t was strange enough when workers digging a tunnel near Hob's Lane in England unearthed
a cache of five-million-year-old skeletons. Paleontologist Mathew Roney (Donald) is
convinced they represent a new ancestor, an ape-man with a large cranium.
But then, beyond the remains, they find an even stranger craft buried deep in the clay.
Army bomb experts are called in to investigate, under the command of prickly Colonel Breen (Glover).
Breen is certain the object is a German missile left over from the war.
Professor Bernard Quatermass (Keir) is not so sure. He's puzzled by the
unnatural material the object is made of--and by reports of strange visitations
and noises going back centuries, whenever the ground under Hob's Lane is
disturbed.
Nonetheless, Breen breaks into the object's sealed interior compartment,
revealing large, horned, locust-like arthropods that have been long dead. After
a worker becomes possessed by mad visions, Romey and Quatermass piece
together an alarming theory: These aliens came to Earth to escape doom on
Mars but, unable to live here, they experimented with--and infested--Earth's ape-man
inhabitants. The aliens preserved their race in the minds
of the incipient Earthlings, their evil seed passed down through the ages of
humanity. The theory seems confirmed when Romey's colleague Barbara Judd
(Shelley) experiences visions of Mars, which Romey captures with
mind-monitoring equipment.
Breen, however, sees the artifacts merely as proof of a Nazi wartime plot to
scare Londoners; his opinion holds sway with the government, which opens the site to
the press. As excited reporters crowd into the pit, Quatermass's dire
warnings go unheeded until Miss Judd, drawn to the craft, whispers, "It's
coming alive..."
Five million years of terror
Filmed science fiction generally comes in two flavors: British, which has a unique and
distinctive character, and everything else. British SF relies
heavily on mood, atmosphere and tension, owing as much to Orson Welles as
to H.G. Wells. The emphasis is not on startling visuals but on startling
concepts. A good British science fiction film could almost take place
entirely in a drawing room (and bad ones sometimes do).
Quatermass and the Pit--released in America as Five Million
Years to Earth--is an archetype of the genre. The third and best in
the Hammer Films trilogy of Quatermass films (which were based on
three successful BBC series that aired from 1953 to 1958), Quatermass and the
Pit develops the shocking idea that, far from being in danger of
invasion, Earth was invaded long ago--only it wasn't the planet that was
colonized, it was the minds of humanity. The denouement ends the action but not the
horror of what viewers learn about themselves. As Barbara Judd says, "We are
the Martians now."
This film--and the series called Quatermass and the Pit
that it follows closely--are both excellently written (by Nigel Kneale)
and masterfully evocative. Together they had a profound influence on
British science fiction. For example, Doctor Who soon began
featuring an adversarial Doctor/Brigadier dynamic strongly reminiscent of
Quatermass and Breen.
Quatermass and the Pit is a compelling example of how an innovative
story, strong acting, and powerful directing can obviate the need for
spectacle. After all, science fiction was invented to challenge the mind,
not the eye.
