The Quatermass Xperiment
Encyclopedia
The Quatermass Xperiment (US title: The Creeping Unknown) is a 1955 British science fiction
horror film
. Made by Hammer Film Productions
, it was based on the 1953 BBC Television
serial The Quatermass Experiment
written by Nigel Kneale
. It was directed by Val Guest
and stars Brian Donlevy
as the eponymous Professor Bernard Quatermass
. Jack Warner
, Richard Wordsworth
and Margia Dean appear in supporting roles.
The plot of the film involves the return to Earth of astronaut
Victor Carroon (Wordsworth), who has become the first man in space in a rocket ship of Quatermass's design. However, it becomes very clear that something infected Carroon during the flight, and he rapidly begins mutating into an alien
organism which, if it spore
s, will destroy humanity. Quatermass and his associates have just a few hours to track the creature down and prevent an apocalypse.
The film presents a heavily compressed version of the events of the original television serial. The most significant plot change occurs at the climax of the film. In the television version, Quatermass appeals to the last vestiges of Carroon's humanity and convinces him to commit suicide
in order to save the world. In the film, Quatermass kills the creature by electrocution
. This change, along with Donlevy's brusque interpretation of the title role, upset Nigel Kneale who frequently criticised the film. In his approach to making the fantastic nature of the film's plot convincing to audiences, Val Guest aimed to employ a high degree of realism
, directing the film in the manner more akin to that of a newsreel
.
The film enjoyed a highly successful release in the United Kingdom, forming one half of the highest grossing double bill release of 1955. It was also the first Hammer production to attract the attention of a major distributor in the United States, in this case United Artists
who distributed the film under the title The Creeping Unknown. The film received a mixed critical reception on its initial release but in the intervening years has come to be viewed as a classic of the genre. Particular praise is reserved for the tortured performance of Richard Wordsworth as the possessed Victor Carroon.
Its success led to Hammer producing an increasing number of horror films, including two sequels Quatermass 2
(1957) and Quatermass and the Pit
(1967), leading to them becoming synonymous with the genre. The Quatermass Xperiment is widely regarded as the first of these "Hammer Horrors".
), the scientist who built and launched the rocket, along with his assistant Briscoe (David King-Wood
). Shortly after the launch, all contact with the rocket and its three occupants – Carroon, Reichenheim and Greene – was lost. Opening the rocket's hatch, they find only Carroon (Richard Wordsworth
); there is no sign of the other two crew members. Carroon appears to be in shock, unable to speak except to mouth the words "Help me". While Quatermass and Briscoe try to learn what has happened to the rocket and its crew, Carroon's wife Judith (Margia Dean) breaks her husband out of the hospital where he is being kept. But Carroon has been changed by something the rocket encountered on its journey: he is now able to absorb any living thing he comes into contact with. Having already absorbed a cactus and killed the private investigator hired by Judith to get him out of hospital, he flees from his horrified wife (who is driven insane by the experience). A manhunt, conducted by Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner
), gets under way. Hiding out at the London docks, Carroon encounters a little girl (Jane Asher
) but through sheer willpower leaves her unharmed, making instead for a zoo where he absorbs many of the animals. By now, Carroon has lost any appearance of humanity. Quatermass and Briscoe track the creature to Westminster Abbey
. Examination of tissue samples taken from Carroon has led Quatermass to conclude that the alien creature that has taken him over will eventually cause him to spore
, endangering all of humanity as the organisms spread. With the assistance of a television crew working at the Abbey, Quatermass succeeds in killing the creature by electrocution
. He leaves the scene, determined to start again.
in 1953. Written by Manx
author Nigel Kneale
, it was an enormous success with critics and audiences alike, later described by film historian Robert Simpson as “event television, emptying the streets and pubs”. Among its viewers was Hammer Films producer Anthony Hinds
, who was immediately keen on buying the rights to make a film version. Hammer contacted the BBC on 24 August 1953, two days after the transmission of the final episode, to enquire about the film rights. Another who saw the potential for a film adaptation was the serial's writer, Nigel Kneale. At his urging, the BBC touted the scripts around a number of producers, including the Boulting Brothers and Frank Launder
and Sidney Gilliat
. Kneale even met with Sidney Gilliat to discuss the scripts but Gilliat was reluctant to buy the rights as he felt any film adaptation would inevitably receive a restrictive ‘X’ Certificate from the British Board of Film Censors
(BBFC). Hammer were not so reticent, deciding from the outset that they would deliberately pursue an ‘X’ Certificate for the film. Because Nigel Kneale was a BBC employee at the time, the rights to The Quatermass Experiment were held in their entirety by the BBC and Kneale received no extra payment for the sale of the film rights. This was a matter of some resentment for Kneale for many years until the BBC made an ex-gratia payment of £3,000 in 1967, in recognition of his creation of Quatermass.
(1953), the company's first foray into science fiction. The script was refined further by director Val Guest. One of Guest's key contributions to the script was to tailor the dialogue to suit the brusqe style of star Brian Donlevy. Further stylistic changes were sought by the BBC who retained a script approval option after the sale of the rights and asked Nigel Kneale to work on their suggested changes, much to his indignation. When the draft script was submitted to the BBFC for comment, Board Secretary Arthur Watkins replied, “I must warn you at this stage that, while we accept this story in principle for the ‘X’ category, we could not certificate, even in that category, a film treatment in which the horrific element was so exaggerated as to be nauseating and revolting to adult audiences”. The BBFC were particularly concerned with how graphic the depiction of Caroon's transformation into the alien creature would be.
The original television version consisted of six forty-minute episodes whereas the film version runs to just 82 minutes. The film's screenplay, therefore, condenses many of the events of the original – for example, the opening thirty minutes of the television version are covered in just two minutes in the film. Some characters from the television version, such as the journalist James Fullalove, are omitted altogether, while Judith Carroon disappears about halfway through the film. Similarly, a subplot
involving an affair between Briscoe and Judith Carroon is also left out. However, the change which aggravated Nigel Kneale the most was the dropping of the notion that Carroon has absorbed not only the bodies but the memories and the personalities of his two fellow astronauts. This change leads to the most significant difference between the two versions: in the television version, Quatermass makes an appeal to the last vestiges that remain of the three astronauts absorbed by the creature, convincing it to commit suicide before it can spore whereas in the film version Quatermass kills the creature by electrocution. Val Guest defended this change believing it was "filmically a better end to the story". He also felt it unlikely that Donlevy's gruff interpretation of Quatermass would lend itself to talking the creature into submission.
