Quatermass II

Plot synopsis:
=== The Bolts ===
Meteorites are falling over Northern England, one of which is observed by an Army radar unit. After a farmer finds one of the objects in a field, the soldiers become directly involved, and Captain Johnny Dillon decides to unofficially ask the father of his fiancée, Paula, to investigate. Paula's father is Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group — "the rocket man!", as one of Dillon's troops puts it. Quatermass and the Rocket Group, now including Paula and mathematical genius Dr. Leo Pugh, are recovering from the news that one of the two nuclear Quatermass II rockets has exploded during a ground test in Australia, killing hundreds of staff and ending their project to build permanent bases on the Moon.
Quatermass agrees to accompany Dillon on an investigation and the pair visit the farmer, who refuses to talk and sends them away. At a pub, they find out that the nearby village of Winnerden Flats has been leveled to build an enormous industrial plant protected by armed guards, which is identical to Quatermass' moonbase design. Upon investigating a newly fallen meteorite, Dillon is sprayed from it with ammonia gas, and a distinctive mark appears on his face.
=== The Mark ===
Similarly 'marked' armed guards arrive from the plant and take Dillon away. Whilst being taken Dillon threateningly tells Quatermass not to follow. After the guards' departure Quatermass speaks with a tramp, who explains that there used to be a small government research unit consisting of a few huts by Winnerden Flats, and that a year ago they expanded and bulldozed the village, and built the plant and a prefab town for the construction workers. At the prefab town, Quatermass sees that 'the mark' and strange behaviour are associated with those who find the fallen meteorites, but before he can find out more the community police order him away.
Quatermass returns to the Rocket Group, where Leo has reconstructed the meteorite, which can carry ammonia and other gases and travel through the atmosphere to the ground in one piece. In London, the Metropolitan Police claim they have no jurisdiction over the matter, so he goes to his contact Fowler at the ministry, who reveals that the plant is a top secret project to make synthetic food, but Vincent Broadhead MP, who is conducting an inquiry into the project, reveals that there are identical plants in Brazil and Siberia. Upon gaining entry to the inquiry, Quatermass notices that one of the civil servants has 'the mark'.
=== The Food ===
As he tries to investigate further, Quatermass finds that other figures in high levels of government have gained 'the mark' after coming across meteorites. Quatermass leaves the inquiry, then returns with Fowler to find that Broadhead has been 'marked' and now claims there is no problem with the project. Fowler takes Quatermass to meet with civil servant Rupert Ward, who has the authority to inspect the plant. Back at the Rocket Group, Leo and Paula deduce and discover with a radio telescope that an asteroid is orbiting the Earth invisibly and discharging the meteorites when it reaches the near point, 400 000 miles over Southern England every 14 hours.
Ward helps Quatermass and Fowler gain entry to the plant and they find that Dillon has been discharged from the infirmary and has left. They then look around and discover that gases are pumped to the giant pressure domes from the pilot plant: ammonia, hydrogen, nitrogen and methane, as opposed to oxygen as in Quatermass' moonbase pressure dome idea. Meanwhile, the guards intimidate and then murder a family who were having a picnic nearby. Back at the plant, Ward slips away to look inside a dome, and Quatermass and Fowler find him stumbling out of it dying and covered in black slime, which before his death Ward reveals was inside the dome instead of food. Fowler and Quatermass escape back to the Rocket Group and analyse Ward's tie with Leo and Paula, finding that the slime is a corrosive, poisonous substance, fatal to all forms of life on Earth. Meanwhile, the asteroid is approaching its near point.
=== The Coming ===
Quatermass deduces that an alien life-form which comes from one of the moons of Saturn, which lives on ammonia, hydrogen and methane, but to which oxygen is a deadly poison, travels to earth in the meteorites, and in the few seconds they spend out of their shells before dying they possess human minds, and transmit knowledge to each other in a collective consciousness. From this, they assume that it was the population of Winnderden Flats itself who demolished the village and built the plant. Quatermass decides that they can use the remaining Quatermass II rocket like a nuclear bomb and destroy the asteroid, much to Leo's protest at the rocket being unsafe to fly. Fowler tries to steal information about the other plants from the ministry, but is overcome and possessed by a makeshift meteorite hidden inside a filing cabinet.
