The Quatermass Xperiment (US title: The Creeping Unknown) is a 1955 British Hammer science fiction horror film on Blu-ray, based on the 1953 BBC Television serial The Quatermass Experiment written by Nigel Kneale. It is regarded as the first of the “Hammer Horrors”.
Britain's first rocket has been successfully launched and returns to Earth but communication has been severed. Only one of the three spacemen (Wordsworth) remains on board whose physical and mental health has been severely damaged. He is put under strict observation but his wife smuggles him out of the hospital only to unleash the biggest threat ever to civilisation. For the survivor is being consumed by an alien force, who gains strength from human flesh to multiple and grow, threatening to engulf and kill all living organisms. Professor Quatermass (Donlevy) must find a way to overcome the thing before it becomes impossible.
Features the two extraordinary additions of ‘Quatermass II’ and ‘X The Unknown’!
Blu-ray + DVD formats, 2 disc set.
Special Features
- Quatermass 2
- X The Unknown (Sequel)
The Quatermass Xperiment Review
“For the uninitiated, Quatermass (not "Quartermass”) is Professor Bernard Quatermass, a rocket scientist who on four occasions encountered alien life forms here on earth. The Quatermass saga began as a 1953 television serial produced in the earliest days of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The Quatermass Experiement was filmed by Hammer two years later, though it was retitled The Creeping Unknown for release in America. (The slight change in the title, the “X” in Xperiment, was to emphasize the picture's “adults only” X-certificate in Britain.) The same team, more or less, adapted the BBC's 1955 follow-up, Quatermass II, which Hammer filmed in 1957, and which became Enemy from Space in the U.S. The third Quatermass adventure, aired in 1959 and filmed seven years later as Quatermass and the Pit, likewise retained its title in Britain, but again was changed for U.S. release, this time to Five Million Years to Earth. A fourth drama, The Quatermass Conclusion (1979), was filmed and released as both a multi-part television drama and in a feature version.
The Quatermass stories are the creation of Manxman Nigel Kneale, and with each story he delved deeper and more intelligently into areas of science fiction frequently explored in literature but almost never on television and even less so in films. His stories are logical and sophisticated but uncluttered with scientific jargon. Their ideas are complex and far-reaching, yet always accessible to a mainstream audience. Finally, Kneale always anchored his stories with solid, well-drawn characters, another rarity in '50s science fiction cinema. The first two films were enormously influential, insomuch as their stories have been imitated endlessly in the years since. The Quatermass Xperiment, unlike Quatermass II, has lost some of its impact through the years, but still holds up as one of the more intelligent, thought-provoking science fiction films of its time.
The story begins at the crash site of a rocketship, Britain's first manned spaceflight. One of its astronauts, Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), though injured, has survived the crash. However, the two other astronauts have vanished, leaving only their empty space suits. Quatermass (American actor Brian Donlevy), head of the Rocket Group and under pressure from both the press and the British government for answers concerning the unsanctioned flight, investigates. As Quatermass tries to unravel the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the two men, Carroon, conscious but catatonic, appears to be undergoing a strange metamorphosis…
The Quatermass Xperiment's strengths are the vividness and intelligence of Neale's storytelling, and the sense of urgency given the film version by director and co-screenwriter Val Guest. Neale reportedly hated Donlevy's unwavering, singularly un-British Quatermass, but much of what seems to have bothered Neale comes out of Guest and Richard Landau's script rather than Donlevy's performance. In cutting the roughly four-hour television program down to a 78-minute movie, Guest and Landau cleverly turned Quatermass into a hurricane of a man who races through the story's necessary exposition. He lets nothing stand in his way – politeness and procedure be damned, he has a job to do and time is of the essence! Stocky, unflappable Donlevy is marvelous, walking a full beat faster than everyone else, and giving each line a concerned, ruthless authority that makes the story's fantastic elements seem entirely plausible.
The late James Bernard likewise contributes to this enormously as well, giving the picture its notably tense score, one dominated by unrelenting, piercing violins. It also complements Guest's savvy direction, which wisely opts for a stark, documentary look most of the time. This, in turn, gives the film its air of verisimilitude while going a long way to hide its paltry budget.
The Quatermass Xperiment is several cinematic landmarks at once. It's a watershed science fiction drama that also helped establish Hammer as a major exporter of fantastic cinema. And, best of all, it introduced to the world the thrillingly smart storytelling of Nigel Kneale and what is perhaps his greatest character." DVD Talk