31 Days of Halloween Day 9: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)
October 16th 2010 15:42
As my month of freaking myself out needlessly continues, I wonder how much of my list will reveal itself to have been bullied by a lot of recommendations and "best" lists...?
Having only vaguely heard of this by name, I thought it might be worth a look since it was part of the esteemed (ahem) Hammer back catalogue, and marked the studio's first attempt at a horror movie. It's more science-fiction than horror, but the story elements are so simple I'm not sure if it holds up well. Worse still, having been adapted from a longer-length serial, it's clear that the movie is just a heavily abridged version of this, and the events simply go from A to B to C to D to etc etc.
Set in England, the movie begins with a couple of randy teenagers frolicking, literally rolling in the hay, in the front garden of the girl's dad's farm (?!). Before they do something that will make her get pregnant, the guy overhears a weird noise, which turns out to be a space rocket crashing. Honestly, if they weren't going to kill off these little bortsal recruits and her surprisingly tolerant father, they didn't really need this scene - they could have just cut straight to the crash site, where the action starts happening.
It's already crawling with police, detectives, the press and a bunch of randoms, as well as Victor, single guy who survived the crash. He also happens the be the only one on board, and in complete shock, can only blankly say "Help" before being wheeled off...
...To a laboratory (not a hospital), which is run by the powerful, egocentric Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy), who designed the rocket, and his doctor assistant. A few spinning newspapers inform us that Quatermass had refused a police investigation, and later in the lab, he is hesitant to take the poor bastard to the hospital, because they have just discovered that Victor's fingerprints look a bit off, and no-one else but they know what's out there "in space...on the other side of the sky!"
Since Victor (played superbly by the now late Richard Wordsworth) is unnaturally silent, profusely sweaty, and keeps giving everyone really creepy stares, the professor and his doctor start to worry. It's just as well, because his pointy-breasted wife (played woodenly by the surprisingly then-veteran actress Margia Dean) isn't particularly bothered or affectionate. She does whine a bit, and gets to deliver some painfully obvious lines ("the world? What world? Your world? The world of Quatermass") and the horror staple banshee scream once Victor escapes. Unfortunately, she's not bumped off, though.
It soon transpires that Victor is mutating, and it's assumed it was caused by the effects of being in space. The men watch some of the video footage to try to determine what happened, but after a good 5 minutes of scary traffic-light-type music, nothing actually happens. I kept waiting for it, but...nothing. Not even by 1955 standards. It's a complete waste of a scene and doesn't tell us something we don't already know.
The rest of the film involves a cat-and-mouse game, with both a detective and the professor trying to hunt down poor Victor, who is trying to figure out what the hell is happening to him, and how to stop it. There's a particularly affecting scene in which he breaks into a pharmacy and frantically tries to concoct a respiratory poison with which to put himself out of his misery, and also tries to resist the urge to kill the pharmacist. Indeed, Victor's pain appears so real, that we honestly feel sorry for him. He spends the majority of the film looking utterly panicked and conflicted, and Wordsworth's portrayal is excellent. He has the perfect Willem DeFoe-esque presence for it - large, expressive bug-eyes, sharp, bony cheekbones and a skinny, lofty frame.
It's a shame then, that the movie just degenerates into a cheesy illustration of just how bad special effects were back then. It dates the movie terribly, which is why I'm loath to watch anything that seems to present any SFX-based entity as its piece-de-resistance. The actual fully-formed alien lifeform appears to resemble a giant, leathery, farting testicle, looking like the bastard child of Jabba The Hutt and a spider crab.
But never mind that. Despite the fact that the tv serial's original ending packed more emotional punch (this movie resorts to the saving power of pyrotechnics), there is an interesting method of character development at play for Professor Quatermass. Instead of using Donlevy's acting to traditionally display traits, his sense of character is built up by every other character's reaction to him. He seems to be able to design and build a rocket, oversee his astronaut's after-care, deny hospital admittance and refuse a police investigation. He seems to be above the law entirely, and most of the fear and cock-ups seem to be caused by a lack of doing things properly (i.e. hospitals, police, the army, Patrick Brogan) rather than any danger that could have been avoided. Through these events, and even at the end of the film, it's clear where the real horror lies.
