corner it/him in Westminster Abbey, the creature having scaled the heights of the building in what at first appears to be a lazy reworking of "King Kong". In fact, Neale's TV version gives Bernard Quatermass an ingenious and somewhat disturbing solution to the problem of disposing of the alien. Counting on some semblance of the three astronauts' consciousness still residing within the alien form, Quatermass makes an emotional plea to these last human vestiges and eventually gets the creature to commit suicide by the force of his argument. But this was not thought cinematic enough by writer Landau, and instead, the Hammer Quatermass resorts to exactly the kind of solution you'd expect of this particular rambunctious incarnation of the character: he electrocutes the creature to death and blows it up! The fact that he almost burns down Westminster Abbey in the process, and shows not the slightest indication of having any concern about it, only seems to compound the film's impression of an absurdly arrogant character. It's never really resolved whether we are meant to like this man Quatermass, even as he strides off into the night vowing to start his rocket project all over again. The original Professor Bernard Quatermass was meant to exemplify an optimistic vision of a thoughtful, sensitive, future scientist -- forward-looking but socially aware. This is about the last thing the Quatermass we see in this film could be described as. Nevertheless, with its quivering James Bernard score (his first for Hammer films) and a range of bit parts from the likes of Thora Hird, the film is ultimately rather likeable and well staged by director Val Guest, despite this one major query about its central character.

 

The DVD from DD Home Entertainment presents a nice, fairly sharp black and white transfer with reasonable mono audio. Marcus Hearn moderates an informative audio commentary with the recently deceased Val Guest, which is complimented by a short video interview with the director. Film historian Hearn and author Jonathan Rigby also provide the viewing notes for a twenty-four page glossy booklet which comes with the disc. Between them, these extras give us just about every piece of information one could wish to know about this early Hammer classic.