Customer Reviews

Quatermass 2

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I couldn't even get past the first half hour of this movie before turning it off ... deeply disapponted. It looks like bad 50's American sci-fi, it's hard to believe that this is a Hammer film. Buy this film if you like "The day the Earth Stood Still" or other cheese like that.

I love old movies--gothic, sci. fi.--you name it. But I was very disappointed in this one. I could just go on and on, but suffice it to say that except for the crisp b&w filmography this movie has no (zero) redeeming qualities about it whatsoever. It's not even "funny bad." I wish I could give zero stars, but one is as low as it is allowed to go. How sad.

Thanks to an excellent literate script by master Nigel Kneale and intensive, atmospheric direction by the underrated Val Guest (who both scored great marks with "Abominable Snowman"), this ranks as one of the best and most disturbing Science-Fiction Thrillers. I don't need to reiterate the intriguing story, but it builds gripping suspense from the word 'Go' and finally escalates into a crucial state-of-alarm that climaxes in a thrilling and terrifying showdown at the secret alien refinary plant in the remote British country. Pretty violent and grim for its time, and it still retains its entertaining and thought-provoking qualities. The confrontation between the workers and the alien-controlled government & military "zombies" has certain Marxist underlying themes of the 'workers revolt againest the oppressive, dictatorial rulers' - who, in shattering fact, are aliens who are truly alien - and thoroughly malevolent. Some kaffka allegories of corrupt government and fascism are conveyed here in the bleakest of ways. Kneale's intelligent, riveting screenplay also served as the basis for the James Bond plots and wild devices that surfaced a few years later in the rebelliously turbulent 6O's - which this insightfully compelling Science-Fiction Classic seems to sinisterly forecast. Not your typical or campy monster movie by any long shots. Also, quite cynical for its time, as Quatermass is forced to become the angst-ridden, alienated hero (anti-hero) in his accidental uncovering of conspiracy (his plans for a proposed moon project is swiped by them) and cover-ups: Very Hitchcockian. Also sounds a lot like X-FILES, doesn't it? I believe this was XF's producers favorite childhood science-fiction film; the dark, ominous influence and inspiration is undoubtably present. Not a kid's flick by any means. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this hauntingly memorable and intensely scary classic. Probably the most starkly realistic vision of what a true alien invasion might be like. Genuine nightmares to take to bed - and wonder.

Thanks to an excellent literate script by master Nigel Kneale and intensive, atmospheric direction by the underrated Val Guest (who both scored great marks with "Abominable Snowman"), this ranks as one of the best and most disturbing Science-Fiction Thrillers. I don't need to reiterate the intriguing story, but it builds gripping suspense from the word 'Go' and finally escalates into a crucial state-of-alarm that climaxes in a thrilling and terrifying showdown at the secret alien refinary plant in the remote British country. Pretty violent and grim for its time, and it still retains its entertaining and thought-provoking qualities. The confrontation between the workers and the alien-controlled government & military "zombies" has certain Marxist underlying themes of the 'workers revolt againest the oppressive, dictatorial rulers' - who, in shattering fact, are aliens who are truly alien - and thoroughly malevolent. Some kaffka allegories of corrupt government and fascism are conveyed here in the bleakest of ways. Kneale's intelligent, riveting screenplay also served as the basis for the James Bond plots and wild devices that surfaced a few years later in the rebelliously turbulent 6O's - which this insightfully compelling Science-Fiction Classic seems to sinisterly forecast. Not your typical or campy monster movie by any long shots. Also, quite cynical for its time, as Quatermass is forced to become the angst-ridden, alienated hero (anti-hero) in his accidental uncovering of conspiracy (his plans for a proposed moon project is swiped by them) and cover-ups: Very Hitchcockian. Also sounds a lot like X-FILES, doesn't it? I believe this was XF's producers favorite childhood science-fiction film; the dark, ominous influence and inspiration is undoubtably present. Not a kid's flick by any means. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this hauntingly memorable and intensely scary classic. Probably the most starkly realistic vision of what a true alien invasion might be like. Genuine nightmares to take to bed - and wonder.

As others have pointed out, this is a fantastic movie. It's one of my all-time favorites, so when the DVD edition came out I had to have it. Unfortunately, it is rather disappointing. To begin with, the video quality of the opening 2 minutes and a few other dimly lit scenes come off very badly on the DVD; this is even acknowledged in a little notice included with the disc. Too bad, they should have just dubbed it from the VHS edition, which looks fine!