Among the other actors that appear in the film are Thora Hird
, Gordon Jackson
, David King-Wood
, Harold Lang
, Lionel Jeffries
and Sam Kydd
, many of whom appeared regularly in films directed by Val Guest. The Quatermass Xperiment was also an early role for Jane Asher
who appears as the little girl encountered by Carroon when he is on the run.
. Guest began his career co-writing comedies such as Oh, Mr Porter!
(1937) and Ask a Policeman
(1939) before moving into directing with Miss London Ltd.
(1943). His first directing job for Hammer was on Life With The Lyons
(1954) and he went on to direct their first two colour features: The Men of Sherwood Forest
(1954) and Break in the Circle
(1954). Guest had little interest in science fiction and was unenthusiastic about directing the film: he reluctantly took copies of Nigel Kneale's television scripts with him on holiday in Tangiers and only began reading them after being teased for being "ethereal" by his wife. Impressed by what he read, and pleased to be offered the opportunity to break away from directing comedy films, he took the job. In his approach to directing the film, Guest sought to make "a slightly wild story more believable" by creating a "science fact" film, shot "as though shooting a special programme for the BBC or something". To this end, Guest employed a cinéma vérité
style, making extensive use of hand-held camera
, even on set, an unusual technique for the time which horrified several of the technicians employed on the film.
Filming began on 12 October 1954 with a night shoot at Chessington Zoo and continued from 18 October 1954 into December. The budget was £42,000, low even by the standards of Hammer at the time. Special effects technician Les Bowie
recalled, "We did Quatermass on a budget so low it wasn't a real budget. I did it for wages not as a proper effects man who gets allocated a certain budget for a movie". Most of the location shooting was done around the Windsor
area. The scenes at the start of the film of the emergency services rushing to the rocket crash site were filmed, much to the annoyance of the locals, in the village of Bray
, Berkshire
where Hammer's studios were located. The field in which the scenes of the crashed rocket were shot was at Water Oakley
Farm, near Bray. It was originally intended to make the crash site look more spectacular by setting fire to the corn field but bad weather put paid to this idea. The scene where Carroon encounters the little girl was filmed at the East India Docks
in London. For the shot of the lights of London going out when the electricity is diverted to Westminster Abbey, an agreement was made with one of the engineers at Battersea Power Station
to turn off the lights illuminating the outside of the building; however the engineer misunderstood and briefly cut all the power along the River Thames
. The rest of the film was shot at Hammer's Bray Studios
, including the scenes set in Westminster Abbey; the Abbey refused permission to film there. A sense of scale was given to the Westminster scenes by the use of matte painting
s.
Partly because of the concerns raised by the BBFC and partly on account of the low budget, Guest kept the creature largely off-screen for much of the film, feeling that the audience's imaginations would fill in the blanks more effectively than he and the special effects team could deliver on-screen. For the climactic scenes at Westminster Abbey, however, effects designer Les Bowie created a monster from tripe
and rubber and photographed it against a model of the Abbey.
. Feeling that the science fiction theme of the film required a mood of “otherwordliness”, Bernard created a score that made heavy use of strings and percussion. Remarking on the effectiveness of the score, the film critic John Brosnan
noted, "Of prime importance, is the contribution of the soundtrack, in this case supplied by James Bernard who never wrote a more unnerving, jangly score". Several cues were released on CD by GDI Records on a compilation titled The Quatermass Film Music Collection. Bernard went on to compose the scores for many of Hammer's horror films, including The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Horror of Dracula
(1958), The Kiss of the Vampire
(1962), The Plague of the Zombies
(1966) and The Devil Rides Out
(1968).
(1954), chose to exploit it in the title of the film. "X is not an unknown quantity" was the tagline Exclusive Films, Hammer's distribution arm, used to sell the film to cinema managers. On subsequent re-releases, the film reverted to the title The Quatermass Experiment.
The Quatermass Xperiment premièred on 26 August 1955 at the London Pavilion
on Piccadilly Circus
. The supporting feature was The Eric Winstone Band Show. The film went on general release in the United Kingdom on 20 November 1955 in a double bill with the French film Rififi
. This became the most successful double bill release of 1955 in the UK. In the United States, the film was initially retitled Shock!; this was later changed to The Creeping Unknown when United Artists
took over distribution of the film in March 1956. United Artists packaged the film in a double bill with The Black Sleep.
newspaper gave the film a generally favourable assessment: their critic wrote, "Mr. Val Guest, the director, certainly knows his business when it comes to providing the more horrid brand of thrills... The first part of this particular film is well up to standard. Mr. Brian Donlevy, as the American scientist responsible for the experiment, is a little brusque in his treatment of British institutions but he is clearly a man who knows what he is doing. Mr. Jack Warner, representing Scotland Yard
, is indeed a comfort to have at hand when Things are on the rampage." Other reactions were more mixed: William Whitebait in the New Statesman
called the film "better than either War of the Worlds
or Them" while the reviewer in The Manchester Guardian
praised "a narrative style that quite neatly combines the horrific and the factual". On a less positive note, Frank Jackson of Reynolds News quipped, "That TV pseudo-science shocker The Quatermass Xperiment has been filmed and quitermess they've made of it too" and Patrick Gibbs of the Daily Telegraph found that the film "gives the impression that it originated in the strip of some horror comic. It remains very horrid and not quite coherent". Another critic who wasn't impressed with the film was François Truffaut
, who wrote in Cahiers du cinéma
, “This one is very, very bad, far from the small pleasure we get, for example, from the innocent science fiction films signed by the American Jack Arnold... The subject could have been turned into a good film, not lacking in spice; with a bit of imagination... None of this is in this sadly English film”.
