Far and away one of my favourites series of films are Nigel Kneales
Quatermass series. With the exception of the later tv series on ITV and
BBC4 respectively, they are easily some of the best British sci fi to
date. Every year about this time, I break out the BBC boxed set of the
1950's live broadcast TV serials. Unfortunately, most of the first part -
the Quatermass Experiment has been lost to time and the depredations of
improper care. But out of the trilogy of Quatermass series, my
favourite is Quatermass and the Pit. Originally broadcast live each week
in 1958, the serial covers the discovery of a spaceship buried in
central London after an excavation reveals ancient skulls of what appear
to be apemen. Further investigation proves that the apemen were in fact
buried with the spaceship and actually carried inside it. After a
hurried excavation of the entire hull, a sealed compartment is found and
efforts made to penetrate its hidden mystery. Once the hull is opened,
rapidly decomposing bodies of three insectoid aliens are revealed, which
Bernard Quatermass suggests are in fact martian colonists, fleeing a
dying world to repopulate Earth by proxy, by genetically modifying apes
to continue the martian culture.
Considering the series was performed live, its a powerful and dramatic
piece, with few flaws. The model making and effects are for their time,
stunning. The dvd set comes with copious notes on production and the
aliens are apparently cast in fibreglass with hydraulic inserts to make
them move. One part of and episode shows a reconstruction of a 'race
memory' from a martian hive purge, featuring the tripedal aliens hopping
and jumping around the screen as they flee their city. A brief close up
of one of the animated martians shows the eyes dilating rapidly and
this effect was apparently achieved with condoms inside a clear plastic
shell!
More memorable for me than the Dr Who-like aliens is the ship itself. A dramatic departure from the conventional V2, aerodynamic rocket fare of its contemporaries, the martian ship looks more akin to a sea-mine with a vaguely shell like casing and bumps and horns all over it like a giant larva.
The show was so successful that it spawned a feature length film, the first Quatermass feature to appear in colour. Released by Hammer and shown as 'Five Million Years to Earth' in the US, Quatermass and the Pit was a big budget production starring Andrew Keir as the good professor. The poster showed a semi naked busty female, very prominently and carried the rather fetching Barbara Shelley as his screaming sidekick.
Hammers treatment of the script was faithful to the original though,
although the ship itself was vastly different. The movie ship was still
insectile, but went for another beautifully designed form, owing more to
a surrealist beetle in glossy electric blue finish. The martians
themselves were similar, although their initial appearance showed them
as toothy, satanic creatures, the rapid 'rotting' of the tissues
rendered them into bendy, ineffective rubber models which detracted from
their initial menace.
Hammers ending of the film was a little more downbeat than the serial, adding images of a burning London with their traditional fiery finish and Quatermass and his lovely assistant taking a much needed breath after vanquishing the monster.
