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The Creeping Unknown / Quatermass Xperiment - (1955 England)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 8:54 pm    Post subject: The Creeping Unknown / Quatermass Xperiment - (1955 England) Reply with quote



Super-scientist Quatermass (the hero of Enemy from Space and Five Million Years to Earth) is portrayed by Brian Donlevy in this British film about an early manned rocket flight which returns to Earth with only one surviving astronaut aboard. No trace is found of the other two astronauts except for their ominously empty spacesuits.

Take note of the early scenes showing the crashed rocket with its nose buried in a field. It looks like a full-sized mockup was used rather than a mere matte painting.



The bloated hand of the surviving astronaut is infected by an alien organism which eventually gobbles him up (ala The Blob).



The resulting creature-with-tentacles is confronted by the Quatermass in Westminster Cathedral during a live TV broadcast. I never knew the creature looked so magnificent until I found this picture of it!



And yet in an amazing reversal to Hollywood norm, the monster on the poster looks absolutely ridiculous! This must a promotional first for filmmakers: the poster sucks, but the monster in the movie is terrific! Shocked

Despite its sincerity, the plot suffers from illogical holes. We never learn why the infected astronaut's behavior alternates between extreme agony and demonic possession, nor do we see anything to indicate that the alien is intelligent. The astronaut is slowly consumed by the organism, but the people he touches are killed almost instantly.

Even though the bodies of the victims are relatively intact, Quatermass states that they were absorbed for food (?). And yet the two missing astronauts were entirely gone.

Director Val Guest relies heavily on dialogue for plot exposition. Donlevy's performance is so dry and unemotional (other than a perpetual grouchiness) that he doesn???t create the kind of interesting character the audience would hope for. In all fairness, however, Donlevy does a better job in Enemy from Space (and so does Andrew Keir in "Five Million Miles to Earth").

The special effects by Les Bowle are effective but too few-and-far-between. The music score by James Bernard does its fair share to promote the eerie mood.

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Brent Gair
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 10:38 pm    Post subject: Re: The Creeping Unknown / Quatermass Xperiment - (1955 Engl Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Director Val Guest relies heavily on dialogue for plot exposition...

That's the curse of post WWII British films up through the mid 1960's.

I assume a lot of it has to do with budget (consider that shooting B&W was also very common for most British films through the 1960's).

The Brits did a LOT of movies based on parlour stage plays that had grand ideas but tiny sets and no budgets. Think of things like DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS to respectable movies like SEPARATE TABLES with Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster. These were stage productions with two or three sets that were adapted for the big screen. Quatermass began as a BBC TV serial so it followed in the British tradition of "stretching" small scale productions to make a theatrical movie.

I have a sizable collection of '50s and '60s British movies and, honestly, sometimes I think I'm just a masochist for buying them. Lots of talking and not a whole lot to watch.


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 1:24 am    Post subject: Re: The Creeping Unknown / Quatermass Xperiment - (1955 Engl Reply with quote

Brent Gair wrote:
Bud Brewster wrote:
Director Val Guest relies heavily on dialogue for plot exposition...

That's the curse of post WWII British films up through the mid 1960's. ... Lots of talking and not a whole lot to watch.

That explains what I'd noticed about them also.

Bud Brewster wrote:
Take note of the early scenes showing the crashed rocket with its nose buried in a field. It looks like a full-sized mockup was used rather than a mere matte painting.

This was a point I had responded to on the old board, which of course was lost in the Great Collapse. There may have been further issues raised as well before I posted my response, as the screen grabs I saved for use in my post seem also suited to a discussion of the use of miniatures.

This view of the rocket is obviously a miniature. There are no actors in the shot. Note that the fuselage is visibly tapered above the ground.



If you examine all the scenes in which actors are moving around in the foreground, you'll notice that the rocket's fuselage is a simple parallel-sided cylinder. It would have been more expensive to build the full size set piece with curved or even tapered sides, like the miniature, than a simple cylinder, let alone with fins, tip pods, and exhaust nozzle. The camera angle is never such that an actor would be interposed between the camera and a fin. The camera never tilts up in these "close-ups" to show the fins. What a waste if they're really there.













It's only when the fins are visible with actors in the foreground that it starts looking like a matte painting above the cylindrical set piece we see in the closer shots. This is the only shot wherein actors are shown in the frame with the entire tail of the rocket.



The lower cylindrical portion seen in the closer shots matches the finish in those shots: a flat light gray with scorch streaks. Up above the region where any actors will appear in the frame the skin of the rocket changes to a shiny finish.

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PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:32 pm    Post subject: Re: The Creeping Unknown / Quatermass Xperiment - (1955 Engl Reply with quote

orzel-w wrote:
The lower cylindrical portion seen in the closer shots matches the finish in those shots: a flat light gray with scorch streaks. Up above the region where any actors will appear in the frame the skin of the rocket changes to a shiny finish.

Great analysis, Wayne!

