The QUATERMASS XPERIMENT

(vt The Creeping Unknown US)

   Film (1955)

   Hammer. Dir Val Guest, starring Brian Donlevy (as Quatermass), Richard Wordsworth, Jack Warner. Screenplay Richard Landau, Val Guest, based on the BBC TV serial by Nigel KNEALE. 82 mins, cut to 78 mins. B/w.

   It was this film version of the BBC's tv serial The QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT that convinced the Hammer company there wasmoney in horror. (The spelling "Xperiment" referred jokingly to the X certificate Hammer correctly expected the film to be given because of what seemed in those innocent days its alarming horror content.) An astronaut returns to Earth infected by spores from space that slowly take over his body, finally transforming him into an amorphous blob that retreats into Westminster Abbey, where it is electrocuted by Quatermass. (The originaltv serial ends with Quatermass talking to all the three astronaut psyches lingering within the monster, thus convincing the blob to self-destruct.) Richard Wordsworth's shambling, pitiful performance as the afflictedastronaut is quite moving, communicating (though he barely speaks) a sense of something utterly alien to human experience. TQX is a minor classic.

   PN/JB

   See also: MONSTER MOVIES.