That night Quatermass travels with journalist Hugh Conrad to the prefab town where they meet with construction workers who say that work has been suspended for all except the 'zombies' ('marked' people). They claim that the meteorites are only over-shots from the plant after one of them lands in a pub. These recent meteorites are falling in hundreds and being collected by special guard teams then returned to the plant. Quatermass steals a guard's uniform from a lorry to gain entry to the plant. As he does this Conrad returns to the pub to telephone his newspaper and reveal everything about the secret alien invasion, but he becomes 'marked' before he can finish. The construction workers, however, hear what he says and decide to take action. Meanwhile, Quatermass is inside a pressure dome, where he sees guards putting meteorites into the tanks of poisonous slime that killed Ward, where together, in the recreated atmosphere of a moon of Saturn, they combine and grow into the first of the enormous ammonid alien creatures.
=== The Frenzy ===
Quatermass is narrowly saved from discovery by the rioting construction workers, who storm the plant and along with him are besieged inside the gas distribution centre, where they pump oxygen into the completed pressure dome to poison the ammonids, however some of the workers succumb to propaganda from the plant controllers, who offer them the chance to see inside the dome. The guards kill them by blocking the pipe with their bodies. In anger, the remaining workers fire on the dome with a bazooka, igniting the hydrogen and subsequently destroying the entire plant, killing the ammonids and releasing ammonia gas into the surrounding area.
Quatermass escapes the plant in a gas mask and meets up with Leo, whom he finds unconscious in his car nearby. With little time left to prevent more ammonids returning in meteorites, he and Leo are forced to use the Quatermass II to attempt to destroy the asteroid, despite the known flaws in the rocket's design and its liability to explode. They return to the Rocket Group, but British Paratroopers led by Johnny Dillon take control of the firing base.
=== The Destroyers ===
The team invite Dillon up to the control room, where they see he has written orders from the very top, showing that the ammonids have long been in control of the government. They appeal to his human side to allow them to continue, which he does so after Leo tells him the rocket must launch. Despite both being old and unfit, Quatermass and Leo are the only two who have the scientific knowledge to make such a flight. They fly to the asteroid and land on it, but en route Quatermass finds out that the night the plant exploded Leo was possessed by the ammonids.
Leo intends to kill Quatermass to prevent the destruction of the asteroid, and also to allow the ammonids to travel back to Earth en masse in the Quatermass II. He tries to kill Quatermass with a gun, but the recoil sends him floating helplessly off into space. Quatermass returns to the rocket and jettisons the nuclear motor, then flies the rocket back to earth as the motor blows up the asteroid, killing the remaining ammonids and relinquishing control over Dillon and all the 'marked' humans, returning mankind to its former freedom.

Tags: violence, cult, murder

Review:
By far the most frightening serial ever shown on British TV and in 1955 the Beeb took the unprecedented step of warning viewers before each episode that under no circumstances should children view this film and anyone of a nervous disposition would be best advised not watching.
My own father, a man one would view as strongly masculine to the core was absolutely terrified at the concepts here and deeply disturbed by the music - Holst's Planet Suite: Mars: The Bringer of War. For years after and until his death in fact, he could never listen to that piece of music without leaving the room.
The first real horror came at the end of episode 2 I think when Quatermass stumbles across some poor worker who has tumbled down a flight of metal steps having tried to get into the dome.
The concluding episode saw the locating of the asteroid and Quatermass's final flight there to destroy the alien threat.
You wouldn't have laughed in 1955!Val Guest's big screen remake: ENEMY FROM SPACE many years later, was certainly OK but could never hold a candle to this original work which as many have commented is just about impossible to find.
I actually have a softcover book of this great film series, complete with the entire dialog and several plates from the old black and white serial.
Like most folks, I watched all the movie versions of the Quatermass saga before seeing any of the hard-to-find BBC television serials.