. Hammer quickly sought to capitalise on the huge success of the film with a sequel. They approached Nigel Kneale with a proposal for a new Quatermass story, to be titled X the Unknown
(again capitalising on the ‘X’ Certificate in the title). Kneale refused permission to use Quatermass, however, but the film went ahead nonetheless with a newly created scientist character, very much in the Quatermass mould, played by Dean Jagger
. Quatermass did eventually return to cinema screens in Quatermass 2
(1957) and Quatermass and the Pit
(1967) both of which were based on Nigel Kneale serials originally presented by BBC Television. Three of the four films Hammer made in 1956 – X the Unknown, Quatermass 2 and The Curse of Frankenstein – were horror films and over the following twenty years the company became best known for their “Hammer Horror” productions.
The Quatermass Xperiment has continued to be largely well regarded by critics and film historians in the years since its release. Writing in Science Fiction in the Cinema, John Baxter
said, “In its time, The Quatermass Experiment was a pioneering sf film... Brian Donlevy was stiff but convincing... Much of the film is saved, however, by Richard Wordsworth... one of the finest such performances since Karloff's triumphs of the Thirties.” This view is echoed by John Brosnan
in The Primal Screen: "One of the best of all alien possession movies", he writes, "Not since Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster has an actor managed to create such a memorable, and sympathetic, monster out of mime alone". Bill Warren in Keep Watching The Skies! finds that "the buildup is slightly too long and too careful" but also writes, "It's an intelligent, taut and well-directed thriller; it showcases Nigel Kneale's ideas well; it's scary and exciting. It was made by people who cared about what they were doing, who were making entertainment for adults. It is still one of the best alien invasion films". Steve Chibnall, writing for the British Film Institute
's Screenonline
, describes The Quatermass Xperiment as "one of the high points of British SF/horror cinema." The horror fiction writer Stephen King
praised the film as one of his favourite horror movies from between 1950 and 1980 in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre
in 1991. The film director John Carpenter
, who later collaborated unsuccessfully with Nigel Kneale on the film Halloween III: Season of the Witch
(1982), has claimed that The Quatermass Xperiment "had an enormous, enormous impact on me—and it continues to be one of my all-time favourite science-fiction movies."
Some critics, such as Philip French of The Observer
, have noted that the plot of the 1999 Johnny Depp
movie The Astronaut's Wife
bears similarities to that of The Quatermass Xperiment, although it is not known whether the film really was an inspiration or whether this is coincidence.
by DD Video in 2003. It contained a number of extra features including a commentary by director Val Guest and Hammer historian Marcus Hearn as well as an interview with Val Guest and an original trailer.
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
. Made by Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
, it was based on the 1953 BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
serial The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science-fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television in the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first manned flight into space, overseen by...
written by Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...
. It was directed by Val Guest
Val Guest
Val Guest was a British film director, best known for his science-fiction films for Hammer Film Productions in the 1950s, but who also enjoyed a long, varied and active career in the film industry from the early 1930s up until the early 1980s.-Early life and career:He was born Valmond Maurice...
and stars Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy was an Irish-born American film actor, noted for playing tough guys from the 1930s to the 1960s. He usually appeared in supporting roles. Among his best known films are Beau Geste and The Great McGinty...
as the eponymous Professor Bernard Quatermass
Bernard Quatermass
Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group...
. Jack Warner
Jack Warner (actor)
Jack Warner OBE was an English film and television actor. He is closely associated with the role of PC George Dixon, which he played until the age of eighty....
, Richard Wordsworth
Richard Wordsworth
The English character actor Richard Wordsworth was born on 19 January 1915 and died on 21 November 1993. He was the great-great-grandson of the poet William Wordsworth....
and Margia Dean appear in supporting roles.
The plot of the film involves the return to Earth of astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
Victor Carroon (Wordsworth), who has become the first man in space in a rocket ship of Quatermass's design. However, it becomes very clear that something infected Carroon during the flight, and he rapidly begins mutating into an alien
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
organism which, if it spore
Spore
In biology, a spore is a reproductive structure that is adapted for dispersal and surviving for extended periods of time in unfavorable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many bacteria, plants, algae, fungi and some protozoa. According to scientist Dr...
s, will destroy humanity. Quatermass and his associates have just a few hours to track the creature down and prevent an apocalypse.
The film presents a heavily compressed version of the events of the original television serial. The most significant plot change occurs at the climax of the film. In the television version, Quatermass appeals to the last vestiges of Carroon's humanity and convinces him to commit suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
in order to save the world. In the film, Quatermass kills the creature by electrocution
Electric shock
Electric Shock of a body with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles or hair. Typically, the expression is used to denote an unwanted exposure to electricity, hence the effects are considered undesirable....
. This change, along with Donlevy's brusque interpretation of the title role, upset Nigel Kneale who frequently criticised the film. In his approach to making the fantastic nature of the film's plot convincing to audiences, Val Guest aimed to employ a high degree of realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
, directing the film in the manner more akin to that of a newsreel
Newsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
.
The film enjoyed a highly successful release in the United Kingdom, forming one half of the highest grossing double bill release of 1955. It was also the first Hammer production to attract the attention of a major distributor in the United States, in this case United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
who distributed the film under the title The Creeping Unknown. The film received a mixed critical reception on its initial release but in the intervening years has come to be viewed as a classic of the genre. Particular praise is reserved for the tortured performance of Richard Wordsworth as the possessed Victor Carroon.
Its success led to Hammer producing an increasing number of horror films, including two sequels Quatermass 2
Quatermass 2
Quatermass 2 is a 1957 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions, it is a sequel to an earlier Hammer film The Quatermass Xperiment. Like its predecessor, it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass II – written by Nigel Kneale...
(1957) and Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit (film)
Quatermass and the Pit is a 1967 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions it is a sequel to the earlier Hammer films The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. Like its predecessors it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass and the Pit – written by Nigel Kneale...
(1967), leading to them becoming synonymous with the genre. The Quatermass Xperiment is widely regarded as the first of these "Hammer Horrors".
Plot
A rocket crashes in a field in England, and the emergency services soon arrive. Also at the scene is Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian DonlevyBrian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy was an Irish-born American film actor, noted for playing tough guys from the 1930s to the 1960s. He usually appeared in supporting roles. Among his best known films are Beau Geste and The Great McGinty...
), the scientist who built and launched the rocket, along with his assistant Briscoe (David King-Wood
David King-Wood
David King-Wood was a British actor.He was born in Tehran, Iran , the youngest of four children...
