Quatermass 2 (1957) - film review

Professor Bernard Quatermass’s ambition to build a colony on the Moon appears to be thwarted as government funds are diverted to other projects.   Meanwhile, his team are busy investigating reports of meteorite landings in an area of English countryside known as Winnerden Flats.   Visiting the site of the landings, Quatermass and his colleague Marsh are surprised to find a vast research installation which closely resembles the blueprint for their lunar base.  Marsh finds one of the meteorites but it fractures on contact, releasing a gas that leaves a strange V-shaped mark on the scientist’s neck.  A party of armed guards appear from the installation and take Marsh away.  Driven away at gunpoint, Quatermass returns to London to confront parliamentarian Vincent Broadhead with his findings.  Broadhead reveals that he too has concerns about the secret research base, which has received colossal sums of government money to finance a programme to create synthetic food.  Broadhead arranges for Quatermass to attend an official tour of the installation, but the tour is not what it seems.  At the last moment, Quatermass escapes and realises the horrifying truth.  The base has been constructed not for the benefit of mankind, but to provide a suitable environment for creatures from another world...

When The Quatermass Xperiment (1956) proved to be a runaway hit, Hammer Films could hardly wait to unleash a sequel.  X the Unknown was to have been the next Quatermass film but had to be released Quatermass-free when writer Nigel Kneale refused to give permission for his character to be used.  Undeterred, Hammer secured the rights to the BBC’s next Quatermass serial, the imaginatively titled Quatermass II, even before it was transmitted.  This time round, Kneale insisted on writing the screenplay, since he had been massively disappointed with the previous Hammer rewrite of his story.  

With Kneale’s input, Quatermass 2 is certainly much closer to the original television series than its predecessor, and therein lies its fault.  With a significantly greater budget (achieved mainly by the advance sale of the distribution rights to United Artists), the film would have benefited from a more ambitious scope, rather than ending up as a slightly more polished version of a cheap TV show.  It doesn’t help that the story is too obviously a reworking of Kneale’s previous offering (in fact, all four Quatermass stories are variations on the same theme).  Yet, despite its modest ambition and familiar plot (which owes a lot to the previous year’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers), the film also has some great strengths.  Val Guest’s direction and some moody photography transform a humdrum sci-fi drama into a taut, fast moving thriller, which is let down only but two things – the obvious miscasting of Brian Donlevy as Quatermass and a slightly embarrassing rampaging monster climax.

The decision to cast Brian Donlevy as Britain’s premier rocket scientist and part-time defender against alien invasion was foist on the Hammer production team by their American backers.  Donlevy has the unique distinction of being the only actor to have played Quatermass twice (he also starred in The Quatermass Xperiment), even though he is clearly unsuited for the role.  Far from being a contemplative man of science, Donlevy’s Quatermass is a gruff bullyboy who looks as if he would be far more at home beating up hoodlums in 1950s American gangster films.  We should at least be grateful that this unusual characterisation takes us away from the nauseating clichés – at the time, most films depicted scientists either as eccentric old men in a white coats or as impossibly handsome young men with at least three scantily dressed girls draped on each arm.  

Brian Donlevy may be unconvincing as a man of science, but he turns in a solid performance that is complemented by a respectable supporting cast.  The latter includes Bryan Forbes (who would turn director a few years later), Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper and future Carry On star Sid James (here playing a comedy version of the character played by Roger Delgado in the TV series).  As in the original TV version, the Shell oil refinery at Stanford-le-Hope provided an appropriate location for the ultra-secret research base, something that adds greatly to the film’s bleak realism and contributes some gripping action sequences.  

Although Quatermass 2 was far from being a commercial failure, its performance at the box office was completely overshadowed by that of another Hammer offering, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957).  Realising that Gothic horror was a far more lucrative line than contemporary science-fiction, Hammer passed up the opportunity to adapt Nigel Kneale’s third Quatermass story, and indeed only got round to doing this when their Gothic goldmine had been pretty well exhausted.  Quatermass and the Pit (1967) would be a faithful adaptation of Kneale’s third (and best) TV serial, although only the most undiscerning of viewers will fail to realise this is a virtual remake of the author’s previous two stories.

Quatermass 2 is arguably the best cinematic treatment of Nigel Kneale’s concept to date, a film that can be enjoyed both as a slick horror-thriller and as a chilling allegory of Cold War paranoia.  It may also make you think twice the next time you come to fill up your supermarket trolley with processed food, and it will certainly cause you to take a closer look at politicians’ necks when they come round asking for your vote.  After all, V is for victory, but not necessarily the kind that is good for us...

© James Travers 2010

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