Halloween 31 For 31: The Quatermass Experiment (2005)

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Director: Sam Miller

Screenplay: Richard Fell (adapting the screenplay of Nigel Kneale)

Cast: Jason Flemyng (as Professor Bernard Quatermass); Mark Gatiss (as John Paterson); Andrew Tiernan (as Victor Carroon); Indira Varma (as Judith Carroon); David Tennant (as Doctor Gordon Briscoe)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #2

The first Quatermass story, the original version of The Quatermass Experiment, was a six episode series broadcast in 1953 on the BBC. Sadly only the first two episodes survive, but it was successful and led to two sequels that have survived. As those sequels were being created in the late fifties Hammer started to readapt Quatermass for the theatrical screen with their own version of The Quatermass Experiment in 1955. Decades later BBC4, building from the original scripts of Quatermass creator and legendary screenwriter Nigel Kneale, decided to create a production of The Quatermass Experiment that would be performed live on television on 2 April 2005. Once allusive for me to find, but now with only the 1979 series Quatermass and its compilation theatrical film left to see, this 2005 version presented an interesting viewing experience of the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass being readapted for the new Millennium.

The story is the same as the other version of this story; the first spaceship launched into space by Britain by itself - headed by Quatermass (Jason Flemyng, who is good but sadly in the shadow of Andrew Keir, John Robinson and André Morell in the same role) - crashes to Earth with only one of the astronauts, Victor Carroon (Andrew Tiernan), surviving. However its apparent, as the other two have disappeared completely and Victor shows bodily changes in his near catatonic state, that something horrible has been brought back to Earth. The live nature of the broadcast doesn't necessarily stand out especially as the first original mini-series of Quatermass in the fifties were also recorded live, and especially as watched eleven years afterwards some of the mistakes in the live version in the performances and production were replaced for the DVD release with retakes. Instead the minimalistic style of doing this like the original series is of more interest, in terms of emphasising the dialogue and performances in the centre of the special, the stage bound nature forcing alongside the actors to have to perform as they would do in theatre the technical side to having to be economic in production style as well. There are cutaways to imagery too for style, of rockets in space and cells dividing under a microscope, which offer a more dreamlike nature to the show in contrast to even the Hammer version.

Sadly The Quatermass Experiment feels merely perfunctory. Alright and an accomplished task but ultimately, despite one version almost entirely lost, inferior to its previous adaptations. The transition to the (then) modern 2000s feels strange, in a strange nebulous time period, which doesn't feel fleshed out; the closest attempt is having the exposition being depicted through news broadcasts, but consisting of only the same person (real broadcaster Jane Hill), it causes the production to feel limited in materials rather than economic. It doesn't take risks with the plot by modernising it either, which isn't inherently an issue especially with the calibre of actors involved (Mark Gatiss, who I know more for his horror documentaries, Indira Varma, David Tennant etc.), but it lacks a key trait of Nigel Kneale's work that appears especially with the six episode shows in how he, alongside his incredible ideas, was also a great dramatist who created memorable characters and even went to depicting fun and eccentric side characters for added depth. Attempts at drama in this version, the conflicted relation of Varama's Judith Carroon as the wife of Victor adapted from the first versions, or Gatiss' scientist becoming frustrated at the failed project and spreading his opinion through newspapers, don't work in this special very well, limited in time between the main plot to a detriment. It's also a lot more serious in tone compared to all the other version of the Quatermass stories I've seen, serious in their own tones but not as severely serious as this. This is especially the case as the dialogue takes a turn into more esoteric turns as the nature of Victor's form not being necessarily human questions the characters' original scientific beliefs, a great idea for giving this version its own character but undermined by the lack of lightness and vagueness of the dialogue's hinting.

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The style is mainly like the fifties television stories, static but filled with constant dialogue or images to focus on, only with the greatly advanced technology of modern television production and a few more camera movements. There are creative decisions however which don't work at all. Having music in scenes, unlike the original mini-series, is one such failure, a realisation for me that the silence of the originals is much more preferred than constant music in modern productions of any type. Here quite generic music is played continually which also is pointlessly expressive, the slight awkwardness of the scoreless originals working a lot more to draw me in. Also the decision, when he escapes into the London streets, to have first person from Victor as effectively a Drunk-Cam (woozy visuals, the camera constantly shaking around) was absolutely silly and irritating.

Probably the biggest disappointment is that, whilst a solid modern retelling, there's a clear attempt to strip away the obvious pulp nature of the original premise to be more serious. Honestly, Nigel Kneale's work has an inherent fifties b-movie nature to it in the first Quatermass programmes, which didn't stop him tackling some serious and idiosyncratic themes in his work. Paradoxically, this tries to be so serious or at least thoughtful about its characters, but feels hollow. Its attempts to step away from what is, frankly, a fifties monster film in premise, to the point you never see what Victor finally turns into, only a vague off-screen entity, feels like a vacuum is created. It undermines the apocalyptic threat, only hints of it killing off birds and a single fake severed hand to show its sense of threat, not enough to work with at even in the context of what is televised live theatre, where if implication is required instead of an actual visible threat, it needs greater prescience in what's said of it rather than merely shots of cell division scrutinised in a laboratory. This also applies to the ending, different in all three versions of The Quatermass Experiment, where Quatermass tries to appeal to what humanity is left in the entity, the resulting conclusion an attempt at an expressionist ending which feels obscured. Altogether, while an admirable project, the 2005 version of The Quatermass Experiment feels like an anti-climax.

