By J. KNIGHT

I don’t know anyone who watches old horror/sci-fi movies for the keen characterizations.

We watch them for the monsters, mainly, and maybe for a bit of sexual titillation from damsels in distress or vampires in low cut gowns. Gothic sets and misty moors may enter the picture. But "characterization" hardly registers on the classic horror fan’s thrill-o-meter.

And yet....

When I consider the old Universal monsters, they’re all tortured in some way, and I don’t mean physically. I mean the alienation of Frankenstein’s Monster, the eternal loneliness of Dracula, the torment of the Wolf Man.

Even the schlockier entries will offer up a guilty scientist who regrets his experiment-gone-bad or something like a love triangle (okay, often imagined by a writer who’s never had a date in his life, but at least the writer’s attempts at romantic banter are good for a chuckle). Usually there’s something to remind us that we’re watching living, breathing human beings and not game pieces on a checkerboard.

And then there’s Quatermass II: Enemy from Space (1957) the second and least of the Quatermass trilogy.

I’ve seen this film several times. Once for fun, then once again years later when I began this article and realized that I remembered almost nothing of the film except people running around an oil refinery. Seeing it for the second time I was filled with such apathy that I put off writing the article until once again, like helium from a balloon, all memory of the story had seeped out of my consciousness.

I had to sit down and watch Quatermass II for a third time, which is more than the recommended adult dosage. Like a character in a Lovecraftian drama, I hurry to get my thoughts down on paper before all recollection of the film vanishes, like a dream upon waking.

It isn’t that Quatermass II is a bad film. It isn’t. I’ve certainly sat through much worse. Then again, I’ve enjoyed much worse films more than I enjoyed Quatermass II.

The plot’s a good one, if familiar. Aliens (who live on an asteroid we can’t see because it’s in orbit "on the dark side of the Earth") arrive inside small meteorites. When someone handles one of the meteorites, it breaks open and a gaseous alien infects them and takes over the person’s mind. The aliens are up to no good, building a phony "artificial food factory" that is actually a breeding ground for more aliens.

Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) happens upon the plant accidentally and is struck by its similarity to a lunar base he’s designed, which he’ll build once he gets the kinks worked out of his atomic rocket. While investigating the plant, Quatermass’s assistant, Marsh (Bryan Forbes), becomes infected by a meteorite. Gas-masked guards appear, rough Quatermass up a bit, and take Marsh back to the plant.

Quatermass embarks on a campaign to find out what’s going on at the plant and to rescue Marsh. He’s drawn into a web of intrigue as we learn that the aliens have infected, and thus control, various leaders of British society who are protecting the plant.

The problem is, we’ve seen this same plot rendered with much more pizzazz in films such as Invaders From Mars (1953) and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956). Even 1958’s similarly-themed I Married A Monster From Outer Space offers more humanity and emotional range than Quatermass II. And jeez...when I start praising the "humanity and emotional range" of I Married A Monster From Outer Space, you know I’m setting the bar pretty darned low. Still, Quatermass II manages to stumble over it.

I have pages of notes delineating the plot in excruciating detail. I will spare you, and myself, the tedium of going through them. In short, Quatermass infiltrates the plant at the same time that angry villagers storm the gates and eventually we meet the hideous alien blobs ("Thousands of tiny creatures that can join together and expand into things a hundred feet high!" in Quatermass’s words) who are being acclimated to Earth’s atmosphere within big old domes.

I hesitate to say much more about the plot because, in the case of Quatermass II, plot is all there is. I honestly can’t remember any film being quite as characterless as this one.

Quatermass is his usual truculent, science-obsessed self, but with a softer edge this time around. In one scene he actually apologizes to one of his employees, a breakthrough that must have made his therapist beam with pride. There’s a reporter (Sidney James) who’s a drunk. And a police captain (John Longden) who’s likeable enough. There’s a member of Parliament (Tom Chatto) who’s determined to get to the bottom of the situation. But emotionally, they all run the gamut from A to...well, they pretty much stick with A.

Watching Quatermass II is like watching someone else play a video game. The characters go here and do this and go there and do that, and it all makes sense, pretty much, but darned if I can summon up an ounce of concern over the fate of any of these human zeroes.

Quatermass II reunites the writing team of Nigel Kneale and Val Guest from the first Quatermass film, The Quatermass Xperiment, and Guest is back in the director’s chair. It’s all quite competent (well, except for that "dark side of the Earth" bit) but some essential element is lacking, the one that keeps you in your seat rather than rooting in the refrigerator for a piece of cheese. Missing also, this time around, is co-writer Richard H. Landau. Coincidence?

All in all, I haven’t had so little to say about a genre film—or had such a devil of a time sitting through one—since I reviewed the German-British co-production The Brain for the HORROR-WOOD article "Brains! Brains! Brains!" (Part Two). That movie put me to sleep five times before I reached the end.

Quatermass II: Enemy From Space is nowhere nearly that soporific. But on an insomniac night when the rats scratch inside your skull and even the Shopping Channel won’t lull you to sleep, you could do worse than to reach for Quatermass II.

Quatermass II was followed, luckily, by my favorite Quatermass film, Five Million Years To Earth, which I’ll take a more enthusiastic look at next time.