The added attractions of the DVD edition are a 25 minute documentary on Hammer Films Sci-Fi films and a running commentary by Nigel Kneale and Val Guest. There's also a theatrical trailer, but that's on the VHS tape too.

Well, it's too bad they waited so long to interview Guest and Kneale, because they have very few recollections of the film. Oh there's a fact or two here and there, but it's basically rather dull. Kneale still harps on how much he dislikes Brian Donlevy as Quatermass, even though it's been 45 years since the movie was made! Guest is a little more interesting, when he speaks. Overall I think they'd have done better to have a fan of the film or a movie historian do the voice over.

The Hammer Film documentary is just 25 minutes of film clips with some narration. Again, not impressive.

Overall, I'd have to say this DVD is below average. I guess I'll be keeping my VHS tape.

With exception made for the films of George Pal and Andrei Tarkovsky, science fiction cinema appeals to me mostly in black-and-white. Cameron Menzies' Things to Come (1936), for example, would look gaudy and toy-like had it been filmed in one of the color processes; but in black-and-white, the war scenes acquire a documentary grittiness (which Menzies certainly meant them to have) and the miniature work looks grand and convincing. Byron Haskin originally planned to shoot his big-bug flick Them! (1954) in color and 3-D, but finally made it on a lower budget in desert- and storm-drain-friendly black-and-white. The nightmarish-ness of Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is drained away in the two remakes from the late 1970s and early 1990s; Siegel's own vision puts Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter in a labyrinth of threatening shadows where the merest hint of color would spoil the creepy mood. Director Val Guest's Quatermass II (1958), known in its original American release as The Enemy from Space, has a number of points of contact with The Body Snatchers, and is equally effective in conjuring an atmosphere of occult paranoia over a contagious loss of humanity. Brian Donlevy reprises the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British "Rocket Program" and scientific jack-of-all-trades. In the first Quatermass film, The Creeping Unknown (1952), the redoubtable professor battles a gelatinous carnivore that started its human meal by devouring a crew of astronauts pioneering the way into earth orbit. The nemesis in Quatermass II is more diffuse, more intelligent, and potentially far more deadly. It is a collective intelligence able to possess human hosts and coerce them into service. These "zombies," as the film calls them, have taken over a remote government facility and are systematically dispossessing the bodies of government officials, whom they lure into the place in the pretence that it is a "synthetic food factory" about to make agriculture obsolete. Quatermass discovers the place when he goes looking for a meteor-fall detected by radar from his rocket test range. He finds that someone has built, on the site of a demolished village, the "moon base" for which he has just conspicuously failed to get funding. Sinister looking guards appear and take away the professor's aid, who has received a characteristic v-shaped wound from a meteor that he has picked up from the ground. The things crack apart when held. A dark blotch appears on the neck or face of the victim. All the guards show the same lesion. After considerable frustration and a hair's breadth escape from the conversion process, Quatermass penetrates to the truth behind all the skullduggery: aliens are indeed invading the earth, taking over humanity, and growing huge masses of parasite-creatures in the pressure-domes. Guest's direction is stark: he filmed many scenes at a Shell Oil refinery on the Welsh coast and he skillfully inter-cuts location footage with one or two matte-shots, a couple of miniature sets, and some studio interiors. The "alien base" looks steely and inhuman; the parasite-ridden hosts behave in convincingly dehumanized ways and are efficiently monomaniacal. There is no bravado from the players. The superb editing packs much incident into eighty minutes. In one horrific scene, an investigating parliamentarian falls into a vat of alien "food" and is covered head to foot with corrosive slime. All of the Quatermass films are intelligent and Quatermass II is no exception. The musical score contributes a good deal to the atmosphere. Recommended for aficionados of Cold War sci-fi for the silver screen or for fans of The Body Snatchers who are curious about that film's less well known British counterpart.

