Drop the “E.” Just “Xperiment.” It’s cleaner.1
Hammer Horror begins here, with Val Guest’s black-and-white scientific chiller where cosmic horror crash-lands back home. While the studio would eventually lean into lurid Gothic romps, there’s no hint of that in these professionals who follow the plot step by reasoned step. The protagonists belong to a world of bright artificial lights, and those white halos of civilization keep the worst of the horror at bay, at least for a time. The policeman tries to stay clean-shaven. The doctor bites back the worst of his objections to a high-handed scientist. Everything is under observation.
Brian Donlevy stars as the arrogant Professor Quatermass, who alternates between clipped tones and barked orders. When his exploratory rocket falls nose-down in a hayfield, Quatermass seizes control of the investigation with an iron fist. Two of the astronauts inside the shuttle are dead, and the third, Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), is nearly catatonic, a staring waxwork of a man. Sometimes, when no one is looking, he breaks into a wild, unsettling grin. What happened to the other astronauts? Their suits are still intact, and there’s no sign anyone ever left the ship. And what’s happening to Carroon? Even his wife (Margia Dean) can’t coax any answers out of him.
Quatermass finds two semi-allies—Dr. Gordon Briscoe (David King-Wood), who examines Carroon, and Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner), who is doggedly pursuing answers about the missing-presumed-dead astronauts—who can exist under his rule without being cowed into uselessness. Together, the three of them begin to unravel what’s happening. It comes in slow burn hints: distorted footage, subtle disfigurements, blurry fingerprints with hardly any loops and whorls. The film has a nice sense of visuals, but for a long time, its restraint means it almost functions as a radio play. Here, let’s stand in front of a body. The audience doesn’t need to see it. It’s a money-saving device, but it feels like more than that: it comes with the sense that the authorities have it all under control. The lights are on. The fear is building, but there’s the illusion of containment.
Judith Carroon, tired of the layers of bureaucracy keeping her from her husband, cuts across all that, hiring a snarky private detective, Christie (Harold Lang), to spirit him away from the hospital and into her private care. Needless to say, it goes wrong.
Carroon is out in the dark, out in the open air. Unobserved. That transition kicks off the more aggressive back half of The Quatermass Xperiment, and all the systems begin to decay. Carroon’s been steadily changing this whole time, but now his transformation escalates—he’s shedding little dripping, crawling pieces of himself around the city, and the radio has to warn people not to touch them. Before Quatermass can so much as breathe a condemnation of women, amirite, the film lets the horror into the well-lit, orderly lab, too. Think you can put all this wet, grasping unknown in a glass cage and have it stay there? Think again. It’s a stark visualization of Quatermass—in this Lovecraftian world—as a kind of self-satisfied Pandora, letting the horrors out of the gods’ box but believing he can keep them safely in one of his own design.
Quatermass is our steely protagonist, but his steel is undented. He can get away with that for now. By the end of the movie, though, his unwillingness to be affected by everything he’s seen—by everything his project has led to—is revealed to be a horror all its own. Judith Carroon saw only a little, and she shocked and traumatized herself right out of the movie. As soon as Dr. Briscoe sees enough to guess, he sees enough to fear. Placid Inspector Lomax, forced to live with his stubble after all, pushed beyond the bounds of his ordinary comfort, knows that he would never want to go further. Science—and still more professionalism, coming in from a surprise source—saved them once. But their margin of error was razor-thin. Can they count on having that same success again? Shouldn’t they at least think about it?
Well, Quatermass gets the last word—gets it, in fact, by almost refusing to hear or acknowledge what anyone else is saying. This is what happens when a flexible discipline meets an iron mind. This is what happens when you refuse to be at least a little afraid.
The Quatermass Xperiment suffers from at least one teeth-grindingly bad performance—Margia Dean is so wooden that she’s almost excruciating to watch—but it makes up for it with Richard Wordsworth’s wordless agonies and a fine supporting cast. It’s the kind of film where even walk-on characters like pharmacists and desk sergeants get frills of characterization, rounding out the human world around the inhuman intrusion. And that transition from it’s-all-under-control-here to oh-fuck-that-prosthetic-and-creature-work is phenomenal. It can be hard to bring cosmic horror on the silver screen, but this manages it.
While I sympathize with people who feel like it butchers Quatermass’s original characterization—and fobs the role off to an American, no less!—I like how the changes add a human source of horror, too. There are dangers within as well as without, and one will lead us to the other. It makes the film’s lurking space terror a kind of existential vampire: it has to be invited in.
The Quatermass Xperiment is streaming on ScreenPix.
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Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
How Are You? It’s Alan, episode 4 – Alan goes hiking in the Peak District, near where I used to live! The stuff about his relationship continues to be funny and will presumably fully explode in the last couple of episodes. I’m not sure this was quite as laugh-out-loud funny as some of the other episodes but it gains points for local interest and stunning landscape. But loses a point for not mentioning that one of the local caves is nicknamed “The Devil’s Arse” (I once saw Jarvis Cocker play a solo gig there).
Seinfeld, “The Good Samaritan” and “The Letter” – two mildly insane mid-tier episodes, the former has some good stuff but the plots don’t feel as cleverly integrated as some episodes (Kramer’s weird seizures kinda felt like a last minute “we forgot to give Kramer anything to do!” thing to me). The latter, by which I mean The Letter, was a little better largely thanks to the old couple’s hilarious discussions of Kramer’s portrait but also because I have a huge crush on Catherine Keener in this era apparently and hadn’t previously realised. Elaine’s baseball subplot felt a little weak though.
