The Quatermass Xperiment

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

Image From IMDB

A spaceship crash lands in a farm. Three pilots left on the doomed voyage, but now only one is inside, yet no-one obviously opened the door while they were in space? So… what the hell happened? Where did the other two astronauts go?

It’s an intriguing setup, especially as this was years before the first man mission to space, so a lot of the science is pure guess work with no real point of reference giving them plenty of creative freedom. The photography is absolutely beautiful, as is a lot of the camera work. And, when the horror beats kick in, you’re instantly reminded this is unequivocally a Hammer Horror Production.

The movie plays as an investigation into what happens as we wait for the lone survivor with a disgusting skin condition to recover. The mystery only deepens when the flight recorder shows us exactly what happened, without us really knowing exactly what happened. Clearly something went horribly wrong, but you’re still uncertain what. Although, you just witnessed something. Right? For the record, that was my favourite scene. Something about the setting and character reactions worked. I mouthed “roll it again” along with him.

Another favourite scene was them breaking Victor out of the hospital. Christie was a fantastic character and I could have watched a whole noir movie with him.

The different relationships in the movie were good, but mostly there to move the plot forward. Victor and Judith being the primary one as she attempted to run away with her partially comatose husband––that came to an abrupt stop. The inspector and Quatermass were fun together too as they began to try and solve the bizarre puzzle of what happened together.

I loved the creature effects, and the progression they took. Kind of a cross between Frankenstein and An American Werewolf in London, although, obviously years before the latter. The scene with the little girl had Frankenstein written all over it, luckily I was over-reacting. By the time the movie devolved fully into a creature feature, I was all in. The whole end sequence really was fantastic.

The Quatermass Xperiment is a great little movie in my opinion. It looks beautiful, and everyone plays their role admirably. Part sci-fi, part creature feature, the movie has B-Movie written all over it, but despite the insanity there’s a class to it that elevates it above that. For any fans of 50s sci-fi, this is a really intriguing watch.