). Shortly after the launch, all contact with the rocket and its three occupants – Carroon, Reichenheim and Greene – was lost. Opening the rocket's hatch, they find only Carroon (Richard Wordsworth
Richard Wordsworth
The English character actor Richard Wordsworth was born on 19 January 1915 and died on 21 November 1993. He was the great-great-grandson of the poet William Wordsworth....
); there is no sign of the other two crew members. Carroon appears to be in shock, unable to speak except to mouth the words "Help me". While Quatermass and Briscoe try to learn what has happened to the rocket and its crew, Carroon's wife Judith (Margia Dean) breaks her husband out of the hospital where he is being kept. But Carroon has been changed by something the rocket encountered on its journey: he is now able to absorb any living thing he comes into contact with. Having already absorbed a cactus and killed the private investigator hired by Judith to get him out of hospital, he flees from his horrified wife (who is driven insane by the experience). A manhunt, conducted by Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner
Jack Warner (actor)
Jack Warner OBE was an English film and television actor. He is closely associated with the role of PC George Dixon, which he played until the age of eighty....
), gets under way. Hiding out at the London docks, Carroon encounters a little girl (Jane Asher
Jane Asher
Jane Asher is an English actress. She has also developed a second career as a cake decorator and cake shop proprietor.-Early life:...
) but through sheer willpower leaves her unharmed, making instead for a zoo where he absorbs many of the animals. By now, Carroon has lost any appearance of humanity. Quatermass and Briscoe track the creature to Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
. Examination of tissue samples taken from Carroon has led Quatermass to conclude that the alien creature that has taken him over will eventually cause him to spore
Spore
In biology, a spore is a reproductive structure that is adapted for dispersal and surviving for extended periods of time in unfavorable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many bacteria, plants, algae, fungi and some protozoa. According to scientist Dr...
, endangering all of humanity as the organisms spread. With the assistance of a television crew working at the Abbey, Quatermass succeeds in killing the creature by electrocution
Electric shock
Electric Shock of a body with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles or hair. Typically, the expression is used to denote an unwanted exposure to electricity, hence the effects are considered undesirable....
. He leaves the scene, determined to start again.
Origins
The Quatermass Experiment was a six part serial broadcast by BBC TelevisionBBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
in 1953. Written by Manx
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
author Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...
, it was an enormous success with critics and audiences alike, later described by film historian Robert Simpson as “event television, emptying the streets and pubs”. Among its viewers was Hammer Films producer Anthony Hinds
Anthony Hinds
Anthony Hinds , aka Tony Hinds, aka John Elder, is a British screenwriter and producer. He is the son of the founder of Hammer Film Productions, William Hinds.-Early life:Tony Hinds was educated at St Paul's School...
, who was immediately keen on buying the rights to make a film version. Hammer contacted the BBC on 24 August 1953, two days after the transmission of the final episode, to enquire about the film rights. Another who saw the potential for a film adaptation was the serial's writer, Nigel Kneale. At his urging, the BBC touted the scripts around a number of producers, including the Boulting Brothers and Frank Launder
Frank Launder
Frank Launder was an English writer, director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat....
and Sidney Gilliat
Sidney Gilliat
Sidney Gilliat was an English film director, producer and writer.He was born in the district of Edgeley in Stockport, Cheshire. In the 1930s he worked as a scriptwriter, most notably with Frank Launder on The Lady Vanishes for Alfred Hitchcock, and its sequel Night Train to Munich , directed by...
. Kneale even met with Sidney Gilliat to discuss the scripts but Gilliat was reluctant to buy the rights as he felt any film adaptation would inevitably receive a restrictive ‘X’ Certificate from the British Board of Film Censors
British Board of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification , originally British Board of Film Censors, is a non-governmental organisation, funded by the film industry and responsible for the national classification of films within the United Kingdom...
(BBFC). Hammer were not so reticent, deciding from the outset that they would deliberately pursue an ‘X’ Certificate for the film. Because Nigel Kneale was a BBC employee at the time, the rights to The Quatermass Experiment were held in their entirety by the BBC and Kneale received no extra payment for the sale of the film rights. This was a matter of some resentment for Kneale for many years until the BBC made an ex-gratia payment of £3,000 in 1967, in recognition of his creation of Quatermass.
Writing
The first draft of the film screenplay was done by Richard Landau, an American screenwriter who had worked on six previous Hammer productions, including SpacewaysSpaceways
Spaceways is a 76-minute, 1953, British-American, black and white, science fiction film co-produced by Hammer Film Productions Ltd. and Lippert Productions Inc.. It was filmed entirely in England by the Hammer company, with Michael Carreras as producer-of-record and American Robert L...
(1953), the company's first foray into science fiction. The script was refined further by director Val Guest. One of Guest's key contributions to the script was to tailor the dialogue to suit the brusqe style of star Brian Donlevy. Further stylistic changes were sought by the BBC who retained a script approval option after the sale of the rights and asked Nigel Kneale to work on their suggested changes, much to his indignation. When the draft script was submitted to the BBFC for comment, Board Secretary Arthur Watkins replied, “I must warn you at this stage that, while we accept this story in principle for the ‘X’ category, we could not certificate, even in that category, a film treatment in which the horrific element was so exaggerated as to be nauseating and revolting to adult audiences”. The BBFC were particularly concerned with how graphic the depiction of Caroon's transformation into the alien creature would be.
The original television version consisted of six forty-minute episodes whereas the film version runs to just 82 minutes. The film's screenplay, therefore, condenses many of the events of the original – for example, the opening thirty minutes of the television version are covered in just two minutes in the film. Some characters from the television version, such as the journalist James Fullalove, are omitted altogether, while Judith Carroon disappears about halfway through the film. Similarly, a subplot
Subplot
A subplot is a secondary plot strand that is a supporting side story for any story or the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or in thematic significance...
involving an affair between Briscoe and Judith Carroon is also left out. However, the change which aggravated Nigel Kneale the most was the dropping of the notion that Carroon has absorbed not only the bodies but the memories and the personalities of his two fellow astronauts. This change leads to the most significant difference between the two versions: in the television version, Quatermass makes an appeal to the last vestiges that remain of the three astronauts absorbed by the creature, convincing it to commit suicide before it can spore whereas in the film version Quatermass kills the creature by electrocution. Val Guest defended this change believing it was "filmically a better end to the story". He also felt it unlikely that Donlevy's gruff interpretation of Quatermass would lend itself to talking the creature into submission.
