The experimental spaceship Quatermass I unexpectedly crashes back to Earth after contact with it had been lost. Relief at its return is, however, short lived. Two of the crew are missing and third, Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) in a near-catatonic state.
Carroon is taken back to the British Rocket Group's base for observation, as Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) and his colleagues try to piece together what happened. Meanwhile the down-to-earth Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner) conducts a rather more mundane investigation, lest Carroon have somehow murdered his colleagues in space – a suggestion which angers Quatermass.
Something is clearly wrong with Carroon regardless, but the truth only emerges too late, after a rapidly mutating Carroon is snuck out of hospital by his well-intentioned but foolish wife: He and his colleagues encountered an alien entity, which has infected him and is gradually taking control of his being. The entity absorbs other living things into itself, grows at an alarming rate and then reaches a critical mass whereupon it reproduces by expelling thousands of spores into the atmosphere.
In other words, if Quatermass and Lomax cannot locate and destroy the Carroon monster in time, the Earth is doomed…
There's not really much that one can say about The Quatermass Xperiment , Hammer's 1955 X-certificate big-screen adaptation of the popular BBC television series written by Nigel Kneale, that differs from accepted wisdom. The concensus is basically right:
Director/co-writer Val Guest's documentary-style handling gives the film a greater than usual degree of plausibility. This impression is only enhanced by some nice self-referential touches, like Quatermass and his team watching the footage recorded by the spaceship's on-board camera or the final showdown taking place amidst a live television broadcast from Westminster Abbey.
Richard Wordsworth's non-speaking performance, in which he brilliantly conveys his losing battle to retain his humanity through perfectly judged gestures and expressions – not too subtle, not too emphatic – is one of the very greatest in the history of horror cinema, bearing comparison with those of Boris Karloff in the Frankenstein films. (Note the telling sequence where Carroon meets a little girl, played by a young Jane Asher, by the river's edge.)
James Bernard's bold string and percussion based score, along with his and musical director John Hollingsworth's awareness of when not to underscore the action, is another plus, adding to the eeriness without going against Guest's documentary style realism.
The only area for debate, then, is the suitability of Brian Donlevy for the role of Quatermass. Nigel Kneale considered the American actor and his tough guy mannerisms to be utterly inappropriate for his cerebral British professor and was vocal in his criticism. Guest – who also co-wrote the film screenplay with Richard Landau, a regular Hammer writer at the time – was more forgiving, feeling that, with scenes adapted to suit the actor's no-nonsense approach, he worked well enough.
Personally, I'd side with Kneale. Donlevy's Quatermass comes across by and large here as an unthinking, unfeeling bully and, as such, makes for a somewhat awkward hero for audiences to identify with. Indeed, no sooner has the monster been destroyed (oops, did I spoil the ending) than he resolves to get back to the business of launching rockets, without pausing to reflect on the havoc his experiment wrought – a Frankensteinian mad scientist approach if ever there was one.
Nevertheless, Donlevy's scenery chewing isn't enough to overcome the sterling work by Guest, Wordsworth and co. and, as such, The Quatermass Xperiment retains its effectiveness better than many a film of its ilk.
The Quatermass Xperiment has long been available on Region 1 DVD from Anchor Bay, but this disc from DD Video marks its first Region 2 appearance. (There is also a Spanish R0 disc out there.)
The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of approximately 4:3 and in Dolby Digital 2.0.
While the print used in in surprisingly good quality, with little in the way of scratches and damage, the transfer itself is perhaps not all it could be, the top of the image being noticeably brighter than the rest at times. Audio, though unspectacular, is hiss-free and sufficiently clear.
The centrepiece extra on the disc is a feature length commentary with director/co-writer Val Guest and Hammer historian Marcus Hearn. Guest remembers the production as if it were yesterday – no mean feat for a 90-year-old recalling a film made nearly half a century ago – and has plenty of interesting asides, whether it be problems with Donlevy's toupee or the actor's fondness for brandy-laced coffee, or the difficulties one of the supporting players had in hitting his marks on account of his deformed feet, while Hearn provides the Hammer related details that fans of the studio rather than the Quatermass character will want to know.
The interview segment, running eight minutes, is a slight disappointment as it has been excerpted from the same session as yielded the commentary track and, consequently, doesn't impart any new information other than what the participants look like.
Rather than the usual on-screen notes and galleries, DD have opted instead to provide to a booklet of "viewing notes" instead, with a useful essay on the film from Hearn and Jonathan Rigby. One wishes more companies would follow this example.
The package is rounded off by the UK trailer for Quatermass and the Pit , a slighly odd choice seeing as the trailer for the US version of The Quatermass Xperiment under its The Creeping Unknown title is out there, being featured on All Day Entertainment's The Horror of Hammer trailers DVD.
All told, a welcome DVD for Hammer fans in R2 land.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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