While the surge of British horror films from Hammer is generally considered to have started in full blooded colour with The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957 this is an earlier example that shows signs of the idea evolving. Or perhaps given the subject matter, mutating. Like the other films featuring eponymous rocket scientist Bernard Quatermass, this is a big screen adaptation of a television serial with a boost in production values to counter the trimmed running time. It's still in black and white, but the shameless title alteration to advertise the 'X rating' of the (admittedly pretty tame) film hints at the ghoulish sensibilities that were to follow.
For the most part this is exactly what you'd expect for a science fiction story from the 1950s. It's all done with deadly seriousness despite the rather silly premise, but this earnest tone makes the story endearing in its own way. After a rocket ship crashes in a rural village the inhabitants are revealed to be human - part of what was a manned experiment in space flight. But when the fire crews finally open up the doors there are not three men but one on board, and he's got a few rather strange behavioural problems. Where his crew-mates have gone and what's wrong with him is revealed later as evidence is gathered by the research team, but like the other films in this series the plot is about alien infection or possession, so no prizes for figuring out the answer to his symptoms.
Richard Wordsworth is perfectly cast as astronaut Victor Carroon, a mostly mute and haunted figure with pale skin and sunken eyes. There are references to James Whale's Frankenstein as he shambles about looking confused by his surroundings and his purpose. The second half of the film focuses on his escape from a hospital, after his wife decides that she can help him more than top scientists and doctors. Why she thinks this is never clear, and the writing just makes her look like an idiot who distrusts everyone despite Victor's very serious looking medical problems. But thankfully there's no time for romantic melodrama and he's soon wandering about London in search of a way to ease his apparent ailments.
Professor Quatermass on the other hand is totally miscast, with Brian Donlevy doing some kind of tough guy act the whole time. He's rude and impatient, often acting less like a scientist and more like an irritable mob enforcer. Changing the Englishness of the character for an American might not have been an entirely bad decision, but the overall result is just jarring. David King-Wood as his comrade Dr. Briscoe feels far more authentic as someone working in a clinical laboratory setting, and even Jack Warner as their later ally Inspector Lomax would have been more suitable in the role. Donlevy just seems to be annoyed at the whole situation most of the time, without the sort of passion for astronomy that should be integral to the story.
The story itself rattles along nicely as the science team and the police clash and the investigation of Carroon's missing team turns up a few unsettling clues. Meanwhile Carroon himself is looking worse with time, with strange skin on his face and one side of his upper body and arm. It's not the most complex plot ever conceived but there's enough slow burning dread to warrant it's US release title The Creeping Unknown. It's also surprisingly gruesome for the time period in a few notable scenes as the infection Carroon carries pushes him to find sources of energy in a city chemist and then the big cat enclosure at a zoo. While his old self sometimes surfaces his slow loss of humanity is an effective ticking clock for the narrative.
In terms of the sci-fi spectacle on offer there's a variety of effective moments from the crashed rocket model to the make-up shown whenever there's a close-up on Richard Wordsworth's face. The weirder and slimier scenes in the third act are also pretty good for what is required, even if the scenes that are supposed to depict a mutant plant look more like an octopus on strings in a few shots. It's almost a mixture of Earth animal and alien flora, but it never quite gets there. Still, there's enough dark and grimy London locations to give it all an aura of horror when required. Carroon hiding in the bushes and laboratory samples breaking free are drenched with plenty of atmospheric lighting to sell the mood as the situation slowly unravels.
If only the script and the central protagonist were more congruous. The original serial is very similar but offers much stronger elements in certain story beats that should really have been kept intact. Several interesting ideas have been dropped in favour of more generic, and I suppose film-like ones that lessen the impact of the plot while raising a lot of questions that could have been avoided. It remains an entertaining if wobbly kind of affair, and a fairly compelling thrill ride - at least during the second half of the running time. They still managed to put out a sequel of course, but in this series only the third entry feels like a genuine Hammer essential.
3/5
BONUS REVIEW
QUATERMASS 2 (1957)
In many ways the follow up is more of the same on a larger scale, with the idea of one man being host to an alien intelligence being upped to a whole town. Quatermass (still Brian Donlevy for some reason) has added a moon base to his research plans but finds that funding for his whole project has been cancelled. Maybe it's because of that angry and reckless attitude he gives off? But things are not so simple, and after his team looks into a strange meteor shower he finds that his moon base has been paid for already. The only problem is someone has built the whole thing on Earth, near the same remote rural village the meteorites have landed.
The film has a different feel to it in this regard, and the plot has more of a Body Snatchers conspiracy vibe than the first instalment. There are paranoid locals who think that they should keep quiet about the strange construction activity, and suspicious 'marked' authority figures with unknown allegiances. It might have a larger scope but the mood is very claustrophobic, particularly during scenes where the professor and his companions try and get inside the mysterious 'synthetic food' factory that has been designed to look exactly like his lunar habitat. A lot of mask wearing goons don't exactly sell the idea of this all being an average industrial production plant.
The pacing is the real problem as various investigating parties go back and forth from the city to the countryside, meeting resistance every so often and making a retreat. Quatermass is clearly on to the invaders early on but nobody silences him when it's convenient, and the finale is just a rushed action shoot out. It's interesting to see a story based on secretive government labs, but again the results are truncated and lack the depth the TV version of the script offers. It's still a fun sci-fi yarn with some effective monster moments along the way, and the likes of Michael Ripper and Sid James are nice inclusions to the cast. But the results are strangely rough around the edges considering this was all produced for another format already.
3/5