Casting
- Brian DonlevyBrian DonlevyBrian Donlevy was an Irish-born American film actor, noted for playing tough guys from the 1930s to the 1960s. He usually appeared in supporting roles. Among his best known films are Beau Geste and The Great McGinty...
as Quatermass: As was common for Hammer productions at the time, an American star was brought in to provide appeal to American audiences and help the film find distribution there. Brian Donlevy was chosen by American producer Robert L. LippertRobert L. LippertRobert L. Lippert was a prolific film producer and cinema owner who eventually owned a chain of 118 theatres -Biography:...
, who helped finance the film – as he had many of Hammer's earlier films with the same casting stipulation – and would distribute the British Hammers in the USA in exchange for the Hammer distribution arm, Exclusive Films, handling Lippert's films in the UK. Donlevy had been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting ActorAcademy Award for Best Supporting ActorPerformance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
for Beau GesteBeau Geste (1939 film)Beau Geste is a 1939 film produced by Paramount Pictures based on the novel of the same name by P. C. Wren. It was directed and produced by William A. Wellman from a screenplay by Robert Carson...
(1939). He was best known for his appearances in a number of Preston SturgesPreston SturgesPreston Sturges , originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated playwright, screenwriter and film director born in Chicago, Illinois...
comedies, most notably The Great McGintyThe Great McGintyThe Great McGinty is a 1940 political satire comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, starring Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff and featuring William Demarest and Muriel Angelus. It was Sturges's first film as a director; he sold the story to Paramount Pictures for just $10 on condition...
(1940). Donlevy's brusque portrayal of Quatermass is very different to that of Reginald TateReginald TateReginald Tate was an English actor, veteran of many roles on stage, in film and on television. He is best remembered as the first actor to play the television science-fiction character Professor Bernard Quatermass, in the 1953 BBC Television serial The Quatermass Experiment.-Early life:Reginald...
in the television version and was not to Nigel Kneale's liking, who later remarked, “I may have picked Quatermass's surname out of a phone book, but his first name was carefully chosen: Bernard, after Bernard LovellBernard LovellSir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell OBE, FRS is an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.-Early Life:...
, the creator of Jodrell BankJodrell BankThe Jodrell Bank Observatory is a British observatory that hosts a number of radio telescopes, and is part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester...
. Pioneer, ultimate questing man. Donlevy played him as a mechanic, a creature with a completely closed mind”. Responding to Kneale's criticisms, Guest said, "Nigel Kneale was expecting to find Quatermass like he was on television, a sensitive British scientist, not some American stomping around, but to me Donlevy gave it absolute reality". By this stage in his career, Donlevy was suffering from alcoholismAlcoholismAlcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
; it was some weeks into the shoot before Val Guest became aware that the flask of coffee he always carried on set was laced with brandy. He reprised the role of Quatermass in Quatermass 2Quatermass 2Quatermass 2 is a 1957 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions, it is a sequel to an earlier Hammer film The Quatermass Xperiment. Like its predecessor, it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass II – written by Nigel Kneale...
(1957) and continued to act until his death in 1972.
- Jack WarnerJack Warner (actor)Jack Warner OBE was an English film and television actor. He is closely associated with the role of PC George Dixon, which he played until the age of eighty....
as Inspector Lomax: Warner appeared by arrangement with the J. Arthur Rank OrganisationRank OrganisationThe Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company formed during 1937 and absorbed in 1996 by The Rank Group Plc. It was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities....
. At the time he was best known as the star of Here Come the HuggettsHere Come the HuggettsHere Come the Huggetts is a 1948 British film, the first of the Huggetts Trilogy about a working class English family. All three films were directed by Ken Annakin and released by Gainsborough Pictures....
(1948) and its sequels. However, shortly after finishing The Quatermass Xperiment, he made his first appearance on television in the role he is most associated with, as the title character in Dixon of Dock GreenDixon of Dock GreenDixon of Dock Green was a popular BBC television series that ran from 1955 to 1976, and later a radio series. Despite being a drama series, it was initially produced by the BBC's light entertainment department.-Overview:...
(1955-76).
- Richard WordsworthRichard WordsworthThe English character actor Richard Wordsworth was born on 19 January 1915 and died on 21 November 1993. He was the great-great-grandson of the poet William Wordsworth....
as Victor Carroon: Wordsworth was the great-great-grandson of the poet William WordsworthWilliam WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
. He was cast by Val Guest because "he had the right sort of face for the part". Wordsworth was best known at the time for his work in the theatre. His performance in The Quatermass Xperiment is frequently compared with that of Boris KarloffBoris KarloffWilliam Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
in FrankensteinFrankenstein (1931 film)Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
(1931). Val Guest, aware of the risk of an actor going over the top with the part, directed Wordsworth to "hold back just a mite of what you're feeling". Summing up Wordsworth's performance, film critic Bill WarrenBill WarrenWilliam Bond Warren , better known as Bill Warren, is an American film historian and critic generally regarded as one of the leading authorities on science fiction, horror and fantasy films....
said, "All Carroon's anguish and torment are conveyed in one of the best mime performances in horror and science fiction films... A sequence in which he is riding in a car with his wife is uncanny: only the alien is visible for a long moment". Wordsworth went on to appear in three more Hammer films, The Camp on Blood IslandThe Camp on Blood IslandThe Camp on Blood Island is a 1958 British World War II film, directed by Val Guest for Hammer Film Productions and starring Carl Möhner, André Morrel, Edward Underdown and Walter Fitzgerald....
(1958), The Revenge of FrankensteinThe Revenge of FrankensteinThe Revenge of Frankenstein is a 1958 British horror film made by Hammer Film Productions. Directed by Terence Fisher, the film stars Peter Cushing, Francis Matthews, Michael Gwynn and Eunice Gayson....
(1958) and The Curse of the WerewolfThe Curse of the WerewolfThe Curse of the Werewolf is a British film based on the novel The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore. The film was made by the British film studio Hammer Film Productions and was shot at Bray Studios.-Plot:...
