Before Doctor Who, there was Quatermass. Finally started to check out this series over recent weeks, and have just finished my marathon. Wow, what a great series of creations. The sort of intelligent, ideas-driven science-fiction that is sadly largely missing from the movie and television industry today.
The majority of the original BBC serial The Quatermass Experiment is missing, so I started my marathon with Hammer's remake The Quatermass Xperiment. This was a terrific horror movie, with an amazing performance form the guy playing the astronaut/creature, but I never really got much of a handle on who Quatermass was as the movie zipped too fast to offer characterisation. From what I made out he was some cold, calculated anti-hero. I checked out the two surviving episodes of the BBC serial and was surprised to see that he's nothing like this at all in the original, which built up quite the atmosphere in its few surviving episodes. A crying shame it's gone, and I'm as angry at its absence as I am at the missing Doctor Who classics.
I then moved on to the BBC's Quatermass II, and I assume Chris Carter must have seen this at some point because it felt like a mythology episode of The X-Files. An absolutely gripping alien conspiracy thriller, only let down by the final episode. The Hammer adaptation was a mess, and I thought Donlevy's performance was terrible compared to John Robinson's, but I thought the finale was actually moderately improved.
Then we get to both the serial and film of Quatermass and the Pit and... fucking hell. This is AMAZING sci-fi. The TV serial is among the best TV sci-fi I've seen, and the movie is among the best movie sci-fi I've seen. The two actors in either medium's version of the story are really great, with both giving pitch-perfect performances that helped increase the suspense. It's amusing to see how much Doctor Who's The Daemons ripped this story off, with the main story being by and large the same, only with more emphasis on psychological horror than creatures. If I had to pick a favourite, I'd pick the Hammer movie version as I thought it increased the atmosphere and scare factor. The floating image of the devil's head at the end was much more powerful than it was in the TV show, though I missed the final speech from the serial. Overall, I'd rate the 1967 Quatermass and the Pit as my favourite part of the franchise. Magnificent Lovecraftian horror cinema, that I'll no doubt be revisiting soon.
The 1979 conclusion, written by Kneale for ITV, isn't as visually iconic as the classic 3 but had a beautifully bleak atmosphere and a generally angry tone of social commentary. The prof went out in great fashion.
All I've got left to check out now is the 2005 remake of the original serial, which I can't say I'm hugely excited for from what I've heard. Any Quatermass fans in da house? Care to share your favourite story, film or actor?
The majority of the original BBC serial The Quatermass Experiment is missing, so I started my marathon with Hammer's remake The Quatermass Xperiment. This was a terrific horror movie, with an amazing performance form the guy playing the astronaut/creature, but I never really got much of a handle on who Quatermass was as the movie zipped too fast to offer characterisation. From what I made out he was some cold, calculated anti-hero. I checked out the two surviving episodes of the BBC serial and was surprised to see that he's nothing like this at all in the original, which built up quite the atmosphere in its few surviving episodes. A crying shame it's gone, and I'm as angry at its absence as I am at the missing Doctor Who classics.
I then moved on to the BBC's Quatermass II, and I assume Chris Carter must have seen this at some point because it felt like a mythology episode of The X-Files. An absolutely gripping alien conspiracy thriller, only let down by the final episode. The Hammer adaptation was a mess, and I thought Donlevy's performance was terrible compared to John Robinson's, but I thought the finale was actually moderately improved.
Then we get to both the serial and film of Quatermass and the Pit and... fucking hell. This is AMAZING sci-fi. The TV serial is among the best TV sci-fi I've seen, and the movie is among the best movie sci-fi I've seen. The two actors in either medium's version of the story are really great, with both giving pitch-perfect performances that helped increase the suspense. It's amusing to see how much Doctor Who's The Daemons ripped this story off, with the main story being by and large the same, only with more emphasis on psychological horror than creatures. If I had to pick a favourite, I'd pick the Hammer movie version as I thought it increased the atmosphere and scare factor. The floating image of the devil's head at the end was much more powerful than it was in the TV show, though I missed the final speech from the serial. Overall, I'd rate the 1967 Quatermass and the Pit as my favourite part of the franchise. Magnificent Lovecraftian horror cinema, that I'll no doubt be revisiting soon.
The 1979 conclusion, written by Kneale for ITV, isn't as visually iconic as the classic 3 but had a beautifully bleak atmosphere and a generally angry tone of social commentary. The prof went out in great fashion.
All I've got left to check out now is the 2005 remake of the original serial, which I can't say I'm hugely excited for from what I've heard. Any Quatermass fans in da house? Care to share your favourite story, film or actor?
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