THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (82’)
by Val Guest
starring Brian Donlevy, Jack Warner, Richard Wordsworth, Margia Dean
UK, 1955
Restored in 4K by Hammer Films
Introduced by Marco Contino
The Quatermass Xperiment (Hammer had changed the spelling to “Xperiment” to tie in with the expected X rating) had originally been broadcast in six episodes on BBC television in 1953, and was the first of the three series concerning Professor Bernard Quatermass written between 1953 and 1960 by Nigel Kneale, an extremely talented writer from the Isle of Man. […] The film retains moments of surprising power largely thanks to the unforgettable and pathos-filled performance from Richard Wordsworth in a Frankenstein-like role as the half-monster. Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the film when one sees it again today is how decisively the opening sequence (which was completely altered from the television version) seems to record Hammer’s intrusion into the cosy middle-class domesticity of British cinema. Two utterly conventional lovers run across a meadow mouthing their lines with precisely the kind of simpering coyness that had dogged British films through the 1940s and 1950s… They giggle and embrace stiffly on a convenient haystack when suddenly the whole scene is interrupted by a terrible whining […] noise … the couple stagger to their feet and begin to run in complete disarray back across the field to take refuge in a hut. As they cringe in terror, a huge tubular rocket ship […] plunges through the sky into the field exactly at the point where they have been lying. It would be difficult to conceive of a more symbolic or appropriate beginning for Hammer’s eruption onto the British film scene in the 1950s. As Hammer’s first monster film, The Quatermass Xperiment also proved to be an excellent demonstration of Phil Leakey’s brilliance with make-up. […] His work on Richard Wordsworth conveyed the sense of a whole body in the process of decomposition in a way that was more subtle than gruesome and enhanced Wordsworth’s own tragic mime. […] His figure, limping miserably over a bomb-site […] undoubtedly amounts to one of the most pathetic monsters that Hammer ever created. (David Pirie)
