THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955)

As it is the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who this year I have decided it was time to revisit his immediate fictional predecessor Bernard Quatermass. Invented by Nigel Kneale in the 1950s Quatermass was a British Rocket Scientist who took on unknown alien menaces threatening humanity (well the British Countryside). 

Originally a BBC series the Quatermass Experiment Hammer licenced it for the screen in 1955 and began its success sparked the Hammer Horror genre. I shall be watching the whole Quatermass series and so begin where it all started.

A mission to space, launched by Prof. Bernard Quatermass' British Rocket Group, goes ever wrong and crashes back to earth. Only one of the three astronauts has survived and he begins to change into something else, something inhuman. When he escapes from custody Quatermass realises that what the astronaut is turning into is a threat to all humanity.

This is a frustrating film. I enjoyed it but I do not think I can say it is actually a good film. The script compresses the orginal 6 part BBC drama in 90 minutes which gives it a great pace. However, there is something lacking in this film. Some things happen and then at the end they stop and I never quite care about the journey. The more I have thought about the more I have wondered if it is because it was essentially the first Hammer Horror. It lacks the  vividness and lurid incident of the later films and goes beyond taking itself seriously. Hammer Horrors were never tongue in-cheek, that was a dreadful post-ironic media imposition, but they knew what they were there for. To get the teenagers in on a Friday night on the promise of swooning maidens and horrid monsters. The Quatermass Xperiment comes across as too earnest and it seems like it wants to say something relevant about the space race when it does not actually have an opinion.

"Evening All"

This feeling is not helped by the casting of Brian Donleavy as Quatermass.I do not think I have ever seen such a spectacular bit of miscasting in any film. The character is written as  a questing enthusiastic scientist seeking to push the boundaries of science but Donleavy delivers it like some humourless drill sergeant less interested in the pursuit of knowledge than throwing his weight around. His performance is stiff and lifeless and every time he walks on screen the film sinks. What is even more frustrating is the supporting cast are uniformly excellent with Lionel Jeoffries appearing briefly and being more Quatermass than Quatermass himself. One piece of casting which I did not know about and was a pleasant uprise was Jack Warner was Police Inspector Lomax. Dixon of Dock Green himself plays Lomax with a gusto which draws you in. I see why he became Britain's favourite copper for all those years. He is set up as the counterpoint to Quatermass, the supposed rationalist and intellectual, as a salt-of-the-earth man who believes in the bible. He comes to accept what is happening because of the evidence presented even if he does not think man should be meddling. Clearly there was supposed to be more of an opposition on the character arcs between Lomax and Quatermass. Lomax accepts that the events are going wrong because of the evidence presented. Quatermass who was supposed to embrace the unknown, has his faith in science and progress put to the test by events going wrong, or more importantly, not as he predicted. This is there in the script but Donleavy's stilted baleful performance robs the film of any of it.

"I don't know what's stiffer. This man or your acting"

There are some lovely moments in the film. A wonderfully strange bit when the changing astronaut absorbs a cactus into his body for no discernible reason (well there is a bit of techno-babble why but it never really explains the scene). Later on there is a riff on the scene from Universal's Frankenstein when the Monster encounters the child playing. Unlike in that film there is no real denouement to the scene apart from perhaps indication of the last vestige of the astronaut's humanity when he leaves the child to play. 

But those two scenes alone do not a great film make. This film has more worth as a curiosity than an actual film on its own merits. If you are a fan of Hammer Horror it is interesting to see where it all began and to see the first hero of British TV on the big screen. The film was named the Quatermass Xperiment to cash in on the new X Certificate fad but it never quite lives up to its own publicity. It set the stage for what was come but never really comes to life itself. So an inauspicious start to watching the Quatermass series but hopefully it can only get better from here. I am disappointed nobody has done the Quatermass XXXperiment yet.