The effects are, of course better in the silver screen treatments, but the television serials let a lot more exposition and explanations get out, so things make even more sense and characters and situations get fleshed out in some rather interesting ways...the movie (Enemy From Space) has an unmanned rocket being launched at the aliens, while the serial has Quatermass and a fellow scientist taking the rocket up to face the aliens.John Robinson makes a great Quatermass...very arrogant and domineering, but at the same time you can sense some concern for humanity in the man.
He's no quite as good as John Mills in the last installment of the series (The Quatermass Conclusion), but he does make the serial much more enjoyable than the movie (nothing against Brian Donlevy in that particular production).It's also fun to see Roger Delgado (best known as The Master on Doctor Who) in the role of the reporter who comes with Quatermass to the strange little town of Wynnerton Flats.Unless you frequent the newsgroups and video-trading circles, you don't have much chance of finding this little gem...but if you do, remember that it is definitely worth the four hours to watch..
The 1957 film version of "Quatertmass II" was superior to its predecessor, and one can only assume that the serial was too; again, it obviously goes deeper into the various themes than the film does, but it's interesting to see how Kneale was able to compress his own work without losing the essential quality and potency of his concept (we've seen several films which have had large chunks removed from them with the result that one would hardly recognize the original - but it's certainly not the case with the Quatermass series!).All things considered, I guess I prefer the films to the serials for two reasons: one, the fact that the former - even if still done on a low budget - were invariably more polished (given their crisp photography as opposed to the fuzziness of a TV program); the other reason is the essential tautness of the films - the serials don't necessarily feel draggy and are certainly never boring but, watched in one sitting (which, I guess, was never the intention to begin with!), Kneale's gripping and thought-provoking plots could make for a tiresome overall experience!!
John Robinson replaced Reginald Tate (who had died in the meantime) as Professor Quatermass; he does a good job at it but, from the three actors who performed the character on TV (I haven't watched John Mills in the final serial, named simply QUATERMASS, from 1979), he's the one who comes closest to Brian Donlevy's interpretation in the first two films and which so dissatisfied Kneale!
The cast also features Hugh Griffith as Quatermass' assistant and future stalwart of British horror cinema Rupert Davies as a government official.The fact of these being live broadcasts was betrayed more than anything else during this particular serial by the surprising number of lines flubbed by the actors throughout - chief among them Robinson himself!
Besides, even if scenes that were made memorable by the films (which I obviously watched prior to the serials) generate their own tension and excitement on the small screen, the film's ending is preferable to the one presented here - in which Robinson and Griffith are flown into outer space in order to destroy the planet which was attempting to colonize Earth..
The very best of the Quatermass stories.
Having recently come by a pirated copy of this on VCR recently, I can honestly say after several viewings that this has to be the best of the Quatermass seriels made by the BBC in the 1950s.
Broadcast live on UK TV in 1955, this is an altogether more together piece than the remade Hammer film of a few years later and has a much more involving plot.
One of the main diferences in the story has Professor Quatermass actually travel to the alien asteroid with his assistant Leo Pugh to destroy the ammonid things before more of them reach the earth.Another plot addition is the introduction of little metallic cases to contain the aliens in and make them more readily available for transportation to one victim to another, a side plot sadly missing from the afformentioned Hammer film.
The character Broadhead from the film version is called Ward here and it is only a 3 man expedition that enters the Synthetic Food plant at Winnerden Flats, during this visit Ward dies covered in black slime and Quatermass and a character called Fowler discover to their horror that a nearby picnicking family have been gunned down by the impossing Zombie guards.
News is doing the rounds that the serial may be making it's way onto DVD this year and hopefully it will make it..
I had never heard of the Quartermass series before and after seeing Quartermass II: The Enemy From Space, I hope I can find the others.Being honest here, I never have been too much a fan of British made films as comparatively they always had what I (personal opinion - NOT meant as a negative!) felt was a cheap, amateurish feel to them.
but to enjoy these old films, people must realize watching it to make a comparisons with modern productions will always be disappointing.Watch films like this for the fun of seeing how people back then saw sci fi.
I have to passsionately disagree with people who have come onto this page claiming this is the best of the QUATERMASS serials .
I`ve not seen the original BBC QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT but both QUATERMASS AND THE PIT and the 1979 ITV serial are far better than this .!!!!