(1961). He died in 1993.
- Margia Dean as Judith Carroon: A former beauty queen, Margia Dean was allegedly cast on account of her association with then 20th Century Fox20th Century FoxTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
president Spyros SkourasSpyros SkourasSpyros Panagiotis Skouras was an American motion picture pioneer and movie executive who was the president of the 20th Century Fox from 1942 to 1962...
: according to executive producer Michael CarrerasMichael CarrerasMichael Carreras was a British film producer and director. He was best known for his association with Hammer Studios, being the son of founder James Carreras, and taking an executive role in the company during its most successful years.As producer, he worked on The Curse of Frankenstein , Dracula ...
, "Skouras had a girlfriend who was an actress and he wanted her in pictures, but he didn't want her in pictures in America, because of the tittle-tattle or whatever, so he set it up though his friend Bob Lippert". Dean, however, was no stranger to Lippert; by the time The Quatermass Xperiment had been produced, she'd appeared in over twenty of the pictures produced for Lippert in the US.
Among the other actors that appear in the film are Thora Hird
Thora Hird
Dame Thora Hird DBE was an English actress.-Early life and career:Hird was born in the Lancashire seaside town of Morecambe. She first appeared on stage at the age of two months in a play her father was managing...
, Gordon Jackson
Gordon Jackson (actor)
Gordon Cameron Jackson, OBE was a Scottish Emmy Award-winning actor best remembered for his roles as the butler Angus Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs and George Cowley, the head of CI5, in The Professionals....
, David King-Wood
David King-Wood
David King-Wood was a British actor.He was born in Tehran, Iran , the youngest of four children...
, Harold Lang
Harold Lang
Harold Lang was an American dancer and actor.-Biography:Lang began his professional career as a ballet dancer, making his professional debut with the San Francisco Ballet in 1938 and then going on to perform with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo two years later and American Ballet Theatre in 1943...
, Lionel Jeffries
Lionel Jeffries
Lionel Charles Jeffries was an English actor, screenwriter and film director.-Early life and career:Jeffries attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wimborne Minster, Dorset. In 1945, he received a commission in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry...
and Sam Kydd
Sam Kydd
Sam Kydd was an Ulster-born English actor. An army officer's son, he was born in Belfast, but moved to London, England when he was a child. He was educated at Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England....
, many of whom appeared regularly in films directed by Val Guest. The Quatermass Xperiment was also an early role for Jane Asher
Jane Asher
Jane Asher is an English actress. She has also developed a second career as a cake decorator and cake shop proprietor.-Early life:...
who appears as the little girl encountered by Carroon when he is on the run.
Filming
Assigned to direct the film was Val GuestVal Guest
Val Guest was a British film director, best known for his science-fiction films for Hammer Film Productions in the 1950s, but who also enjoyed a long, varied and active career in the film industry from the early 1930s up until the early 1980s.-Early life and career:He was born Valmond Maurice...
. Guest began his career co-writing comedies such as Oh, Mr Porter!
Oh, Mr Porter!
Oh, Mr Porter! is a British comedy film starring Will Hay with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt and directed by Marcel Varnel. While not his most commercially successful, it is probably his best-known film to modern audiences...
(1937) and Ask a Policeman
Ask A Policeman
Ask a Policeman is a 1939 British comedy film directed by Marcel Varnel which stars Will Hay, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt. The title comes from the popular music hall song Ask a Policeman. The Turnbottom Round police force are threatened with dismissal by their Chief Constable and decide to...
(1939) before moving into directing with Miss London Ltd.
Miss London Ltd.
Miss London Ltd. is a 1943 British, black-and-white, comedy, musical, war film, directed by Val Guest and starring Ronald Shiner as Sailor Meredith and Arthur Askey as Arthur Bowden...
(1943). His first directing job for Hammer was on Life With The Lyons
Life With The Lyons
Life with The Lyons was a British radio and television domestic sitcom dating from the 1950s .-Overview:Life with The Lyons was unusual in that it featured a real-life American family...
(1954) and he went on to direct their first two colour features: The Men of Sherwood Forest
The Men of Sherwood Forest
The Men of Sherwood Forest is a 1954 British adventure film directed by Val Guest and starring Don Taylor, Reginald Beckwith, Eileen Moore and David King-Wood. The film follows the exploits of Robin Hood and his followers...
(1954) and Break in the Circle
Break in the Circle
Break in the Circle is a 1955 British film directed by Val Guest and starring Forrest Tucker, Eva Bartok, Marius Goring and Guy Middleton. An adventurer is hired by a German millionaire to help a Polish scientist escape to the West....
(1954). Guest had little interest in science fiction and was unenthusiastic about directing the film: he reluctantly took copies of Nigel Kneale's television scripts with him on holiday in Tangiers and only began reading them after being teased for being "ethereal" by his wife. Impressed by what he read, and pleased to be offered the opportunity to break away from directing comedy films, he took the job. In his approach to directing the film, Guest sought to make "a slightly wild story more believable" by creating a "science fact" film, shot "as though shooting a special programme for the BBC or something". To this end, Guest employed a cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
style, making extensive use of hand-held camera
Hand-held camera
Hand-held camera or hand-held shooting is a filmmaking and video production technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conveniently sized for travel and because they allow...
, even on set, an unusual technique for the time which horrified several of the technicians employed on the film.
Filming began on 12 October 1954 with a night shoot at Chessington Zoo and continued from 18 October 1954 into December. The budget was £42,000, low even by the standards of Hammer at the time. Special effects technician Les Bowie
Les Bowie
Les Bowie was a Canadian-born special effects artist working mainly in Britain.Bowie began his career as a matte painter at in 1946...
recalled, "We did Quatermass on a budget so low it wasn't a real budget. I did it for wages not as a proper effects man who gets allocated a certain budget for a movie". Most of the location shooting was done around the Windsor
Windsor, Berkshire
Windsor is an affluent suburban town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is widely known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British Royal Family....
area. The scenes at the start of the film of the emergency services rushing to the rocket crash site were filmed, much to the annoyance of the locals, in the village of Bray
Bray, Berkshire
Bray, sometimes known as Bray on Thames, is a village and civil parish in the English county of Berkshire. It stands on the banks of the River Thames, just south-east of Maidenhead. It is famous as the village mentioned in the song The Vicar of Bray...
