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Fun fact: Quatermass II is the very first numbered horror sequel in history. The first 2. Which is interesting because this in no way a continuation of the story of The Quatermass Xperiment. Continuity really was not a concern back then, nobody was worried about wikis or subreddits getting mad about inconsistencies in the Fifties. Quatermass II is just another adventure for our brash American rocket scientist surrounded by Englishmen and Aliens, Professor Quatermass (Brian Donlevy). It does not take long for Britain and the world to nearly be conquered by aliens - but completely different ones from the body morphing infection of the last film.
No, Quatermass II is Britain's take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers (also released in 1957). Quatermass must fight rocks from space that sprout skin lesions and fascism.
Unfortunately, this is also the worst Quatermass movie.
The only returning major player is Quatermass himself. Even his Scotland Yard contact, Lomax is played by John Longden subbing in for Jack Warner. He's giving a totally different performance, one is reminded of how Felix Leiter was played by six completely different dudes in the early 007 movies. Only Inspector Lomax will not be returning for Quatermass 3, sorry.
Since the script never references the fact that Quatermass killed a space octopus and nearly burnt down Westminster Abbey, he's still in charge of his rocketry team. At the beginning of Quatermass II, the professor is talking about Moon colonization. Possibly as a result of the kerfuffle last movie, Her Majesty's government has suddenly cut his funding for his rocketry program (which appears to consist of only four dudes and a secretary). A much-humbled Quatermass will be throwing desperate passes from his back foot for the first of the movie.
Still the opening is intriguing. Nigel Kneale's Quatermass stories always open on compelling mysteries. A young couple races down the road from a town called Winnerden Flats, the man having burnt himself terribly after contact with a meteorite shard. Prof. Quatermass soon finds that Winnderden Flats is missing from his maps, new roads have sprouted up leading nowhere, and parts of the village were bulldozed to make room for a massive complex seemingly appearing overnight. Quatermass gets extra disturbed when he realizes this complex matches his own lunar colony plans - an alien species following the same engineering method to colonize Britain. They've elaborated on his scheme by possessing huge swaths of the native human population, building an army of what Quatermass II specifically names as "zombies".
Turns out you cannot build something like Winnderden Flats without a lot of connections, going all the way up to London. This is our first government conspiracy, a key element in UFO occult mythology. In general, I have a very dim view of conspiracy theories, not just out of instinctual skepticism. The belief that some sinister secret foreign group is controlling the world is inherently toxic and hateful. It is a very short road to go from "aliens control everything" to "lizardmen control everything" to finally, "the Jews control everything", all the tropes are the same. (By the way, Quatermass II's symbol of fascist power is a six-pointed star missing its top piece... hmm.) If the lizardmen did exist, why must we assume them to be evil. Don't you think lizards can be cute, Danica Patrick? Unfortunately, our era of Pizzagates and pet-eating bullshit sorta takes the fun out of The X-Files.
In 1957, we're still a way away from full blown paranoia of the government. We'll need a few more decades of UFO "cover-ups", JFK assassination theories, and the actual nasty shit the CIA pulled to come to light first. Keep an eye on this element as it develops over our series.
There is legitimate terror in the concept of secret infiltration and takeovers. Quatermass is a well-connected guy, he's meeting with members of Parliament within hours of running into the Winnderden Flats facility. The MP, Broadhead (Tom Chatto), shows how feeble and unprepared regular politicians are to a true threat. To him, Winnderden Flats is merely a just another government boondoggle and the silence around it is typical party politics. Just the usual kind of flimflam of guys making few quid. Instead, Quatermass and Broadhead are running into whole armies of zombiefied Brownshirts. The British government gets to be both Neville Chamberlain and Franz von Papen during this takeover, either way pushed aside for a new grim-faced violent future.
Britain actually did have some history of fascist sympathizing. Hearts of Iron 4 players will recognize the figure of Oswald Mosley who started a Fascist Party in the Thirties. Luckily outside of alt-history mods, he was just a small nasty footnote. Major Nazi leaders like Rudolph Hess believed enough in a secret cabal of British sympathizers that he tried to land in Britain and end the war early in 1941. By 1957, though, good Englishmen dressing in Nazi uniforms would have been the height of terror for a British audience.
Unfortunately, Quatermass II just does not do much with any of this except have a lot of dull gunfights in gray industrial spaces.
Luckily for the world, these aliens make Imperial Stormtroopers look like Yusuf Dikec. Brian Donlevy is not action star, he was in his fifties when this movie came out and shaped like a man who enjoys his liquor. (Wikipedia gleefully reports rumors on set telling us that Donlevy enjoyed liquor quite a bit.) Still, our Prof spends a lot of the movie running from machine gunners or driving off in big luxury cars. Thankfully no matter how many bullets they fire, the zombies just never can hit our hero. Later, Prof. Quatermass will be joined by a proletarian rebellion from the local still-human construction worker towns, who with surprising ease, out-fight the alien army. There's a lot of bloodshed, most of Quatermass's team gets killed in the war, but humanity prevails not really thanks to scientific know-how or quick thinking, just better aim.
As a horror movie, Quatermass II is a a disappointment in comparison to the original. The most gore we get is with the carbuncle-like sores the alien infection leaves on its host. Broadhead is covered in alien slime and we're told it burns him to death, but the actor is obviously just covered in harmless oil. The coolest visuals are when we finally see the final boss alien organism in full view, which are these kaiju blobs rolling around, smashing miniatures. These effects are no Godzilla, not even a Gorgo, but I appreciate a kaiju monster when I get one.
Val Guest gets a lot of mileage out of shooting interesting angles from in the oil refinery most of Quatermass II was filmed at. He uses the space well but... the story just is not good this time. By the halfway mark, we've seen all of Quatermass II's tricks, and all that is left is repetitive combat. Too many scenes of shooting, not enough science fiction. All the gunplay in the world cannot make up for a plot that lacks the visceral ooze that Quatermass I had. Eventually Star Wars will find a way to make fighting space fascists not boring, but George Lucas is only thirteen now in 1957. We have a long way to go.
Anyway, we have one final Quatermass movie to go, and this one will not disappoint.
Next Time: Prof. Quatermass changes actors and accents in Quatermass and the Pit
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