Nonureva Really Surprised!

GazerRise Fantastic!

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Rainey Dawn Two years before The Blob (1958) we had X The Unknown (1956). X takes a more serious approach and a bit more adult of the two films, whereas The Blob is a bit more comical and teenager-ish. Both are good creature features if you like that sort of thing. I like The Blob better.The copy of X I watched had a weird wave to the entire film that is hard explain. It's not wavy lines though it. It's not a rocking motion of the camera man I don't think but almost as if the film was sliding around during the recording to DVD but it could have been originally filmed that way - it's hard to say. I can say that it made me a bit nauseous and dizzy watching it. (I watched it via YouTube).I would not go out to buy this film and would not care to watch it again, but I am not saying it's a terrible film... it's just not that much fun to watch.4/10

Robert J. Maxwell Dean Jagger is a scientist working at a lab in Scotland, trying to find a way to render radioactive materials (like a bomb) harmless. The earth splits open nearby and a rude lump of glowing stuff comes pouring out, lethal, crackling like bacon in a frying pan, and conveniently built of the kinds of radioactive stuff that Jagger is working on.The blob -- for the most part unseen -- manages to kill several locals by radioactive poisoning before Jagger and the authorities are able to deploy a full-scale replica of their laboratory model. It may not work because "the fans are out of synch." Or it may explode, like the tiny lab model does.Will it work? Is Jagger's fantastic theory of blobby organisms having been forced underground as the earth's crust thickened correct? Is the short, squat dilatory figure who runs the lab correct when he calls the whole thing balderdash? Will the whole mess blow up? Why does hail always have to be the size of something else? Did the Masons really design the first dollar bills? It starts off slowly and mysteriously. That's the best part. Then it gets fast, complicated, scientifically inaccurate, and very loud. Sometimes the suspenseful musical score, on top of all that crackling, as of cellophane being wrinkled, literally drowns out the speech so you can't hear what the characters are saying.It's not terrible. It's just a routine example of those 50s Briish SF movies that used an imported Yank as the main figure -- here Dean Jagger, there an improbable Gene Evans -- and sometimes they worked quite well -- Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. In this one, the performances aren't bad but the script has a tendency to lose itself once in a while. In the very last scene, there is a blinding explosion from the creature's fissure. Knocks everyone flat. What was that, asks a soldier. Jagger is staring thoughtfully at the smoke wreathing out of the fissure. "I don't know," he replies, "but it shouldn't have happened." Camera draws away. The End. It should have happened if you'd decided at the last minute to end the movie with a big bang in order to use up the left-over special effects explosive.

l_rawjalaurence X-THE UNKNOWN is a low-budget film from Excelsior (the precursor of Hammer) which was clearly designed to cash in on the success of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT (1953). With the obligatory American star, designed with foreign sales in mind (Dean Jagger), the action derives much of its interest from the way in which it contrasts the mundane life of a remote Scottish village with the abnormal forces operating within it.Life proceeds as normal - apparently. A group of National Service recruits are engaged in a routine exercise; the locals happily drink at the local pub; while two young scallywags (Michael Brooke, Fraser Hines) go out late at night to cause mischief. However none of them are quite prepared for the shock of encountering the 'thing' that feeds on energy, and appears to be resistant to any human attempts to repress it.The film gains much of its force from the contrast between such shocking events and the matter-of-fact way in which they are investigated. Leo McKern turns in an urbane performance as Inspector 'Mac' McGill, who maintains his sang-froid while people around him are becoming more and more hysterical with fear. Together with Dr. Royston (Jagger), he patiently tries to solve the mystery of what happens.In sociological terms, X THE UNKNOWN makes some trenchant points about the destructive effects of scientific discovery. If Royston had not decided to practice his experiments in the area, perhaps the Scottish village might have been spared. The point is trenchantly made by Jack Harding (Jameson Clark), after learning that his son Willie has died as a result of an encounter with the terror.Shot in atmospheric black-and-white on a low budget, Norman's film gains much of its force from the way it shows how people are affected by the terror within their midst. Making clever use of reaction- shots and atmospheric music, it is definitely worth a look.

Joxerlives Apparently this was supposed to be the fourth instalment of the Quatermass series and you can definitely see the influence here, British location, American scientist character in order to give it some transatlantic appeal, bumptious military types, disbelieving bureaucrats (Dr Beeching?) and young and handsome earnest assistants. This time however the threat does not come from outer space but in a neat twist from inner space, a prehistoric creature that feeds on radioactive energy and has now emerged as the development of nuclear power/weaponry has finally provided it with enough food source to return to the surface. A great concept which unfortunately the special effects can never live up to, I envisioned something more akin to Morbius' creature of the 'Id' from The Forbidden Planet. Speaking of which this must have been quite shocking in its' day, the sight of the creature's victims melting away must have been truly disturbing to a 50s audience. They also kill the kid which must have been taboo at the time. One thing that stuck in my craw a little was the nurse who was rendered mute after witnessing her lover's death, I half expected someone to exclaim 'Well of course she's hysterical, she's only a woman'. Underpinning this all is an early form of environmentalism, atomic energy had been sold to the masses as the great white hope but now people were beginning to have second thoughts as the grieving father's rant against the scientist illustrates. That the creature resembles an oil slick may also be a metaphor of sorts. The ending is somewhat underwhelming, the creatures defeat depending on a tyre getting out of a rut and you wonder if there wasn't supposed to be another scene before the titles run but all the same it's an interesting and entertaining film.