, Berkshire
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...
where Hammer's studios were located. The field in which the scenes of the crashed rocket were shot was at Water Oakley
Water Oakley
Water Oakley is a hamlet on the River Thames in the civil parish of Bray in the English county of Berkshire.It is the location of both Bray Studios and the Oakley Court Hotel. It first appeared on maps around 1800. However, the name 'Oakley' is derived from the Old English ac-leah which translates...
Farm, near Bray. It was originally intended to make the crash site look more spectacular by setting fire to the corn field but bad weather put paid to this idea. The scene where Carroon encounters the little girl was filmed at the East India Docks
East India Docks
The East India Docks was a group of docks in Blackwall, east London, north-east of the Isle of Dogs. Today only the entrance basin remains.-History:...
in London. For the shot of the lights of London going out when the electricity is diverted to Westminster Abbey, an agreement was made with one of the engineers at Battersea Power Station
Battersea Power Station
Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Battersea, South London. The station comprises two individual power stations, built in two stages in the form of a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built first in the...
to turn off the lights illuminating the outside of the building; however the engineer misunderstood and briefly cut all the power along the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
. The rest of the film was shot at Hammer's Bray Studios
Bray Studios (UK)
Bray Studios is a film and television facility at Bray, near Windsor, Berkshire, England. The films Alien and The Rocky Horror Picture Show were shot there...
, including the scenes set in Westminster Abbey; the Abbey refused permission to film there. A sense of scale was given to the Westminster scenes by the use of matte painting
Matte painting
A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that would otherwise be too expensive or impossible to build or visit. Historically, matte painters and film technicians have used various techniques...
s.
Partly because of the concerns raised by the BBFC and partly on account of the low budget, Guest kept the creature largely off-screen for much of the film, feeling that the audience's imaginations would fill in the blanks more effectively than he and the special effects team could deliver on-screen. For the climactic scenes at Westminster Abbey, however, effects designer Les Bowie created a monster from tripe
Tripe
Tripe is a type of edible offal from the stomachs of various farm animals.-Beef tripe:...
and rubber and photographed it against a model of the Abbey.
Music
Originally hired to compose the music for the film was John Hotchkiss. When Hotchkiss fell ill, Anthony Hinds asked conductor John Hollingsworth to recommend a replacement. Hollingsworth suggested James Bernard, with whom he had recently worked on a BBC radio production of The Duchess of MalfiThe Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi is a macabre, tragic play written by the English dramatist John Webster in 1612–13. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then before a more general audience at The Globe, in 1613-14...
. Feeling that the science fiction theme of the film required a mood of “otherwordliness”, Bernard created a score that made heavy use of strings and percussion. Remarking on the effectiveness of the score, the film critic John Brosnan
John Brosnan
John Raymond Brosnan was an Australian writer of both fiction and non-fiction works based around the fantasy and science fiction genres. He was born in Perth, Western Australia, and died in South Harrow, London, from acute pancreatitis...
noted, "Of prime importance, is the contribution of the soundtrack, in this case supplied by James Bernard who never wrote a more unnerving, jangly score". Several cues were released on CD by GDI Records on a compilation titled The Quatermass Film Music Collection. Bernard went on to compose the scores for many of Hammer's horror films, including The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Horror of Dracula
Dracula (1958 film)
Dracula, also known as Horror of Dracula in the United States, is a 1958 British horror film. It is the first in the series of Hammer Horror films inspired by the Bram Stoker novel Dracula. It was directed by Terence Fisher, and stars Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Carol Marsh, Melissa Stribling and...
(1958), The Kiss of the Vampire
The Kiss of the Vampire
The Kiss of the Vampire also known as Kiss of Evil, is a 1963 British vampire film made by the film studio Hammer Film Productions...
(1962), The Plague of the Zombies
The Plague of the Zombies
The Plague of the Zombies Hammer Horror film directed by John Gilling. It stars André Morell, John Carson, Jacqueline Pearce, Brook Williams and Michael Ripper...
(1966) and The Devil Rides Out
The Devil Rides Out (film)
The Devil Rides Out is a 1968 British film based on the 1934 novel The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley...
(1968).
Cinema release
As expected, The Quatermass Xperiment received an ‘X’ Certificate from the BBFC, restricting admission to persons over the age of sixteen. Whereas most other studios were nervous of this new certificate, Hammer, who had noticed the success of the similarly ‘X’-rated Les DiaboliquesLes Diaboliques (film)
Les Diaboliques , released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends, is a 1955 French black-and-white thriller feature film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot and Paul Meurisse...
(1954), chose to exploit it in the title of the film. "X is not an unknown quantity" was the tagline Exclusive Films, Hammer's distribution arm, used to sell the film to cinema managers. On subsequent re-releases, the film reverted to the title The Quatermass Experiment.
The Quatermass Xperiment premièred on 26 August 1955 at the London Pavilion
London Pavilion
The London Pavilion is a building located on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Coventry Street on the north-east side of, and facing, Piccadilly Circus in London...
on Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster, built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly...
. The supporting feature was The Eric Winstone Band Show. The film went on general release in the United Kingdom on 20 November 1955 in a double bill with the French film Rififi
Rififi
Rififi is a 1955 French crime film adaptation of Auguste le Breton's novel of the same name. Directed by American filmmaker Jules Dassin, the film stars Jean Servais as the aging gangster Tony le Stéphanois, Carl Möhner as Jo le Suédois, Robert Manuel as Mario Farrati, and Jules Dassin as César le...
. This became the most successful double bill release of 1955 in the UK. In the United States, the film was initially retitled Shock!; this was later changed to The Creeping Unknown when United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
took over distribution of the film in March 1956. United Artists packaged the film in a double bill with The Black Sleep.
