Quatermass

It's Hammer Time!

It’s Hammer Time!: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

21 September 2012 Natalia Romanova 5 Comments

Time to start a new mini-series: It’s Hammer Time!.

For decades, one of the biggest names in British movie production was Hammer. Famous for horror movies, particularly ones starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, the studios were an integral part of British movie production and starting today, for a limited run, I’m going to be giving you a chance to watch a glorious smattering of them in HD.

We’re going to start with The Quatermass Xperiment, based on the famous BBC serial by Nigel Kneale of the (almost) same name and starring Brian Donlevy as the eponymous Quatermass. In it, the British Rocket Group sends an experimental rocket into space, but when it comes down again, all but one of the astronauts is missing and the surviving astronaut is different somehow. What happened? BRG’s Professor Quatermass is determined to find out.

When first broadcast on the BBC in the early 1950s, the six-part The Quatermass Experiment emptied the streets and changed the face of British television forever. It spawned two BBC follow-up series the same decade – Quatermass II and the jewel in the series’ crown, Quatermass and The Pit – and an ITV series at the end of the 70s called simply Quatermass. BBC4 even remade The Quatermass Experiment as a live broadcast, just as the original had been, starring David Tennant, Adrian Dunbar, Jason Flemyng and Mark Gatiss among others, back in 2005.

Taking advantage of the original series’ notoriety and shocks, in 1955, Hammer took it, condensed it down to a single X-rated movie (hence the slight change of name), gave it an American lead and changed the ending slightly. It was popular enough that Hammer was able to film Quatermass II, again starring Donlevy, a couple of years later, and in 1967, Quatermass and the Pit, starring Andrew Keir. 

But for your delight, here’s the first of those movies, direct from Hammer (yes, it’s still going). I’ve preceding it with Hammer’s own documentary, written by film historian Marcus Hearn. Enjoy!

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The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: 1984 (1954)

13 June 2012 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

People elevated to God-like status logo

Time to induct a new member into the pantheon of blog gods: Nigel Kneale, the god of writing innovation and scary predictions.

Kneale was one of the first TV playwrights and drama writers, famously emptying the streets of Britain with The Quatermass Experiment, a six-part 1953 science-fiction serial that revolutionised television and brought intelligent science-fiction to the masses.

Kneale principally remains famous for the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass, who went on to appear in three further TV series on both the BBC and ITV as well as three Hammer Horror movies, a radio play and 2005 BBC4 remake.

But Kneale was one of television great trailblazers. As well as predicting reality TV in the play, The Year of the Sex Olympics, he also created the idea of the scientific supernatural play for TV with The Stone Tape, in which scientists investigate the supernatural and discover that houses and stone can act as a recording material for events, thus creating ghosts when they ‘play back’ the event – something still described in psychic investigations as the ‘stone tape’ phenomenon.

For this, his many other works and his influence on television and film, Nigel Kneale has been made a blog god. Here’s a lovely documentary to explain in greater detail why he’s so brilliant.

But back in 1954, Kneale managed to empty the streets of Britain a second time, as well as cause questions to be asked in Parliament about the BBC’s moral standards. How? With an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 starring Peter Cushing and future Quatermass André Morrell that was voted one of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century. It’s our Wednesday Play and you can watch it after the jump.

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Friday’s “Paradise Lost lost, Quatermass back?, more Stella and The Café, and Space:2099” news

10 February 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

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Review: The First Men in the Moon

22 October 2010 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

The First Men In The Moon

In the UK: Tuesday, 10pm, BBC4

HG Wells’ The First Men in the Moon is one of Wells’ lesser known sci-fi books. While The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and even The Island of Dr Moreau get remade all the time, The First Men In the Moon had a rather lovely 1964 film adaptation starring Lionel Jeffries and co-written by Nigel Kneale, but that’s been it.

Now, there are few UK TV writers today who are bigger sci-fi fanboys than Mark Gatiss. If he’s not writing Doctor Who, starring in Doctor Who, appearing in documentaries about Doctor Who, presenting documentaries about horror movies, appearing in documentaries about Nigel Kneale, writing Lucifer Box stories that pastiche 19th century fiction, updating Sherlock Holmes, et al, he’s thinking about it. I know he is. I can sense it.

So leave it to Gatiss to not only realise there’s this gap in the HG Wells adaptation record but to fix it by writing a 90 minute TV movie based on the book – and, naturally enough, starring in it.

Now, BBC4 isn’t exactly big budget, so you might be expecting something put together with some local theatre stars, a couple of pieces of string and a bit of papier mache. But The First Men in the Moon follows on from previous low budget, high gloss sci-fi productions, such as The Quatermass Experiment (which also starred Gatiss), A for Andromeda and Parallel Quest, by being very good looking, having a great cast (Rory Kinnear) and some quite extensive CGI, all while staying reasonably faithful to the source material – both the book, and because this is Gatiss, the movie.

It’s just a pity everything was done with such a knowing wink in its eye. Here’s a trailer:

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Liz Shaw's Best Bits

Liz Shaw’s Best Bits: Inferno

15 July 2010 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Liz Shaw in Inferno Elizabeth Shaw in Inferno

It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for. We’re now at the last in our four-part series about the first Jon Pertwee Doctor Who companion, Liz Shaw – probably the best companion the show ever had. A Cambridge scientist with degrees in practically everything, she could have probably have saved the world all by herself: it’s just the Doctor had a few shortcuts that helped out.

Inferno was the only Liz Shaw story that didn’t follow the templates set by the old Quatermass serials, instead pioneering a whole new area of science fiction for Doctor Who – the parallel universe. Yes, if you thought nu-Who with its universe populated by Cybermen and Rose Tyler shagging a half-human Doctor was the first time we’d seen a parallel Earth on Doctor Who, you’d have been wrong.

So get ready not just for Liz Shaw’s Best Bits but also Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw’s Best Bits after the jump, where we’ll also answer the question: were the Doctor and Liz Shaw shagging?

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