Quatermass 2

The second of the Quatermass films (the first was THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, the "X" used to emphasise the adult X-rating the film received on its initial release) was allowed a slightly larger budget and benefited enormously from Nigel Kneale's participation in the screenplay. In this film, at least Brian Donlevy behaves a little more like Quatermass ought to, though I still don't think he was right for the part.

For my money, Quatermass should be a pipe-smoking English boffin with leather patches sewn on the elbows of his jacket. The original character was conceived as a kind of Barnes Wallis type, as portrayed by Michael Redgrave in THE DAM BUSTERS.

The movie is set in a post-war Britain that was a little panicked by the idea of nuclear weapons and even more unsettled by the knowledge that our former allies, The Soviets, had the same weapons and they were pointed at us. This was the climate that gave us Orwell's 1984 and Don Siegel's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Paranoia was out to get us ...

This same atmosphere lasted well into the 1960s and can also be glimpsed in TV shows like THE AVENGERS. This was the era I grew up in, so I speak from personal experience :-)

This movie is one of Hammer's better offerings of the period. Released the same year as CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, it more than holds its own against the other, better-known Hammer colour offerings. Indeed, it benefits from its monochrome photography, which brilliantly communicates the austerity of the years immediately following WWII.

Thoroughly recommended, this film will appeal to anyone who can get beyond the admittedly primitive 1950s special effects to be rewarded by the rich and clever story that lies beneath the slightly dodgy veneer ...

I was never aware that this movie was anything other than a stand-alone feature. I'm not familiar with 'Quatermass' in any way whatsoever. But I saw a movie when I was a kid that was titled 'Enemy From Space' and I've never forgotten it. The scene where a man who has been covered in some black stuff shockingly, jarringly shrieks out and stumbles down the outside stairway of some huge, weird, vat-like structure frightened me enormously. I didn't know what the stuff was exactly, I just knew it was burning the man horribly and his utterly convincing screams drove it into my brain permanently.

I was pretty young when I saw it at my local 'B-Movies Only' neighborhood theater. I'm not sure how it was elsewhere, but in my hometown there was a movie house that got all the A-List pictures (Cary Grant, James Stewart, Liz Taylor, Disney) and another that made the most of the plentiful supply of small-budget monster movies that were released in the late fifties and very early sixties. Triple Features were often offered in these 'lesser' venues. The beauty of it was that both types of theater thrived in those cable-less, vcr-less days. But I digress.

So I see this movie and I'm only about 7 years old at the time and that night I couldn't sleep. And though I had sat through the entire thing, my mind was locked into that horrifying scene so completely that I did not really recall another word spoken in the film. It came around to the Biltmore a couple more times and, though terrified, I was irresistibly drawn to see it again, each time absorbing a little more of the content. The challenging storyline wasn't all that easy to grasp - a lot of it went over my young head.

It was a long time ago but I remember a meteorite falling through a roof, a road that went nowhere, a silent and sinister industrial area, a man who becomes suddenly very sick (in the pub I think) and has a white splotch on his face, severely serious soldiers who seem to be bad guys, a window through which an alien something-or-other is observed and, of course, the unfortunate man covered in burning black oil.

A truly eerie movie, as engrossing as it is chilling. I would very much like to see it again

The Quatermass Xperiment had been a major success for Hammer upon its release in 1955, becoming the company's biggest grossing film up to that time. Moving quickly to capitalise, Hammer Film Productions put together the elements for the sequel, Quatermass 2 (AKA Enemy From Space). Val Guest once again directs and co writes with Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale, Brian Donlevy returns as the irrepressible professor Quatermass, James Bernard scores and Anthony Hinds is again on production duties. Joining Donlevy in the cast are John Longden, Sid James, Bryan Forbes, William Franklyn & Vera Day. The plot sees Quatermass investigating meteorites that have been falling at Winnerden Flats. Whilst up in the Winnerden Valley, Quatermass and his colleague, Marsh, discover a huge power plant complex that looks suspiciously like the model Quatermass has been working on as part of a potential colonisation of the Moon. When Marsh is burnt by one of the meteorites, guards appear from nowhere and take him away down in the valley. Just what is going on at this strange plant? Quartermass intends to find out, but Winnerden has many secrets, secrets that could spell doom for mankind.