Critical response
The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper gave the film a generally favourable assessment: their critic wrote, "Mr. Val Guest, the director, certainly knows his business when it comes to providing the more horrid brand of thrills... The first part of this particular film is well up to standard. Mr. Brian Donlevy, as the American scientist responsible for the experiment, is a little brusque in his treatment of British institutions but he is clearly a man who knows what he is doing. Mr. Jack Warner, representing Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
, is indeed a comfort to have at hand when Things are on the rampage." Other reactions were more mixed: William Whitebait in the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
called the film "better than either War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds (1953 film)
The War of the Worlds is a 1953 science fiction film starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. It was the first on-screen loose adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic novel of the same name...
or Them" while the reviewer in The Manchester Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
praised "a narrative style that quite neatly combines the horrific and the factual". On a less positive note, Frank Jackson of Reynolds News quipped, "That TV pseudo-science shocker The Quatermass Xperiment has been filmed and quitermess they've made of it too" and Patrick Gibbs of the Daily Telegraph found that the film "gives the impression that it originated in the strip of some horror comic. It remains very horrid and not quite coherent". Another critic who wasn't impressed with the film was François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, who wrote in Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
, “This one is very, very bad, far from the small pleasure we get, for example, from the innocent science fiction films signed by the American Jack Arnold... The subject could have been turned into a good film, not lacking in spice; with a bit of imagination... None of this is in this sadly English film”.
Legacy
While The Quatermass Xperiment was not Hammer's first science fiction film, it was their first foray into the horror genre. It was also the first film to bring the company to the attention of major film distributors: in this case United ArtistsUnited Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
. Hammer quickly sought to capitalise on the huge success of the film with a sequel. They approached Nigel Kneale with a proposal for a new Quatermass story, to be titled X the Unknown
X the Unknown
X the Unknown is a British science-fiction / horror film made by the Hammer Films company and released in 1956.-Production:The film was originally intended by Hammer to be a sequel to the previous year's successful The Quatermass Xperiment, but writer Nigel Kneale refused permission for the...
(again capitalising on the ‘X’ Certificate in the title). Kneale refused permission to use Quatermass, however, but the film went ahead nonetheless with a newly created scientist character, very much in the Quatermass mould, played by Dean Jagger
Dean Jagger
Dean Jagger was an Academy Award winning American film actor.-Career:Born Ira Dean Jagger in Columbus Grove, Ohio, Jagger made his film debut in The Woman from Hell with Mary Astor...
. Quatermass did eventually return to cinema screens in Quatermass 2
Quatermass 2
Quatermass 2 is a 1957 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions, it is a sequel to an earlier Hammer film The Quatermass Xperiment. Like its predecessor, it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass II – written by Nigel Kneale...
(1957) and Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit (film)
Quatermass and the Pit is a 1967 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions it is a sequel to the earlier Hammer films The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. Like its predecessors it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass and the Pit – written by Nigel Kneale...
(1967) both of which were based on Nigel Kneale serials originally presented by BBC Television. Three of the four films Hammer made in 1956 – X the Unknown, Quatermass 2 and The Curse of Frankenstein – were horror films and over the following twenty years the company became best known for their “Hammer Horror” productions.
The Quatermass Xperiment has continued to be largely well regarded by critics and film historians in the years since its release. Writing in Science Fiction in the Cinema, John Baxter
John Baxter (author)
John Baxter is an Australian-born writer, journalist, and film-maker.Baxter has lived in Britain and the United States as well as in his native Sydney, but has made his home in Paris since 1989, where he is married to the film-maker Marie-Dominique Montel...
said, “In its time, The Quatermass Experiment was a pioneering sf film... Brian Donlevy was stiff but convincing... Much of the film is saved, however, by Richard Wordsworth... one of the finest such performances since Karloff's triumphs of the Thirties.” This view is echoed by John Brosnan
John Brosnan
John Raymond Brosnan was an Australian writer of both fiction and non-fiction works based around the fantasy and science fiction genres. He was born in Perth, Western Australia, and died in South Harrow, London, from acute pancreatitis...
in The Primal Screen: "One of the best of all alien possession movies", he writes, "Not since Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster has an actor managed to create such a memorable, and sympathetic, monster out of mime alone". Bill Warren in Keep Watching The Skies! finds that "the buildup is slightly too long and too careful" but also writes, "It's an intelligent, taut and well-directed thriller; it showcases Nigel Kneale's ideas well; it's scary and exciting. It was made by people who cared about what they were doing, who were making entertainment for adults. It is still one of the best alien invasion films". Steve Chibnall, writing for the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
's Screenonline
Screenonline
Screenonline is a Web site devoted to the history of British film and television, and to social history as revealed by film and television. The project has been developed by the British Film Institute and funded by a £1.2 million grant from the National Lottery New Opportunities Fund.Reviews...
, describes The Quatermass Xperiment as "one of the high points of British SF/horror cinema." The horror fiction writer Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
praised the film as one of his favourite horror movies from between 1950 and 1980 in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre
Danse Macabre (book)
Danse Macabre is a non-fiction book by Stephen King, about horror fiction in print, radio, film and comics, and the genre's influence on United States popular culture...
in 1991. The film director John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
, who later collaborated unsuccessfully with Nigel Kneale on the film Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a 1982 science fiction horror film and the third installment in the Halloween film series. It is the only Halloween where the story does not revolve around Michael Myers. Directed and written by Tommy Lee Wallace, the film stars Tom Atkins as Dr. Dan Challis,...
(1982), has claimed that The Quatermass Xperiment "had an enormous, enormous impact on me—and it continues to be one of my all-time favourite science-fiction movies."
Some critics, such as Philip French of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, have noted that the plot of the 1999 Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
movie The Astronaut's Wife
The Astronaut's Wife
The Astronaut's Wife is a 1999 science fiction/thriller film directed and written by Rand Ravich. It stars Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron.-Plot:...
bears similarities to that of The Quatermass Xperiment, although it is not known whether the film really was an inspiration or whether this is coincidence.
DVD release
The Quatermass Xperiment was released on region 2 DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
by DD Video in 2003. It contained a number of extra features including a commentary by director Val Guest and Hammer historian Marcus Hearn as well as an interview with Val Guest and an original trailer.
External links
- The Quatermass Xperiment at Hammer FilmsHammer Film ProductionsHammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
- The Quatermass Xperiment at the British Film InstituteBritish Film InstituteThe British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
's Screenonline - The Quatermass Xperiment at The Quatermass Home Page
- The Quatermass Trilogy - A Controlled Paranoia
- Quatermass.org.uk - Nigel Kneale & Quatermass Appreciation Site