Having only vaguely heard of this by name, I thought it might be worth a look since it was part of the esteemed (ahem) Hammer back catalogue, and marked the studio's first attempt at a horror movie. It's more science-fiction than horror, but the story elements are so simple I'm not sure if it holds up well. Worse still, having been adapted from a longer-length serial, it's clear that the movie is just a heavily abridged version of this, and the events simply go from A to B to C to D to etc etc.
Set in England, the movie begins with a couple of randy teenagers frolicking, literally rolling in the hay, in the front garden of the girl's dad's farm (?!). Before they do something that will make her get pregnant, the guy overhears a weird noise, which turns out to be a space rocket crashing. Honestly, if they weren't going to kill off these little bortsal recruits and her surprisingly tolerant father, they didn't really need this scene - they could have just cut straight to the crash site, where the action starts happening.
It's already crawling with police, detectives, the press and a bunch of randoms, as well as Victor, single guy who survived the crash. He also happens the be the only one on board, and in complete shock, can only blankly say "Help" before being wheeled off...
...To a laboratory (not a hospital), which is run by the powerful, egocentric Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy), who designed the rocket, and his doctor assistant. A few spinning newspapers inform us that Quatermass had refused a police investigation, and later in the lab, he is hesitant to take the poor bastard to the hospital, because they have just discovered that Victor's fingerprints look a bit off, and no-one else but they know what's out there "in space...on the other side of the sky!"
Since Victor (played superbly by the now late Richard Wordsworth) is unnaturally silent, profusely sweaty, and keeps giving everyone really creepy stares, the professor and his doctor start to worry. It's just as well, because his pointy-breasted wife (played woodenly by the surprisingly then-veteran actress Margia Dean) isn't particularly bothered or affectionate. She does whine a bit, and gets to deliver some painfully obvious lines ("the world? What world? Your world? The world of Quatermass") and the horror staple banshee scream once Victor escapes. Unfortunately, she's not bumped off, though.
It soon transpires that Victor is mutating, and it's assumed it was caused by the effects of being in space. The men watch some of the video footage to try to determine what happened, but after a good 5 minutes of scary traffic-light-type music, nothing actually happens. I kept waiting for it, but...nothing. Not even by 1955 standards. It's a complete waste of a scene and doesn't tell us something we don't already know.
The rest of the film involves a cat-and-mouse game, with both a detective and the professor trying to hunt down poor Victor, who is trying to figure out what the hell is happening to him, and how to stop it. There's a particularly affecting scene in which he breaks into a pharmacy and frantically tries to concoct a respiratory poison with which to put himself out of his misery, and also tries to resist the urge to kill the pharmacist. Indeed, Victor's pain appears so real, that we honestly feel sorry for him. He spends the majority of the film looking utterly panicked and conflicted, and Wordsworth's portrayal is excellent. He has the perfect Willem DeFoe-esque presence for it - large, expressive bug-eyes, sharp, bony cheekbones and a skinny, lofty frame.
It's a shame then, that the movie just degenerates into a cheesy illustration of just how bad special effects were back then. It dates the movie terribly, which is why I'm loath to watch anything that seems to present any SFX-based entity as its piece-de-resistance. The actual fully-formed alien lifeform appears to resemble a giant, leathery, farting testicle, looking like the bastard child of Jabba The Hutt and a spider crab.
But never mind that. Despite the fact that the tv serial's original ending packed more emotional punch (this movie resorts to the saving power of pyrotechnics), there is an interesting method of character development at play for Professor Quatermass. Instead of using Donlevy's acting to traditionally display traits, his sense of character is built up by every other character's reaction to him. He seems to be able to design and build a rocket, oversee his astronaut's after-care, deny hospital admittance and refuse a police investigation. He seems to be above the law entirely, and most of the fear and cock-ups seem to be caused by a lack of doing things properly (i.e. hospitals, police, the army, Patrick Brogan) rather than any danger that could have been avoided. Through these events, and even at the end of the film, it's clear where the real horror lies.
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