Hammer Studios didn't always make horror films--in fact, they were a pretty humdrum little outfit, barely able to keep its folks in fish and chips...until the studio decided to try its hand at science fiction and ended up cashing in lots of chips at the box office.  Since this big success eventually led to the Hammer Horror output that we love, it's well worth our while to examine...

By J. KNIGHT

(Note: This is the first installment of a series that will examine the Quatermass films.  The second article, which will deal with the sequel to the first Quatermass film, will appear in next month's issue.)

You don’t mess with Quatermass.

Not with Brits around, anyway. Their love for the original BBC-produced television episodes about the dedicated scientist, Professor Bernard Quatermass, runs deep. The first of author Nigel Kneale’s three television plays about Professor Quatermass, The Quatermass Experiment, aired in 1953 and immediately grabbed the attention and admiration of British s-f fans. Kneale brought Quatermass back for two more television plays, Quatermass 2 (1955) and Quatermass And The Pit (1957).

Kneale, the BBC and Hammer Films Ltd. joined forces to bring the first Quatermass adventure to the big screen in 1956. At the time, the British film industry felt compelled to star an American as Quatermass in order to market the film in the United States, a decision that strikes us as odd in these days of Sean Connery, Hugh Grant and any number of other non-American leading men. But that’s how it was back then (and too often, still is), and the actor who played Quatermass on television, the British Reginald Tate, was replaced by a reportedly boozy but American Brian Donlevy.

At the time of the original broadcast of The Quatermass Experiment, the images presented to the British public were considered so horrific that the BBC was barraged with complaints. The images in the movie were even more shocking (literally), and the film version of The Quatermass Experiment (aka The Creeping Terror) received an "X certificate" rating in Great Britain. The rating became an endorsement of the film’s terrifying content and it was renamed The Quatermass Xperiment for release in the United States.

The Quatermass Xperiment begins with the crash landing of a rocket ship in a farmer’s field. The impact shakes the nearby farmhouse, rattling rafters and toppling shelves. Police and fire departments, and Quatermass, rush to the scene.

We learn that the ship belongs to Quatermass, who shot it into outer space with three men on board without waiting for government approval. The Minister of Defense, played by Lionel Jeffries, brings Quatermass to task for gambling with the lives of three men. Quatermass snarls back, "Every experiment is a gamble. The unknown is always a risk. They [the three astronauts] should know that."

Interesting phrase: "They should know that." Apparently Quatermass never bothered to make certain that they knew the risks, or he would have said, "They knew that."

Right away Quatermass’s indifference to the human lives he risked in the name of science marks him as a man not to be trusted. He is, in fact, sociopathically devoid of normal human emotion. His brusque, know-it-all attitude at the site of the crashed rocket further establishes him as a megalomaniac blowhard.

The Fire Chief (Michael Godfrey) suggests that they cool the overheated rocket with water. Quatermass dismisses this idiotic suggestion...until it’s discovered that one astronaut has somehow survived the crash (which is indeed remarkable, since the impact practically destroyed a farmhouse and buried the ship’s nose in English soil). It’s a moment worthy of Rowan Atkinson’s "The Black Adder" when Quatermass commands the Fire Chief to douse the rocket with water on his command, as if it were the first time the idea had been floated.

The lone survivor, astronaut Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), is in a zombie-like state. The other two astronauts are goo. Quatermass immediately rushes Carroon to the hospital. Oh, wait, that’s wrong. That’s what an ordinarily compassionate person would do. This is Quatermass. Quatermass takes Carroon back to his lab to be studied like a rat.

Quatermass’s assistant, Marsh (Maurice Kaufmann), protests that Carroon should be in a hospital, but Quatermass doesn’t see what a hospital could do for him that Marsh can’t. Well, there’s that pesky notion of skilled medical care and proper monitoring and life support equipment, but Quatermass has made up his mind to keep Carroon under his control.

Which makes me wonder exactly what Quatermass’s position is that he can get away with this stuff. I suppose that Great Britain in the mid-1950s was a bit less restrictive than Los Angeles in the 21st century, but I know that if I launched my own manned space rocket without approval and kidnapped a man, I’d face some pretty stiff penalties. Like, going to jail for the rest of my life. But Quatermass is not a man to be trifled with.

