Streaming Availability: N/A (but you'll find it if you know where to look)
We're breaking the timeline a bit to wrap up the story of Professor Bernard Quatermass and his remarkable yet all-too-sort film franchise.
The third Quatermass film, Quatermass and the Pit (released in America as "Five Million Years to Earth") is also a reboot, made fully a decade after the first two Hammer adaptations of the BBC Quatermass serials. Val Guest has been retired for Roy Ward Baker, black and white has made way for color, and finally our once-American title character is now played by the Scottish Andrew Keir. I like Brian Donlevy's version of Quatermass. He's a tough, almost gangster-like figure. But Andrew Keir's take is far superior. He is a quieter, more somber (and sober) figure. Keir plays this like as a man driven, maybe against himself, by irrepressible curiosity, his nose for mystery leading him right into another terrible nightmare.
Plus Andrew Keir sounds exactly like John Rhys-Davies in this movie. That stately growling voice adds a ton of production. So does the graying beard and brown hat.
Interestingly, Quatermass and the Pit, arguably does not star Prof. Quatermass. Our professor's experience in rocketry does not help the problem at all. He is a less influential figure in British politics compared to the earlier movies, so he does not have the pull to overcome bureaucracy. The first scientist on the scene in the Pit is a different hero, the anthropologist Doctor Roney (James Donald). Roney devises the wild jumps in science fiction technology, he's the Chosen One immune to the alien psychic effects, and he will perform the final bits of heroics that save the day. Roney is led to a London Underground station, Hobb's End (In the Mouth of Madness fans will up sit up in the chairs at that name). Recent construction has uncovered a mutant ape skull from five million years ago. While excited for what this means for the history of human evolution, Roney's team also finds a strange metallic object nearby.
London's history means buried bits of mysterious metal are no mere curiosity. The Germans dropped a lot of ordinance down on London during the war and by 1957, not all of it had been found. (Just the other day, in fact, an old 500 lb American bomb exploded at Miyazaki Airport in Japan, so even eighty years later, this is still a real problem.) The bomb squad soon realizes this is no normal rocket, and calls for the experts. Prof. Quatermass finds himself dragged along mid-political battle, as the UK government wants the military to take over his Moon colonization project. His rival, Colonel Breen (Julian Glover), is an expert in WWII bomb disposal and also a complete moron, as we'll see later. Quatermass, while poking around, notices something that neither Breen or Roney see: the skulls are right next to the bomb and completely intact. This object is not from twenty years ago, this thing is ancient. Ancient Aliens, what a concept!
Quatermass and the Pit is a masterpiece of horror construction. I am in awe of this story and its process of building the mystery. If you want to know how to write a great SCP Foundation entry, study this movie. Nigel Kneale's ideas have always had great hooks: "what caused the astronaut suits to come home empty?" for example. Quatermass and the Pit starts with "why is there an alien spaceship under London?" and then pushes it in all sorts of directions. We discover that this neighborhood, Hobb's End has been newly renamed. It was once "Hob's End", as in, the hob demons of English folklore. This area was empty for decades because of stories of ghosts in the early 20th century, then our heroes find old medieval manuscripts warning people of this place. The ship is full of fascinating details: it causes frostbite burns without being cold, it is metallic but not magnetic, and those working around the craft start hallucinating horned spirits. When we finally do the see the aliens inside, they're long dead.
Yeah, this is an alien ghost story.
One thing we have avoided so far in this horror series is the sense of the Gothic. All these alien invasion movies are about terrifying modernities, the horror of novelty. But much of horror is built on sublime quality of facing the infinite past and its ability to inevitably decay our world, thus ancient ruins, old castles, strange superstitious backwards cultures. For example, Dracula is a being from the past invading the 19th century present. Quatermass and the Pit can have spooky scenes in old churches with blowing winds while also being about a kind of alien invasion. (Hammer had to be all too happy to reuse some Gothic sets.) Only this invasion was successful. We cannot stop it, the aliens already won. The demon folklore of medieval humans was not about ghosts, but the long forgotten nightmare of these Martian visitors.
The big contribution our title character makes to the story is unraveling the mystery of what is going on. Prof. Quatermass cannot effectively fight this evil, but he can understand it. This ship is the last remnant of the Martian race, a locust-like species of ruthless, violent eugenicists. Roney's invention allows us to see into a person's mind, so he can conjure up the last days of Mars, which is this vision of bugs devouring each other. With Mars dying, the ship came to Earth to reprogram the local crafty apes into proper successors to continue Martian culture. Quatermass theorizes that our much of our cruel, racist nature comes from what the Martians did to our ancestors. And what the ship is still doing to those working around it. The process is continuing.
It's an extremely bitter and misanthropic view. Quatermass and the Pit theories that mankind was a mistake, a violation of proper Earthling nature. Our hero asks, "Roney, if we found out earth was doomed - say, by climatic changes - what would we do about it?" Roney responds, "Nothing. Just go on squabbling as usual." Nobody represents the awful, inherent vileness of humanity as well as Colonel Breen, who's ability to ignore evidence is infinite. He's still going on about this being a Nazi trick until the very end. Prof. Quatermass knows what will happen if his lunar colonies end up in the ends of the Breens of the world: they will be more missile platforms. More weaponry and death. Maybe the ship does us all a favor then by unleashing total chaos.
Quatermass and the Pit builds slowly, to the point you'd assume the greatest drama would be that of English gentlemen in board rooms having political squabbles. Colonel Breen is a cocky bastard until his flesh is melted away in a grisly special effect. That's when Quatermass and the Pit goes off the rails. The last fifteen minutes of this movie see "madness" overtake London, the city in flames, a massive locust-like creature floating in the sky, driving people towards riots. Our Professor will keep the aliens from conquering the Earth, but this is his greatest defeat, the unknowable conquering his version of rationality. Even Quatermass himself is overtaken by the psychic wave, struggling as hard as he can to not murder Roney. Roney is somehow immune thanks to an unspoken "difference", which is never well explained. (Maybe queerness?)
Cards on the table: I think Quatermass and the Pit rules. This is the best movie so far. It is a synthesis of the UFO phenomenon and demon folklore and on top of that the growing late-20th century interest in psychics and TK. It is three kinds of esotericisim all mixed together! And the movie's influence is pretty impressive considering how obscure this movie is. Lifeforce, the naked vampire movie movie I'm deeply obsessed with is basically a fourth Quatermass movie, ending in similar chaos. Stephen King's novel The Tommyknockers is also about an underground alien ship reprogramming a small Maine town into becoming its next crew.
Sadly, there was never a proper fourth Quatermass film. Kneale would get to make another BBC serial in 1979 with the character now played by John Mills. There is a theatrical recut of that movie, however, nobody, not even Kneale, seems to particularly like this version. I don't need to cover it. There was a fifth Quatermass story called The Quatermass Memoirs, which was a radio play and partially was a documentary about the series. They remade the first serial in 2005 as a live broadcast starring Jason Flemying.
I'm surprised this franchise has never truly resurfaced at any point, there's definitely something here. Doctor Who sort of absorbed this franchise. It is a grim view of the universe. Lovecraft was terrified of the cosmos, and Quatermass matches that by being just as terrified of humanity. Infinite unknowable darkness and madness lies in either direction. I want to see more Quatermass adventures.
Next time! Maybe humanity does not suck so bad after all - so argues Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
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