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Halloween 31 For 31: Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

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Director: Roy Ward Baker

Screenplay: Nigel Kneale

Cast: James Donald; Andrew Keir; Barbara Shelley; Julian Glover; Duncan Lamont

Synopsis: An archaeological site containing an ancestor of mankind is found during an extension being built in the London Underground. When it's perceived that an unexploded World War II bomb has also been found, leading to Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) and Professor Bernard Quatermass (Andrew Keir) visiting the site, its discovered that they might've uncovered an alien vessel instead. A possible origin to the human species may've been found as well as a potential threat to them as well.

For a few months before this Halloween season, I've been going through the Quatermass stories created by the mind of one of the most acclaimed writers of British sci-fi and horror television Nigel Kneale. Originally I intended to only watch the Hammer productions, but an accident led to viewing the three original BBC mini-series. This was for the better, an (almost) chronological trip through the franchise which was as much as a discovery for me of Kneale, my only knowledge of him for a while that of his brief involvement with Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), which he disowned the involvement with story wise because of his displeasure with the violence and gore. Sadly only the first two of six episodes of The Quatermass Experiment (!953) have survived, but Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59) have. Hammer cast American actor Brian Donlevy as Quatermass in the adaptation of the first two series, then with Andrew Keir in the titular role came the most well known of their adaptations in 1967.

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The original reason for going through the Quatermass franchise was because I grew up with Quatermass and the Pit and wanted more than just the memory of it I held for all these years before. My parents during the DVD boom of the early 2000s rented a lot of films, including horror movies, from a place called Global Video in town and from LoveFilm when they had an account. Strangely, though they were a young couple between the Sixties and Seventies, they didn't really rent older films that often. Somehow Quatermass and the Pit was the exception, abruptly ending up on the TV screen and being etched in memory for me as a result. History even repeated when, planning to watch only a couple of episodes per night, I ended up marathoning the whole of the BBC television production with my father one night.

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I once, years ago, made the suggestion American stories explained how an object became evil, while in British stories the object is inherently evil, the vessel found a likely cause of centuries of paranormal activities in the nearby street Hobb's End. This was completely wrong, but there are clear differences in a lot of the storytelling even if both countries can share the same storytelling structures together. There are examples in American stories that follow the ideal of forces out of clear explanation - HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe and, discovering his work, William Hope Hodson, beings that merely exist be they gods or giant crabs that have grown out of human society. But especially when serial killers and slashers films become more significant in American horror films, rational reasons influenced supernatural stories and tales of cursed icons, and significantly they depict forces that could've easily come to existence the same era its victims did. The British, like Japanese, do veer towards forces and influences that have always existed before mankind, more than likely influenced by each country's individual folklore. Nigel Kneale's work on Quatermass does offer scientific explanations or aliens trying to conquer the Earth, but there are visible links to the idea of unforeseen primordial forces in all the version of Quatermass in the BBC and Hammer versions. This is poignant here as, while the story suggests magic and the supernatural can be explained by way of aliens, it doesn't stop it from presenting a force that could destroy mankind, an innate will suddenly awoken in the finale where any human in the vicinity of the vessel baring a certain few will sudden develop a hive mind and destructive abilities. The strange insect-like creatures found the vessel, while explained in a science fiction way, have a sense of elder forms from an ancient position long before man literally existed. The archaic is found in Quatermass and the Pit even if it's using then-modern terms.

Ironically after viewing the BBC mini-series first, I prefer that version of the story than the one whose memory of which led to this venture in the first place. Kneale, scripting both versions, was also very good at dialogue and memorable characters, where exposition actually leads you to feel even more interested in what was happening, and he made a character like Quatermass such a bold and noble man. He also had an interest in eccentric and quaint Britishness, such as in the mini-series with an elderly couple who start the interest in Hobb's End and its paranormal history. The mini-series over six episodes had more time to allow the characters to breath and the main theme of the story to stand out, a subtext for human barbarism where Quatermass is originally stuck with Colonel Breen because the military would rather want army bases on the Moon rather than live harmoniously on  human metropolises in the craters. The whittling down of the plot for the film allows the story to move quickly but with less detail that made the story more gripping. Both have to deal with an issue that, unless with a high budget, it's difficult to pull off the finale where London goes up in flames. The original mini-series manages to go further for the better, including the involvement of an American airplane over the skyline, regardless of the limitations.

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Technical Detail:

Hammer films are fondly remembered for their lush colours, and I cannot object to seeing this tale this way with handsome production design as well. It shares a very different mood from the previous Hammer Quatermass films which, being black and white, become much more atmospheric in comparison to Quatermass and the Pit. If there is a major flaw, there are details much more better done in the BBC production such as the insectoid beings found in the mysterious vessel having an ickiness that is strangely absence in the Hammer film. This version is cinematic, but depending on your tastes the sense of improvisation and creativity with the BBC version may appeal more.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Nigel Kneale in the Quatermass adaptation never depicts cryptic ideas or anything metaphysical, so it's not worth discussing this aspect further.

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Personal Opinion:

There are plenty of classic Hammer films I still need to see, but I've been indifferent to many of them. This adaptation does explain my issues why, in how they can be too clean and straightforward for me, lacking the contemplation or detail of other British horror films like The Wicker Man (1973), or the baroque style of European genre films. The first two Quatermass films stand out differently due to their monochrome look and tones, but Quatermass and the Pit is does suffer from these failures. There is a greater sense of mystery to the TV version, despite its technical limitations, in comparison to this much more glossier adaptation.

That said, I still enjoy this version immensely. In either version it's an incredibly engaging and smart sci-fi narrative, one that is creepy in its implications. My nostalgia with the film will never become tarnished now I've revisited it, and if anything the viewing of these Quatermass stories has led me to love the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass as a whole, wanting to investigate any remaining stories. It's also led me to want to investigate Nigel Kneale's other work, such as The Stone Tape (1972), an even better result from my nostalgia trip in how it's meant seeing some intelligent science fiction.