A Usina dos Monstros

Thanks to a good friend I'm currently undergoing what sci-fi fans refer to as "the Quatermass-experience". That simply means watching the three QUATERMASS-movies in a short time period. The first one felt like a true sci-fi classic, but I honestly couldn't really tell, because I haven't seen enough of those black & white sci-fi flicks to compare it too. But I'm working on that.

After having seen QUATERMASS 2, I'm starting to get convinced that those movies really are a stellar trilogy (even though the individual stories aren't actually related). This second installment was the first British movie ever to feature a number "2" in its title, to indicate that it's a sequel. The movie itself shows a lot of similarities with the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (an alien organism invading earth, loss of human identity, a common higher consciousness, a global threat at hand...). But since they were produced around the same time none of the movies can be accused of stealing from each other.

Writer Nigel Kneale presents us a solid, coherent story undermined with plausible scientific facts. To put it rather simply: an organism not of this earth infects humans and even infiltrates the highest ranks of the British government. The story moves at a decent pace and never gets boring. Val Guest's directing is as good as it gets for a movie from the 50's. He clearly knew what he was doing on the set. Some minor continuity problems can be encountered (some night shots feature a few glimpses of daylight) and at least one scene seemed a bit artificially staged for convenience's sake (the one where Broadhead and Quatermass get their passes from the ministry-chap). But all that really isn't anything to complain about.

I sort of liked Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. He really feels like the prototype of an anti-hero. He's often a bit rude and really persistent. Especially that last characteristic made his character more believable. The rest of the acting was also decent, though all of the supporting roles were too small to be memorable. And I so much liked the fact that there wasn't an obligatory love-interest in the plot for Mr. Quatermass. That simply would not have worked.

There were a few details I really liked, like when Quatermass arrives in that little town in the area of Winterton Flats (or was it Willingdon Flats?). All the inhabitants work for the alien-infested factory and they have posters on the wall with slogans like "Remember: Secrets mean sealed lips" and "Talk about your job. Lose it". Another cool thing about the story was that it was actually Quatermass who designed the factory facility with the domes, which was originally to be a moon-colonization project. Only, the government stole his design and build it here on earth, for the alien organism to adapt itself. The factory was an excellent location and felt real. So were the few special effects (mainly miniatures of the domes). The 'rocket-lift-off' shots and effects looked rather silly though. I'm glad this movie was in black & white, that way, when we finally see the alien organism in all its giant glory, it looked a bit more terrifying.

So if you're curious about the history of sci-fi movies, than you just can not miss this one. Now I'm really looking forward to see QUATERMASS AND THE PIT.

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 ...

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 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

This was one of the first of its kind; a subtlety scary vision of a secret alien takeover. X-FILES may owe a debt to this low-budget, but nevertheless effective film of the powers-that-be who are conspiring with the invaders, and one lone, determined scientist who accidentally uncovers the sinister plot.

QUATERMASS II (U.S. title: ENEMY FROM SPACE) was produced before INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, the film it is often compared to, due to their thematic similarities (loss of identity, social oppression, dangers of conformity, and blind allegiance to a greatly questionable, authoritarian power). However, it was released in the U.S. shortly after BODY SNATCHERS, probably making it look like a copycat to some.

Superb writer Nigel Kneale (excellent script, highly original for its time, derived from the earlier BBC serial) was known to strongly despise Brian Donleavy's gruff performance as the lead character. Kneale did not like the fact that Donleavy presented the character as a cold, methodical misanthrope who treats his colleagues like expendable underlings. He will probably want to boil me in oil for saying this, but I felt that presenting the lead character as morally ambivalent and ethically questionable jettisoned the standard 50's scientist/hero sterotype (for once he is not nice and charming). It also added a further degree of tension to the well-plotted story. In many ways, his alienated character is somewhat alien; perhaps that's the only true way to resist social pressures and conditioning. The allegory here is strong.

As the story opens, Quatermass is driving one night on a remote country road. He is furious that the stodgy Whitehall bureaucrats rejected his funding request for a proposed moon colonization project. A speeding car nearly hits him head-on as it runs off the road. The shaken passengers are a frightened woman and her boyfriend, who is in a crazed state, and has a strange black mark on his face.

Quatermass returns to his isolated lab, where radar reveals to his assistants that many small meteor particles (at least that's what they assume they are) have descended over a rural village known as Wynerton Flats.

Going out there with his colleague, Marsh, they first discover his moon project, fully constructed, and some small, mysterious rocks. As Marsh examines one, it emits an eerie gas and pops in his face, leaving the weird black mark. Strange soldiers arrive, behaving like aloof zombies, abduct Marsh, strong-arm Quatermass in the typical fascist tradition, and order him to leave. (There may be one flaw here: Why didn't the "soldiers" either abduct or kill Quatermass, instead of letting him go, so he can inform?)

Naturally the authorities all have tight lips about the secret activities at Wynerton Flats, but Quatermass manages to convince a few officials to go out there with him. A government aid (with that strange black mark on his wrist) conducts a formal tour of the plant, where everything seems to be normal. Not so. The small group is indoctrinated by the zombies (who resemble Nazis), but Quatermass manages to escape.

(This scene truly exposes Donleavy's ruthless side: He and a woman are taken into a large dome, but Quatermass flees, leaving the woman behind, without any concern for her fate. Hell, he doesn't even abide by the old fifties hero tradition by risking his life to save the distressed damsel. In many ways Quatermass was an ahead-of-his-time anti-hero. I always felt that this added a disquieting strength to the drama and the severity of the dire situation, but I guess that Kneale will still vehemently disagree).

I'll stop here, but don't worry, the worse is still to come. The sense of growing unease and mounting terror (strong qualities of your finer British Science Fiction at that time) escalates. Be patient, for it does carefully build into a total state of alarm, as Quatermass and the local angered citizens challenge the invaders (who have taken over most of the government and military officials) to a brutal showdown. There is something highly menacing in those domes.

This impressive film is true Science Fiction at its best. It thrills without pandering and is thoughtful to the point of disturbing. You can't trust anyone. Its social and political implications are definitely troubling. This is not for your Lucas and Spielberg crowd, for we're not talking about commercial catering to eight-year-olds. Val Guest directs in a cold, cynical Kubrickian manner, accentuating the high degree of paranoia, and the picture's black & white photography conveys a bleak, creepy mood. (Sorry, no pretty pictures here). The intriguing story takes on true nightmarish proportions.

The few effects won't win any CGI awards (don't forget, computers weren't around then) but the briefly glimpsed monster (in the gothic Lovecraft tradition) is quite sickening. After all, it can manipulate man's dirty politics, you can't get more reprehensible than that.

From the late sixties to the late eighties this film was unavailable to the public, and it was feared to be permanently lost, but it later was released on video and shown occasionally on the Science Fiction Channel. Many notable Science Fiction and Horror authors (I believe that Harlan Ellison and Stephen King were among them) have championed this small, but remarkable early Hammer production. This is the film that many others have "borrowed from." Just a polite way of saying RIPPED-OFF!

For those seeking an intelligent challenge, check it out.