By Brian M. Sammons
The Quatermass Xperiment (1955). Director: Val Guest. Cast: Brian Donlevy, Jack Warner, Margia Dean, Richard Wordsworth.
When I began my run on Cthulhu Eats the Movies, I chose one of my favourite classic sci-fi flicks, Quatermass and the Pit, as my first review. It’s a great film chockful of Lovecraftian themes and there’s a whole generation of Cthulhuheads out there that have never heard of it. Just like there are some out there who may know about it, but don’t know it’s the third movie out of three. Well, if they read my review of it here, they would know all that. However, just in case they, or you, have yet to do so, I thought I would not only mention it here, but shine a spotlight on the first Quatermass movie, this time.
First, some history. Professor Quatermass began his adventures on a TV serial in Britain. The show was quite the success, so, a few years later, Hammer Films, of the Christopher Lee Dracula films fame, compressed the story down and brought it out as a feature film. Now, watching it today, it seems like typical 50s sci-fi fare, albeit much more intelligently written, and yet, it was the first movie in Britain’s cinematic history to get the adult’s-only X Certificate. Even though, at the time, the dreaded “X Rating” was not synonymous with pornography, I still think that’s funny. On the other hand, the producers of the film thought it was marketable and thus, why they named the movie “The Quatermass Xperiment“. Ha, get it?
For the record, writer/creator Nigel Kneale hated that bit of crass marketing magic, but then, that’s Hollywood (or whatever the UK equivalent is) for you. He also wasn’t too thrilled that Professor Quatermass, who was supposed to be both very British and intellectual, was played American actor Brian Donlevy, known best for his action-oriented roles.
One last thing: since the whole novelty of having “Xperiment” as the title would have been lost on American audiences, when the film was released in the United States, it had the more sensational, yet oddly accurate, title “The Creeping Unknown“.
History lesson over; on with the story.
The film begins with a manned rocket crashing in the English countryside. Of the three astronauts, only one survives and he is in poor shape. He seems almost catatonic and only mouths the words, “Help me,” over and over again. Professor Quatermass, an expert in rocketry – well, maybe not that good of an expert, as he did design the rocket that just crashed, but he is well-versed in all things space-y – is called in to study the comatose rocket jockey. It soon becomes apparent that the doomed spaceflight came in contact with some form of alien life and that the one surviving astronaut, named “Victor”, is being controlled by the same alien presence. Worse yet, he’s changing physically.
His mutations begin with a freaky hand when he touches, and melds with, a cactus. Despite that bit of weirdness, the spaceman’s devoted wife helps him break out of hospital, but when the urge to meld with her becomes too strong, Victor flees. You see, anything that Vic touches, he absorbs, killing it in the process. It becomes part of him, changes him, and try as he might to not touch anyone or thing, he has an alien presence in him urging him to do just that. So, in an attempt to sate his unearthly hungers, and not to do so with people, Victor goes to a zoo and treats it like an all-you-can-eat buffet. When he is done gorging on the animals, anything that was Victor is pretty much all gone and only a tentacle-waving, shoggoth-like thing remains.
Quatermass, easily following the Victor thing by the trail of death it leaves in its wake, finds a tissue sample of the mutating monster and, through the power of science, learns a few interesting things. First, the creature is part-man, part-various-animals and part-plant (Remember the cactus?), and it’s that last part that is most important. The brave astronaut has become an asexual being and it is about to spore. That is: release thousands of little baby monsters to be carried on the wind, kind of like deadly dandelion fluff. Each spore will have the ability to transform earthly life into creatures like it. They, in turn, will then consume other life forms, until they spore, and so on it will go until all life has been transformed into mushy, mutating aliens.
The movie concludes at historic Westminster Abbey and I won’t give away the exact way that Quatermass saves the day, but since this was the first of three movies, I’ll assume that you figured that out for yourself.
Final Verdict: With cosmic-born horror, people changing into things both more and less than human, a threat that could endanger the world, science playing a vital part in saving the day, scholarly heroes, unnamable monsters, and a somewhat downbeat ending, Ol’ Grandpappy Howard would have approved of this film and I’m betting you would, too. While I don’t think it is as well-made, written, or acted as the sublime Quatermass and the Pit, it is a very good movie and more than capable of standing on its own merits. Unfortunately, it could be a bit of a pain to find a copy of this film if you don’t already have one, as it has been out of print for some time, but believe me when I say it is worth the effort.
You can find The Quatermass Xperiment on Amazon.
Bio: Brian M. Sammons has been critiquing all things horror, science fiction, dark, or just plain icky for over a decade. His reviews and columns can currently be found in the pages of these magazines: Cemetery Dance, Shock Totem, and Dark Discoveries, and on these websites: Horror World, The Black Glove, and now here. Not being satisfied at being a humble and handsome critic, Brian has penned a few tales himself. They have appeared in the magazines Bare Bone, Cthulhu Sex, Dark Animus, and Horror Carousel, and in the anthologies Arkham Tales, Cthulhu Unbound Vol. 2, Horrors Beyond, and Twisted Legends, among others. He has also written extensively for the Call of Cthulhu role playing game in an attempt to corrupt as many new, young minds as possible. Despite all this, Brian is often described by his neighbors as “such a nice, quite man”, and he loves animals.