After the success of the filmed adaptation of THE QUATERMASSS EXPERIMENT(a 1953 teleserial), writer Nigel Kneale attracted more audiences to the small screen with a sequel to the original miniseries. Entitled QUATERMASS 2, it was a hit, and Hammer Films realized an opportunity to translate this juicy treatment for silver screen audiences. Sure enough, the movie version(keeping the original title in the UK and christianed ENEMY FROM SPACE in the US)was released in 1957, with Kneale rewriting the TV script with director Val Guest. Although it was a critical and commercial blockbuster, it has been bombarded with complaints from purists who consider it inferior to the TV version because it lacked the excellent, suspenseful cliffhangers and quiet, intelligent endings that made the miniseries superb.
On the surface though, it is a classic, pure and simple. Brian Donlevy is flawless as professor Bernard Quatermass, who discovers that a decimated town in the hilly, isolated area of northern England, called Wynerton Flats, has made way for an invasion of microorganisms coming from an obscure asteroid in space. They arrive in plastic containers, which enter our atmosphere as meteorites, and burst out of their shells when people come into close contact with them. When they infect the person, they put him or her under their control. Soon, they are building a complex in the area, nuturing more newcoming 'germs' with supplies of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen gases(They cannot breathe our atmosphere) in huge pressure domes. What's worse, several Parliament officials are infected by the wave and are keeping it confidential, marking it as a project to make synthetic food.
Quatermass enlists the help of several 'normal' people to stop the invasion. They include police inspector Lomax (JOHN LONGDEN), his assistant Marsh (BRYAN FORBES, director of THE STEPFORD WIVES) and Scotland Yard reporter Jimmy (SYDNEY JAMES).
With time running out and the list of victims growing, they set off to find and destroy the complex.
Excellently written and directed, with good acting, striking cinematography by Gerald Gibbs, and a bellowing score by James Bernard.

If the Star Wars Trilogy is about dogfights in space,romance and good ol' fun, than the Quatermass Trilogy is about other things: intelligent writing, suspense, paranoia, action spared for the end. Brian Donlevy is flawless in his role as Professor Quatermass, who in this second installment discovers a race of ET microorganisms secretly establishing a colony on Earth by infecting nearby humans and controlling them in building a complex in the isolated area of Wynerton Flats. He enlists help from police inspector Lomax (James Longden), assistant Marsh (Bryan Forbes, director of THE STEPFORD WIVES), and reporter Jimmy (Sydney James), to stop the invasion. Excellent material, from Val Guest's eerie direction to Nigel Kneale's script (from his 1955 BBC teleserial), from brilliant cinematography by Gerald Gibbs to James Bernerd's bellowing score. One of Hammer Films' best efforts and still considered a classic even by the purists who compare it with the teleserial.

Well I remember the afternoon I sat as a ten year old, glued to the TV, mesmerized by fear, as this creepy story unfolded!! I can only add my two cents' worth to the above excellent reviews of this 1957 (and wasn't THAT a great year for SF movies?) gem: (1) The score by James "The Devil Rides Out" Bernard. I think a CD is available of some of his film music, including "Q2"....Wonder if ol' Bernard Hermann saw this movie before he scored "sycho"? (2) The "...H U M A N P U L P !!" scene towards the end in the control room. O that the modern movies left more to the imagination!!

British government rocket scientist Bernard Quatermass is busy at work on his second major space project, when a micrometeorite swarm in the country catches his attention. The objects recovered don't appear to be meterorites, but rather something small, metallic and hollow. When handled, they explode, emitting an unknown gas and leaving a distinctive mark on whoever disturbs them.

Afterward, those exposed behave differently than before. They're still the person they were, but they engage in projects with others who have been similarly affected, chief of which is an isolated government high-security series of domes whose purpose is unknown. Quatermass is more surprised than most, because the domes are a replica of his own project - which is barely off the drawing boards, and not known by anyone.

Attempts to discover what the government is about are fruitless, and Quatermass is blocked from further inquiry - by ministers bearing the mark of the non-meteorites. He gathers a few people he can trust to investigate the mysterious goings-on, and discovers a most unusual form of alien invasion in progress...

This is great sci-fi, scripted by Nigel Kneale, one of the best names in the business. Val Guest's direction is atmospheric and suspenseful, transforming an otherwise somewhat hackneyed plot (though elevated by Kneale's distinctive hand) into a top-notch action-melodrama. The dramatic revelations, when they finally come, are genuinely scary and very effective. There are some truly frightening moments, such as one in which a government minister stumbles onto something sinister in the mysterious plant, and returns nearly burned to a crisp, clothes and skin still smoking. What's actually in the domes is very, very creepy.

The film isn't perfect, but it's quite good. Brian Donlevy never was a good casting choice for Professor Quatermass, though he handles the role ably enough. Britain was at the mercy of American film companies for a good while after WWII, and the only way the UK could get many of its films released was with the inclusion of American actors. It's no insult to Donlevy, it's just that the character is very British, and he is not.

Well worth watching. Preceded by The Creeping Unknown (a.k.a. The Quatermass Experiment), and followed by the excellent Five Million Years to Earth (a.k.a. Quatermass and the Pit) - and many years later by the more disappointing The Quatermass Conclusion.