Through it all, Quatermass remains dead-certain of his actions and of the philosophy behind them. Carroon’s wife, Judith (Margia Dean) rails at Quatermass: "You’ve destroyed him like you’ve destroyed everything else you’ve touched!" Quatermass replies, "There’s no room for personal feelings in science." One can only imagine the uproar if NASA officials had taken this stance in the wake of the space shuttle disasters.

Carroon’s physical state deteriorates until Marsh defies Quatermass and insists on putting the patient in the hospital. Quatermass finally relents. Meanwhile, police inspector Lomax (Jack Warner) suspects that Carroon murdered his fellow astronauts. Routine inspections of Carroon’s fingerprints reveal a surprise: He hasn’t any.

Turns out that the rocket was invaded by a fungus-like alien life form that consumed the other two astronauts and is now eating away at Carroon. His wife Judith busts him out of the hospital figuring that she can take better care of him than those silly doctors and nurses. (I guess that the national health care in Great Britain is as bad as people say it is, since everyone seems to rank the hospital on the same level as a medieval torture dungeon.)

Judith promptly disappears from the film and Carroon launches on a killing spree as the alien fungus grows and grows, consuming him. Quatermass and the police join forces to track down Carroon.

Carroon kills a pharmacist and decimates the animal population of the London Zoo. We get the innocent-little-girl-and-the-monster bit, and we see how Carroon manages to tear himself away without consuming her.

Now, this is a pet peeve of mine, that little girls always escape from monstrous encounters with nothing more than a broken dolly. It seems that the standard for monstrous behavior was set by Frankenstein way back in 1931 when the Monster drowned the little girl (a scene originally censored but later restored). Since then, moviemakers always seem to wimp out. But, in the case of The Quatermass Xperiment, at least the wimping out has a point, to demonstrate how the human part of Carroon is at war with the alien that is trying to consume his body.

Eventually Carroon loses the war and becomes a big, gloppy, tentacled blob that must be destroyed before it can release millions of spores and infect all of London. Quatermass manages to electrocute it in the shocking finale.

The creature is dead, as are three astronauts, a pharmacist, a bunch of animals and a doll. Quatermass hasn’t a clue how the alien got on board the ship or how to prevent such an occurrence in the future, and he just barely stopped it from destroying London and possibly the world. So what does he do? Well, naturally, he sets out, undeterred, "to begin again." Moments later, another Quatermass rocket soars into space.

Consider for a moment that Carroon was just another victim of the alien. Consider also that the alien is a mindless fungus following its natural biological programming to eat and procreate, and that it never asked to be brought back to Earth in the first place. It was Quatermass who invaded its space, Quatermass who brought it back, and it is Quatermass who blithely launches another rocket without any assurance that the same thing—or something worse—won’t happen again.

Who, then, is the real monster here?

Quatermass.

I’d like to think that screenwriters Richard Landau and Val Guest (who also directed) planned it that way. I haven’t seen the original play by Nigel Kneale, so I can’t say if this vision of Quatermass as anti-hero is Kneale’s, Landau’s or Guest’s.

Regardless of who should be credited, the idea gives The Quatermass Xperiment a resonant tone that most movies of its period and budget and concept lack. The direction by Guest is tight and effective.

Val Guest also directed and co-wrote one of my favorite s-f films, The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961), he wrote the screenplay for and directed When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1970), and co-wrote (with Kneale) and directed The Abominable Snowman Of The Himalayas (1957). His output also includes screwball comedies, soft porn, soft porn screwball comedies, and a lot of other B-films, most of which are pretty undistinguished.

Which leads me to suspect that the subtleties in The Quatermass Xperiment are something more than a fluke, but maybe not much more, or possibly the contribution of co-writer Richard Landau, who went on to write television scripts for shows from Ben Casey to The Outer Limits.

Maybe examining the second film in the Quatermass series, Quatermass 2: Enemy From Space, also directed and co-written by Guest (but without Landau), will provide more clues to this mystery.

(J. Knight's supernatural thriller Risen is available from Pinnacle Books. Reviews and a sample can be viewed on his Website.)

Thanks, Jay.  Indeed, The Quatermass Xperiment is not only a satisfying space monster flick, it's also a thought- provoking one as well, in the tradition of all good science fiction works.   And it "launched" little Hammer Studios into a new direction, one that would soon bring us the great Gothic horror movies and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.   We are very thankful that Hammer tried this "xperiment" and are looking forward to your article on the second Quatermass film in next month's issue.

Article copyright © J. Knight

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