POSSIBLE SPOILERS !!!!The script as you would expect from Nigel Kneale is fairly good but far from his best and there is a slight problem watching this in 2004 and that is the basic plot of mankind being infiltrated by pods taking over human beings has been done to death over the years .
We`ve seen three versions of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS , alongside THE PUPPET MASTERS , THE INVADERS etc the plot is rather stale now though to be fair the aliens in this are totally apolitical as compared to being communist .
Another thing you`ll notice if you`re watching this on a pirate video tape is that the story itself is very episodic ie when character A is killed off after their use to the plot is finished character B is introduced to push the story forward and after they die character C comes along .
Obviously people didn`t notice this when the episodes were broadcast in 1955 but it`s strange when Kneale wrote THE PIT he included a radio report in the first episode which ties in with Quatermass`s TV speech in the final scene .
John Robinson was cast at very short notice in the title role and it`s painfully obvious he`s not had enough time to learn the lines never mind get into character which does bring the proceedings down and the rest of the cast give either laughably over emphatic performances , are totally wooden or sound like Dick Van Dyke in MARY POPPINS .
To be fair no one from a working class background became actors in the 1950s so maybe I shouldn`t criticise a bunch of RADA trained thespians trying to portray the proles but it`s difficult not to notice the manual workers don`t sound like manual workers , and Monica Grey who plays Paula Quatermass gives probably the most annoyingly stagey performance in the serialDirector Rudolph Cartier work is also patchy .
When he`s good like in the classic scene where Quatermass looks into an inspection hatch and sees the alien pods hatching he`s excellent but since I`ve complained about the acting the director should bare some blame for that and there`s too many jarring scenes where it`s obvious location film footage cuts to a studio interior , but again because television was a fledgeling media I shouldn`t criticise too much .
Alas Cartier`s biggest mistake is as producer where the serial`s climax takes place on an alien asteroid out in space .
Considering the show was broadcast live with severe technical limitations it seems a bad idea from the outset on having the climax take place here as the final result shows , and am I alone thinking the Hammer film version took a more sensible approachSorry if I give the impression I disliked QUATERMASS 2 .
I don`t but it`s a severe disappointment especially when I consider QUATERMASS AND THE PIT to be the greatest telefantasy series ever broadcast.
Great sci-fi with atmosphere, tension and good pacing – well, until it loses the plot in the final episode at least (SPOILERS).
Every generation thinks they invented everything themselves and that everything under the sun is new; for myself I find it easy to believe that mistrust of Government, alien conspiracy and the like are all themes which came into sci-fi with the X-Files, and that in the 1950's it was all thinly veiled Communist allegory and nothing else.
I have seen the film versions but fellow IMDb user Theo Robertson kindly lent me his DVD of the original series so that I can find out about it for myself.
The first season offered potential but unfortunately only a couple of episodes existed, but it was enough to make me keen to watch the second season (all of which remains).As before this was broadcast live – amazing to someone like me who is used to such a thing being a "special" event a la ER or 30 Rock doing it.
Using some recorded external shots, the show is impressive for being live – the odd flubbed word but no break in reality and no visible problems (although the inability to precisely hit the 30 minute mark must have been a big headache of the BBC at the time).
The build within the show is mostly strong – from the very early episodes through to the bigger Governmental conspiracy it is mostly all very well done because it remains within the real world and takes real world suspicious and flips them within sci-fi.
Heading into this episode I had assumed that the rocket would be used as a missile to destroy the aliens high above earth; when Leo got infected I assumed that the rocket would need a pilot and that he would sacrifice himself in a good ending.
While not great ideas, these are better than what we got which was a manned rocket mission which ends with Quatermass returning.
It is a poor ending to an otherwise strong run of episodes and it did feel like the season could easily have done without it.
Not sure what the fans feel (I may have just committed blasphemy here) but for me it was excessive, a bit silly and went against the tension and drama that had been so consistent up till that point.The cast are different from the previous season – in particular we have a new Quatermass in the form of Robinson.
His voice took me a minute to get used to because at times he sounded like he was acting in a theatre rather than TV, but quickly he is natural and good – able to deliver complex dialogue but yet make it dramatic and urgent.
