Nonureva Really Surprised!

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

keith-moyes I recently watched this TV serial back-to-back with the Hammer movie version.It was originally broadcast live, but was recorded off monitors using two different systems. One system only recorded alternate scan lines so the image is often of very low resolution. The recording is also marred by light leakage. In one episode there was clearly a fault with one of the TV cameras. As a result, the image quality is highly variable, but is still good enough for an evaluation of this early TV classic.It inevitably suffers from the limitations of live broadcasting, but also looks under-rehearsed. Actors are noticeably missing their marks, fluffing their lines, jumping their cues and freezing into 'meaningful' close-ups before the camera is ready for them. Quatermass and the Pit was also broadcast live but is a much slicker production all round.It was probably too ambitious for its paltry budget. Even without the cost of the BBC contract staff, $20,000 was an impossibly small sum for a three hour drama. In retrospect, the final episode, set in space, was probably a mistake. The asteroid set was just tarpaulins thrown over studio junk - and that is exactly what it looks like. Although the Hammer movie was shot on a tight budget and was only half as long, it still cost ten times as much.All this can be taken for granted. The real issue is which version tells the story best.Of course, they were made for different media, so told the story in a different way. The TV version was structured to gradually draw the audience into an increasingly paranoid world, week by week, building steadily towards its climax. The movie had to grab them immediately and lead them from plot point to plot point as efficiently as possible.This serial was a distinct improvement on The Quatermass Experiment. It had a tighter, more plausible story, more action, less padding and built to a more satisfying climax. But there was room for improvement.It shows signs of having been written very quickly and could have done with a re-write. When Kneale was hired to write the movie version it was an opportunity to rethink aspects of the story. His overlong screenplay was then trimmed by Jimmy Sangster and Val Guest, who brought a fresh eye to the story and introduced further improvements. A comparison of the two versions demonstrates the advantages of this script development process. I give a few examples.In the movie, the problems with the atomic rocket are established with a just couple of lines of dialogue.In the TV version, this takes two complete scenes. Quatermass is checking his rocket because he has heard the sister rocket in Australia has gone into nuclear melt-down. This is then reinforced by a scene where he views footage of the Austalian disaster. However, to allow Robinson time for his costume change, this second scene starts with Paula Quatermass and Pugh discussing the set-back. When Quatermass appears, the scene then simply repeats information we have now already heard twice.In the movie, Quatermass is introduced to Vincent Broadhead, an MP who is already suspicious about the Winnerton Flats project. He gets Quatermass into the food plant, sneaks off to investigate one of the domes and falls into the corrosive 'food'.In the TV version, he merely gets Quatermass into a meeting of the investigation committee. He is then possessed by an alien. This means another character has to be introduced to get Quatermass into the plant and it is he who falls into the food. But he is just a PR man. Why would he go snooping around? The movie version is both more efficient and more plausible.On TV, Quatermass takes a reporter to the workers' village where he gets infected by an alien. Guards turn up to investigate the 'overshot'. Now convinced Quatermass is right, the reporter phones in his story. Spooked by what he says, the workers march on the plant.In the movie, it is someone else who gets infected. The guards turn up while the reporter is telephoning his paper and shoot him. This provides much better motivation for the workers' subsequent attack on the plant.On TV, we first see a farmer possessed by the aliens, then Dillon, a little girl, Broadhead, a Minister, the reporter and, finally, Pugh. These multiple possessions contribute to the growing paranoia, but are mostly irrelevant to the plot.The movie combines the roles of Dillon and Pugh into a single character (Marsh) and omits most of other possessions. They are not really missed.On TV, we have two climaxes: the destruction of the pressure dome, followed by the destruction of the asteroid in the next episode. The movie combines them, inter-cutting between the rocket base and the siege of the control room. The puncturing of the dome releases the aliens and the destruction of the asteroid kills them, making for a neater and more striking conclusion.Overall, therefore, the TV version has the advantage of a more measured build-up of tension and can include plot details I regret were not in the movie, but is more diffuse, more obviously padded and less well plotted. The movie is arguably a bit too efficient, but in the final analysis, it is not only better made, it is better written too.However, I am delighted this TV version is finally available for viewing. It is long overdue. 15 years ago I learnt from a TV programme that it had survived intact and wrote urging the BBC to release it on video. At long last they have.Now, my only regret is that we will never see if Neale's more expansive screenplay for Hammer might have produced an even better movie.