A sequel that is at least the equal of its predecessor, Quatermass 2 deals in politico paranoia and chilly alien invasion hysteria. Similar to Don Siegel's excellent Invasion Of The Body Snatchers from the previous year, the film doesn't rely on shlonky shocks to make its heart beat. There's much sci-fi discussion and jobs-worth like characters that are easy to follow, but all serve a purpose as Winnerden's secret starts to show its cards. As Quatermass' trail leads to the higher echelons of power, the paranoiac feel of the piece really kicks in, with the mood greatly enhanced by Gerald Gibbs' monochrome photography and Guest's imaginative use of hand held cameras for certain scenes. The effects work is clever and does its job, while the cast work hard to make the effective story work. Tho the film made good money it was overshadowed by the huge success of Hammer's release of The Curse Of Frankenstein the same year, while the film wasn't given much promotional help from Kneale who was very critical of the finished product. With much of his scorn directed towards Donlevy who he always felt was wrong for the role of the intrepid boffin. With that in mind, it's perhaps unsurprising to find the film still today is very divisive among critics and sci-fi fans alike. So you take your chance then. Personally I think it's one of the best sci-fi movies to have come out of Britian. As was the first film, and as was Quatermass And The Pit from 1967. Pretty great trilogy actually. 8/10

Val Guest's Quatermass II is my favourite film ever. The cold, dawning revelation that builds up all the way through the first half of the film that the invasion is actually underway and that the 'zombies' not only WALK AMONG US, but are actually IN CHARGE and IN POWER is terrifyingly atmospheric. I always like to think that if the invasion ever did come, it wouldn't come through massive mother ships as per Independence Day, but from within, from the suburbs, the rural villages. Really clever invaders would use Earth's own power structures, governments and resources against it without anyone noticing, not turn up en masse in flying saucers spoiling for a fight. The idea of the invasion falling to Earth in meteorites through a form of collective intelligence (recycled in the 1973 BBC Doctor Who serial Spearhead From Space) continues this threatening vein of invasion, and provides the most atmospheric scene in the film when Quatermass stands in the open night air as whizzing sounds around him give away the increased number of the meteorites now falling (the invasion is now fully underway!). Other scenes are just downright terrifying and follow the Kneale tradition of 'terror through revelation': the lorries in London carrying the symbol; Quatermass' first glimpse through the dome viewing panel; and when it is revealed how the zombies are blocking the pipes!! This 'revelation' aspect can be seen in all of the Quatermass films and serials (in The Quatermass Conclusion: when it is revealed by the body parts that the hippies weren't 'transported', in Quatermass and the Pit: 'you mean WE are the Martians!!'). Storytelling, atmosphere and terror like this hasn't survived the onset of today's special effects. Film makers like Dean Devlin just don't need to employ methods like this anymore, and this is why thinking people's science fiction relying on chilling, atmospheric and scientifically valid stories, plots and concepts will never ever be repeated.

I first saw this film once when I was about five or six years old on TV. Because the film had location shooting at an oil refinery, for years I was always reminded of this film when ever I drove past one, wondering if something sinister was going on inside those tanks. However, soon after I first saw this film, QUATERMASS 2 (or ENEMY FROM SPACE-as it was called here in the USA), was pulled from distribution for various legal reasons, and this film was for years impossible to view. Then the film was released from its legal limbo in the mid eighties and I purchased a video copy as soon as it came out.

Unlike so many hard to view films that have been promoted as "a long lost classic", that often turn out not to live up to their reputations when finally viewed again*, QUATERMASS 2 truly deserves its reputation as a rediscovered lost classic. It is one of the best British science fictions films from the fifties.

The films acting and direction are uniformly good. The black and white photography is excellent and the film has an excellent musical score (although sometimes the music is a bit too loud.) The scene where the giant aliens burst from the domes is one of my favorite scenes in a fantastic film. Its like something out of a nightmare: the dome begins to crack, like a giant egg, and emerging from is not a cute little chick, but a hideous malignancy. The gloomy dark gray lighting enhance this scene. However, the aliens that emerge, while gross and repulsive looking when viewed for the first time, begin to look a tad bit silly after repeated viewings.

Perhaps one of the most interesting thing about this film when viewed today, is the films story has many similarities to the "Area 51" mythology. In the film there is government owned plant where everything is top secret, it gets unlimited tax payer funding, but no one in the government dare asks whats going on. This sounds lot like what we are told about the so-called "Area 51." I'm surprised " psycho/social reductionists" like Curtis "Watch The Skies" Peebles overlooked this film. Then again, maybe we are lucky they have.

QUATERMASS 2 is an excellent fifties science fiction that should be more widely shown. Like the other films in the famous "Quatermass" series, its literate, suspenseful and thrilling.

*Sometimes the films promoted as "long lost classics" aren't even lost!