Justified, Season Three, Episode Six, “When The Guns Come Out”
One big theme to Justified is that Americans – even Black Americans, in spite of racism – are continuing the traditions of aristocracy, having used capitalism to bring it down to the peasants. Limehouse in particular has the noble attitude of a king, and he’s exasperated with his man’s attempt at social mobility through violence, knowing what he has is enough – the guy claims he’d rather die on his feet than live on his knees, and Limehouse practically rolls his eyes at the stupidity. You can see Boyd and Raylan in a similar position, trapped in their own ways by their upbringing, and Raylan mostly escaping it through becoming a government worker – which is ironic, really.
Meanwhile, William Mapother’s Dell Boy going down without even a fight is such a great Justified turn, all that buildup and then thrown to the ground. HIs story of the commune he grew up in continues the theme of family legacy; people have a way of assuming their experiences matter, and often believe they have to be continued to be meaningful (which is how you get generations of people beating their kids – “You gotta learn accountability, just like I did!”).
Fascinated by Quarles’s assumption that Raylan must be dirty.
Biggest Laugh: “What were you supposed to do? Be a gentleman and let her go first?”
Biggest Non-Art Laugh: “You know the position you’re putting me in, Arlo?” / “Missionary.”
Top Ownage: “Shit! I didn’t bring a knife.”
Limehouse’s holler is based on a real area of Harlan in the 19th/20th century that was virtually segregated, so white women went there in domestic abuse situations like Raylan’s mom. Otherwise felt vaguely disappointed to find out Harlan has a low crime rate and probably doesn’t have a cool rib joint run by the local Black kingpin.
Seed of Chucky – A firmly 2000’s horror comedy with all that is good and bad in this definition, including the awkward use of CGI – the opener would be great if it didn’t look entirely like a Playstation game via DePalma – the appearance of Redman, which could be much, much worse, and some dated Japan (but sort of funny) jokes. Some great kills nevertheless, I like Chucky concluding that he’d rather be a doll than human, a series first, and Glen/Glenda is a fascinating character that feels a few years ahead of their time. The queer elements have never been stronger in a Chucky movie with this androgynous doll whose emotional turmoil is mostly taken seriously.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
The title card popping up right after an extended prologue that has fuck-all to do with Stoker’s book almost feels like a gag. In a sense, it’s a nice metaphor for what’s going to follow, simultaneously too faithful and not faithful enough. It turned out my opinion hadn’t changed much since I first saw it as a teenager — you can’t just plop a Mina/Dracula romance into the original story and expect it to make sense. If Dracula keeps doing all the awful shit he always does, you have to ask yourself why Mina’d side with the weirdo she’d just met over the best friend he’d murdered and fiancee he’d tortured. It doesn’t help that Coppola & co’s idea of a meet-cute means having Dracula do even more awful shit like stalking and assaulting her, but he lets her pet his dog afterwards and that makes everything OK.
Thank God Winona Ryder and Gary Oldman play the romance as if it makes sense. This isn’t a movie you watch for the script anyway: costume designer Eiko Ishioka’s the real auteur here, and Coppola keeps up admirably. Anthony Hopkins is great as the cackling looney version of Van Helsing that must have inspired Willem Dafoe’s take on the character in Nosferatu. (The script isn’t so good at making Dracula more likable, but at least it succeeds in making these stuffy Victorians less likable.) Speaking of things that feel like gags — the most prominent Brits in the story are played by Americans, and the most prominent Brits don’t play Brits, so pretty much everyone’s faking an accent. Blu-ray was the best and worst way to watch this one. I got to drink in all the brilliant colors and imagery, but it was hard to ignore that the grand sets all looked like they were borrowed from a TV movie.
Hell yeah. The first Quatermass film I saw was the third one, “and the Pit”, which “fixes” the American problem and seems to be the consensus favourite – but I much prefer the first two, with grumpy Donlevy and the gritty B&W cinematography. I love the “somebody came back from space and they aren’t quite right” premise and how everything unravels creepily from there, although from a few years distance I can’t entirely remember which plot points are from the first film and which are from the second (probably doesn’t help that I watched them in reverse order). Definitely a series I should revisit!
I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the series! But yeah, the cinematography in this is really top-notch: gives it an icy feeling that pairs well with Donlevy’s interpretation.
It fits in nicely with the wave of smart but entertaining 50s sci-fi, which is generally more my bag than Hammer Horror.
Year of the Month update!|
And this November, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 2018!
Nov. 10th: Bridgett Taylor: Aquaman
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TBD: Patrick Mio Llaguno – The Long Goodbye
Oct. 15th: Lauren James: Working
Oct. 16th: John Bruni: Shotgun Willie/Sweet Revenge
Oct. 17th: Bridgett Taylor: Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road
Oct. 22nd: Lauren James: The Wicker Man
Oct. 26th: Ben Hohenstatt: Mind Games
Oct. 29th: Lauren James: Don’t Look Now
Hammer released ultra deluxe editions of The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2 a few months ago and this review isn’t going to be the tipping point on me buying them, but it will be on my mind when I finally pull the trigger.
I’ve been staring at those deluxe editions. Very hard to resist.