She speaks very clearly, her dialogue is as crisp as the finest BBC announcer and it would not have surprised me if she had delivered some of her scenes with three books balanced on her head to show how good her posture was; every time she is on screen she is unnatural and rather disruptive – fortunately she is not on too much.
I remember as a child laughing myself silly at the idea that the aliens in V were easily spotted by not being able to wave without their fingers sticking together in a certain way, here it is almost as obvious – not a massive problem again, but it meant the "menace" that Quatermass describes feeling isn't really as creeping or as hidden as I would have liked.Overall though, this is a very impressive piece of sci-fi.
Technically the live broadcast is all the more impressive for the fact that it isn't obviously live but it is the writing and delivery that makes it work.
Feeding on themes of conspiracy and paranoia, the plot develops at a good pace and builds menace and tension throughout – it is only some wobbly moments and a really weak final episode that let it down.
I recently watched this TV serial back-to-back with the Hammer movie version.It was originally broadcast live, but was recorded off monitors using two different systems.
As a result, the image quality is highly variable, but is still good enough for an evaluation of this early TV classic.It inevitably suffers from the limitations of live broadcasting, but also looks under-rehearsed.
Quatermass and the Pit was also broadcast live but is a much slicker production all round.It was probably too ambitious for its paltry budget.
In retrospect, the final episode, set in space, was probably a mistake.
Although the Hammer movie was shot on a tight budget and was only half as long, it still cost ten times as much.All this can be taken for granted.
The movie had to grab them immediately and lead them from plot point to plot point as efficiently as possible.This serial was a distinct improvement on The Quatermass Experiment.
When Kneale was hired to write the movie version it was an opportunity to rethink aspects of the story.
I give a few examples.In the movie, the problems with the atomic rocket are established with a just couple of lines of dialogue.In the TV version, this takes two complete scenes.
However, to allow Robinson time for his costume change, this second scene starts with Paula Quatermass and Pugh discussing the set-back.
This means another character has to be introduced to get Quatermass into the plant and it is he who falls into the food.
The movie version is both more efficient and more plausible.On TV, Quatermass takes a reporter to the workers' village where he gets infected by an alien.
Now convinced Quatermass is right, the reporter phones in his story.
This provides much better motivation for the workers' subsequent attack on the plant.On TV, we first see a farmer possessed by the aliens, then Dillon, a little girl, Broadhead, a Minister, the reporter and, finally, Pugh.
They are not really missed.On TV, we have two climaxes: the destruction of the pressure dome, followed by the destruction of the asteroid in the next episode.
The puncturing of the dome releases the aliens and the destruction of the asteroid kills them, making for a neater and more striking conclusion.Overall, therefore, the TV version has the advantage of a more measured build-up of tension and can include plot details I regret were not in the movie, but is more diffuse, more obviously padded and less well plotted.
The movie is arguably a bit too efficient, but in the final analysis, it is not only better made, it is better written too.However, I am delighted this TV version is finally available for viewing.
He says things like "What's dat?" and "Both aya" (for "Both of you").It's the story that carries the movie, and a great story it is.
Quatermass is pulled into the government conspiracy to hide the beach head "factory" of the alien invasion force when his subordinates spot the unusual series of meteor showers and his own assistant is spirited away by guards of the mysterious plant.Less is definitely more in this story.
Granted, the scene where a man, coated with the pitch- like "food" manufactured at the forbidden factory, dies in agony in front of Quatermass is horrifying, even now.
As people are taken over, and Quatermass's search for his missing assistant is thwarted again and again, the tension builds.
But after that, as the viewer actually sees what Quatermass is talking about, the story becomes a lot less powerful.
Ultimately, the story reached for one horror too many, and was further undercut by the especially poor special effects at the end.That being said, it was terrific Sci-Fi for 1955, imaginative, technological, and filmed locally to enhance a "this is now" feel to the horror.For Doctor Who fans, the similarities to SPEAHEAD FROM SPACE and INFERNO are unmistakable.
Some of the long shots of the plant look like shots from INFERNO (and, much later, from THE HAND OF FEAR).