MARIO GAUCI The 1957 film version of "Quatertmass II" was superior to its predecessor, and one can only assume that the serial was too; again, it obviously goes deeper into the various themes than the film does, but it's interesting to see how Kneale was able to compress his own work without losing the essential quality and potency of his concept (we've seen several films which have had large chunks removed from them with the result that one would hardly recognize the original - but it's certainly not the case with the Quatermass series!).All things considered, I guess I prefer the films to the serials for two reasons: one, the fact that the former - even if still done on a low budget - were invariably more polished (given their crisp photography as opposed to the fuzziness of a TV program); the other reason is the essential tautness of the films - the serials don't necessarily feel draggy and are certainly never boring but, watched in one sitting (which, I guess, was never the intention to begin with!), Kneale's gripping and thought-provoking plots could make for a tiresome overall experience!! John Robinson replaced Reginald Tate (who had died in the meantime) as Professor Quatermass; he does a good job at it but, from the three actors who performed the character on TV (I haven't watched John Mills in the final serial, named simply QUATERMASS, from 1979), he's the one who comes closest to Brian Donlevy's interpretation in the first two films and which so dissatisfied Kneale! The cast also features Hugh Griffith as Quatermass' assistant and future stalwart of British horror cinema Rupert Davies as a government official.The fact of these being live broadcasts was betrayed more than anything else during this particular serial by the surprising number of lines flubbed by the actors throughout - chief among them Robinson himself! Besides, even if scenes that were made memorable by the films (which I obviously watched prior to the serials) generate their own tension and excitement on the small screen, the film's ending is preferable to the one presented here - in which Robinson and Griffith are flown into outer space in order to destroy the planet which was attempting to colonize Earth.

uds3 By far the most frightening serial ever shown on British TV and in 1955 the Beeb took the unprecedented step of warning viewers before each episode that under no circumstances should children view this film and anyone of a nervous disposition would be best advised not watching. My own father, a man one would view as strongly masculine to the core was absolutely terrified at the concepts here and deeply disturbed by the music - Holst's Planet Suite: Mars: The Bringer of War. For years after and until his death in fact, he could never listen to that piece of music without leaving the room. I begged mum to let me watch it (I was 10) - she knew me well enough to let me thank God! The story by scifi specialist Nigel Kneale was hi-tech stuff then. Alien spores infiltrated the earth's atmosphere crashing to earth in small rock-size meteorites. On contact by individuals, the smallest stream of vapor would escape and enter the victim who became "one of them" - looking unchanged, but "taken over" body-snatcher style! As always, a major Government cover-up allowed an enormous domed plant to be built - quite impenetrable and unaccountable seemingly to anyone. Of course, once Bernard Quatermass was on the case, things moved along. The first real horror came at the end of episode 2 I think when Quatermass stumbles across some poor worker who has tumbled down a flight of metal steps having tried to get into the dome. He is covered with a black shiny resin burning him to death. Might sound a cack now, but in 1955 it was gruesome and horrific. As the extent of the "takeover" becomes apparent, Quatermass and his small team of assistants realise they must break into the dome at all costs. What they find is seared on my mind for all time. The dome is full of boiling slimy protoplasmic shapes which rear up as the camera pans closer..thats the only way to describe them, existing in an artificially created environment which is a replication of the conditions upon their own asteroid. As the credits rolled on that episode, not too many people in Britain would have been saying much! Ultimately, the dome is destroyed despite the "thing's" valiant attempts to defend their earth-base. The concluding episode saw the locating of the asteroid and Quatermass's final flight there to destroy the alien threat. One would today laugh at both the rocket and the alien life-forms as they all but crushed the ship in the dying seconds. You wouldn't have laughed in 1955!Val Guest's big screen remake: ENEMY FROM SPACE many years later, was certainly OK but could never hold a candle to this original work which as many have commented is just about impossible to find. I actually have a softcover book of this great film series, complete with the entire dialog and several plates from the old black and white serial. It is one of my favorite possessions.

Vigilante-407 Unfortunately, at the current time Quatermass II is really only available in bootlegs of varying quality. That's how I saw it, though the copy I found is of pretty good quality considering the rarity of the material. Like most folks, I watched all the movie versions of the Quatermass saga before seeing any of the hard-to-find BBC television serials. The effects are, of course better in the silver screen treatments, but the television serials let a lot more exposition and explanations get out, so things make even more sense and characters and situations get fleshed out in some rather interesting ways...the movie (Enemy From Space) has an unmanned rocket being launched at the aliens, while the serial has Quatermass and a fellow scientist taking the rocket up to face the aliens.John Robinson makes a great Quatermass...very arrogant and domineering, but at the same time you can sense some concern for humanity in the man. He's no quite as good as John Mills in the last installment of the series (The Quatermass Conclusion), but he does make the serial much more enjoyable than the movie (nothing against Brian Donlevy in that particular production).It's also fun to see Roger Delgado (best known as The Master on Doctor Who) in the role of the reporter who comes with Quatermass to the strange little town of Wynnerton Flats.Unless you frequent the newsgroups and video-trading circles, you don't have much chance of finding this little gem...but if you do, remember that it is definitely worth the four hours to watch.