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La marque

Original title: Quatermass 2
  • 1957
  • Approved
  • 1h 25m
IMDb RATING
6.7/10
5.2K
YOUR RATING
La marque (1957)
Official Home Video Trailer
Play trailer1:56
1 Video
41 Photos
Alien InvasionHorrorSci-Fi

Professor Quatermass, trying to gather support for his Lunar colonisation project, is intrigued by mysterious traces that have been showing up.Professor Quatermass, trying to gather support for his Lunar colonisation project, is intrigued by mysterious traces that have been showing up.Professor Quatermass, trying to gather support for his Lunar colonisation project, is intrigued by mysterious traces that have been showing up.

  • Director
    • Val Guest
  • Writers
    • Nigel Kneale
    • Val Guest
  • Stars
    • Brian Donlevy
    • John Longden
    • Sidney James
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.7/10
    5.2K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Val Guest
    • Writers
      • Nigel Kneale
      • Val Guest
    • Stars
      • Brian Donlevy
      • John Longden
      • Sidney James
    • 89User reviews
    • 68Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Videos1

    Quatermass 2
    Trailer 1:56
    Quatermass 2

    Photos41

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    Top cast54

    Edit
    Brian Donlevy
    Brian Donlevy
    • Quatermass
    John Longden
    John Longden
    • Lomax
    • (as John Longdon)
    Sidney James
    Sidney James
    • Jimmy Hall
    • (as Sydney James)
    Bryan Forbes
    Bryan Forbes
    • Marsh
    William Franklyn
    William Franklyn
    • Brand
    Vera Day
    Vera Day
    • Sheila
    Charles Lloyd Pack
    • Dawson
    Tom Chatto
    Tom Chatto
    • Broadhead
    John Van Eyssen
    • The P.R.O.
    Percy Herbert
    Percy Herbert
    • Gorman
    Michael Ripper
    • Ernie
    John Rae
    • McLeod
    Marianne Stone
    Marianne Stone
    • Secretary
    Ronald Wilson
    • Young Man
    Jane Aird
    • Mrs. McLeod
    Betty Impey
    • Kelly
    Lloyd Lamble
    Lloyd Lamble
    • Inspector
    John Stuart
    John Stuart
    • Commissioner
    • Director
      • Val Guest
    • Writers
      • Nigel Kneale
      • Val Guest
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews89

    6.75.1K
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    Featured reviews

    pv71989

    One of the best sci-fi films around

    This film was actually the first sequel to use a number in the title (although it's American title was "Enemy from Space"). Not only was this a cleverly written film, based on Nigel Kneale's screenplay, but it was a cruel satire on English and American culture in the 1950s.

    In a nutshell, Professor Bernard Quatermass, leader of England's rocket group, is at wit's end trying to get more funding for his projected moon project. The British government decides it has "projects of far greater importance.'' At the same time, workers at Quatermass' base detect scores of what look like meteorites falling close by. When Quatermass investigates, he not only finds remnants of the meteorites, but his moon base, conveniently appropriated by an unknown government entity. His lab assistant picks up one of the meteorites and it explodes in his face, immediately infecting him with an alien parasite.

    Quatermass is forced to go it almost alone, helped by a cynical police inspector, a drunken beat reporter and a vigilant member of parliament who can't get even his own party members to question where millions of pounds of tax dollars are going to.

    The cruel satire comes from the comparison of Western governments of the 1950s to the communist governments they vehemently opposed during the Cold War years. British citizens were taught to implicitly trust government even as it spent millions to unknowingly fund an alien invasion. Civilian workers were so glad to have jobs they don't question why the supposed "synthetic food" plant they're building needs huge doses of toxic gases like ammonia. Even when evidence of wrongdoing is brought up, government red tape squelches it.

    As for the movie itself, it is much better written than the original ("The Quatermass Experiment"). Nigel Kneale softens Quatermass' dour and brusk personality. Director Val Guest effectively uses a string musical score to build a creepy atmosphere. He and Kneale even overcome the first movie's dull ending, which had an alien getting electrocuted with no suspense whatsoever. Here, the plant workers, angry that one of their own is carted away by infected security guards at gunpoint, try to storm the plant, turning the aliens' carefully planned invasion on its ear. The irony, of course, is that the plant was conceived because government bureaucracy kept it secret. Now, as the plant is threatened, the same secrecy prevents the aliens from calling for help from the police or armed forces.

    The special effects are better in this film, though the giant aliens at the end are not as convincing as they could be. Still, the film is a great example of British science fiction, which relied more on plot and characterization than the special effects that dominated American science fiction.
    8Matti-Man

    Taut, well-crafted early Hammer horror movie

    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 ...
    Infofreak

    Excellent Brit shocker. One of the best in the underrated Quatermass series.

    'Quatermass 2' is even better than the excellent 'The Quatermass Xperiment'. Like the first movie it was a remake of the original British TV production which I have sadly not seen (both are lost I think). Val Guest directs once again, Brian Donlevy reprises the role of the crusty Professor Quatermass, and this time Nigel Kneale was allowed to adapt his own original script, which probably explains why it improves on the first movie. Quatermass stumbles across a mysterious secret Government installation which is supposedly developing synthetic food, but is in fact something quite different and frightening. Donlevy isn't my favourite Quatermass but he is better here than in the first movie, and the supporting cast includes John Longden in the role originally played by Jack Warner, Bryan Forbes as Quatermass' assistant Marsh (another change of actor), comedian Sid James of 'Carry On' fame, and Hammer regular Michael Ripper. 'Quatermass 2' is a very entertaining and suspenseful thriller, which hasn't dated as half as much as you'd expect. It will particularly be interesting to fans of 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers', which it shares certain themes with, and 'The X-Files', which many people, myself included, would argue owes this movie and the next in the series 'Quatermass and the Pit' a large debt. Nigel Kneale is one of the most underrated writers of SF and horror of our time (over 80 years old and still active!), and the Quatermass movies are his best known and enjoyable achievements. I highly recommend them all.
    9worldsofdarkblue

    Boy! Do I Remember This One!

    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
    danr51

    DISTURBING CLASSIC OF 50"s SCIENCE-FICTION

    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.

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    Related interests

    Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in Men in Black (1997)
    Alien Invasion
    Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby (1968)
    Horror
    James Earl Jones and David Prowse in L'Empire contre-attaque (1980)
    Sci-Fi

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      This is believed to be the first film ever to use the arabic numeral 2 as an indicator that it was the sequel to another film (as opposed to Roman numerals).
    • Goofs
      When hurrying to the phone in the Pressure Control Block, McLeod puts down his jacket, which slips to the floor. It appears to have returned to where he originally placed it when he retrieves it in another shot, however.
    • Quotes

      Quatermass: They tell me you have no police here?

      Dawson: Police? We don't need them - we're a law-abiding community, aren't we?

    • Connections
      Featured in The Saturday Afternoon Movie: Enemy From Space (1966)
    • Soundtracks
      Midsummer Mood
      (uncredited)

      Music by Kenneth Essex

      Paxton Music Ltd

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • May 10, 1957 (Netherlands)
    • Country of origin
      • United Kingdom
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Terre contre satellite
    • Filming locations
      • Shell Haven Refinery, Essex, England, UK
    • Production company
      • Hammer Films
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Budget
      • £92,000 (estimated)
    • Gross worldwide
      • $77
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      • 1h 25m(85 min)
    • Color
      • Black and White

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