X: The Unknown (1956) - film review

Soldiers on a training exercise in Scotland are surprised when a fissure suddenly appears in the ground.  One of the soldiers is instantly killed and another is injured by intense radioactive burns.  Not long afterwards, a young boy dies from similar wounds after exploring an abandoned water tower in woods nearby.  Atomic energy researcher Dr Adam Royston is called upon to investigate these mysterious occurrences and makes some terrifying deductions.  A sentient shape-changing creature that has lived for centuries beneath the Earth’s crust has escaped to the surface via the fissure and is now looking for radioactive material to feed on.  As the creature grows, spreading death and destruction in its wake, Royston works frantically to find a way to destroy it...

After the phenomenal success of The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), the film adaptation of Nigel Kneale’s landmark BBC TV serial, Hammer wasted no time in making a follow-up.   The company was not put off when Kneale refused to write a  sequel and to give his permission for the Quatermass character to be reused.   Stepping into Nigel Kneale’s shoes, 27-year-old Jimmy Sangster knocked out a script in next to no time, borrowing ideas from the original Quatermass story whilst pillaging various previous B-movies.   To this mix was added a liberal dose of incomprehensible pseudo-science, of the kind that makes the original Star Trek series look like an Open University course on advanced physics.   This was Sangster’s screenwriting debut and he would go on to do far better work, including writing and directing some of Hammer’s best horror films.  Just as in their earlier Quatermass film, Hammer made great virtue of the X-rating that the British Board of Film Classification gave the film, with the X in the film’s title featuring prominently on all of the publicity. 

The film was originally to have been directed by Joseph Losey, who had recently left Hollywood after being blacklisted for alleged involvement in Communist activities.  The film’s lead actor, Dean Jagger, had extreme anti-Communist views and refused to work with Losey, so the latter was replaced with Leslie Norman, a far less experienced director.  This was not the end of Losey’s association with Hammer, however; he would return to direct the thriller The Damned (1963).

Whilst it is far from perfect, X: The Unknown does holds together surprisingly well.  It may not match up to the standards of The Quatermass Xperiment, but it compares favourably with comparable low budget American horror films and does offer one or two genuine chills.  The sequence in which a body melts (literally) before our eyes is one of the most horrific to appear in any British horror film, and the nocturnal sequences have that aura of Gothic menace that would become Hammer’s stock in trade in the following decades.  It’s a shame that the effect is diminished by some mediocre model shots and the not very convincing realisation of the creature, which looks like the Blob’s anaemic younger brother.  Overall, however, this is not a bad sci-fi/horror offering from Hammer, giving a foretaste of the blood curdling treats that were yet to come.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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