I concede that it must be a matte shot above the point where the closer shots end at the top of the frame. However, I don't quite see where "the skin of the rocket changes to a shiny finish". Seems pretty consistent all the way up.

More importantly however is the amazing way the real tree is matched up with the matted branches in the top half. That's not a terribly difficult thing to do, I suppose, but they certainly did it well. However, no matter how closely I look, I can't find the dividing line between the set at the bottom half of the frame (with the full-sized prop and real tree) and the matte painting which extends the scene upward for the top half of the shot.

What really baffles me is the way the drifting mist moves slowly from right-to-left and seems to overlap the area which ought to be the matte painting. How is that possible?

Watch the scene closely in the Youtube video at the link below and you'll see that at the 3:40 mark the moving mist in areas that ought to be part of the matte painting seem to indicate that it's all an actual set. The upper part of the drifting mist (on both sides of the rocket) is level with the lower part of the rocket's fins ??? and even in front of the top half of the tree!








Those areas should be part of the static matte painting if this isn't really a full-sized mock up of the rocket behind a real tree. So, how can a drifting cloud of mist that extends from the ground all the way up past the fins on the "matted" part of the rocket also be behind the branches of the "matted" tree limbs that are in front the painted part of the rocket?


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

___________________________________________

Wow, look at this wonderful GIF I found on the Classic Horror Film Board thread for this movie!



I think it reveals how the live-action elements and the matte painting were combined. The entire upper part of the rocket (starting from just below the lowest branch that crosses the fuselage) is a matte painting, along with the tree branches in front of the rocket, too.

But here's the part I didn't realize until I saw this.

All the black area around the upper part of the rocket is clear glass, so the darkness there is just . . . darkness. The fog surrounds the rocket (the full-sized prop and the matted part), and it passes in front of the real tree branches to the left of the rocket.

But we don't actually see the fog in front of the painted branches in front of the rocket's upper half.

Since the lower half of the rocket is real, the fog can be seen drifting in front of it, but it's difficult to see because of the rocket's pale color. However, the frizzling film grain creates the illusion that we can see the fog in front of the rocket even better than we actually can!

So, I concede (again) that Wayne is right about the rocket being part studio set and part matte painting.

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PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 9:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wonder why they didn't make the matte painting match the model. Perhaps the model shots were filmed second?

It is kind of funny, with the rocket sticking out of the ground like a lawn dart.

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PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
It is kind of funny, with the rocket sticking out of the ground like a lawn dart.

Yeah, as dramatic and cool as it looks, the notion that the rocket would plummet down from the sky and go ???

Boy-ya-ya-ya-yooong!

??? into the ground is pretty silly. Very Happy
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 5:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
The fog surrounds the rocket (the full-sized prop and the matted part), and it passes in front of the real tree branches to the left of the rocket.

But we don't actually see the fog in front of the painted branches in front of the rocket's upper half.

In studying that animated sequence I noticed that the matte's painted branches stand out more against the mist in the initial frame(s). I singled out the first frame and increased the contrast to make the slightly darker painted branches stand out more.



The real trees here are now quite a bit lighter than the branches painted on the glass matte. The painted branches extend below the lowest fin, but none extend lower than the forward point of that fin. If you keep staring at the animated sequence 'til you go blind, you'll see the mist is always behind the ends of these painted branches, like Bud says.

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 11:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

__________________________

Another good call, Wayne. Cool

I thought at first that the painted branches began right at the leading edge of the fin, so that only the branches in front of the fins were actually painted. But your description is accurate ??? the artist blended the painted branches with real ones gradually in a zone below the edge of the fin, leaving clear glass around those branches, through which we see the drifting mist.

Because the painting was done on glass, we see the fog pass between the painted branches, but not in front of them. However, we see the fog moving both behind and in front of the real branches, lower down.

Wayne, we really should post our conclusions on the CHFB in the thread that provide us with the gif. The author of that post, Skeleton Knaggs, will be pleased by what we've managed to do with it.


http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/2552/The-Quatermass-Xperiment-1955?page=7#.VrDe0ObnUhI
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 4:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I assume you have to be a member to post. If you would like to repost my stuff there, you're welcome to do so, Bud.
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 27, 2019 3:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

_____________

_____________

THIS IS A HAMMER PRODUCTION, their earliest Horror effort, in a way.

This predates THE BLOB (1958) as one of those creepy alien things from space invading/infecting the Earth. It's a condensed version of the TV BBC production from 1953. This is also the first film in the Quatermass trilogy.

It gets a bit confusing. The Quatermass Xperimentwas renamed The Creeping Unknown for its USA release.

The 2nd film, Quatermass II (1956), was also a film version of a TV BBC production, and it was renamed Enemy From Space in the USA.

The 3rd film was Quatermass and the Pit (1967), but it was renamed Five Million Miles to Earth! Shocked

Like I said. Confusing.



The message of these films, especially in this first one, was that, yes, it's understandable that mankind progresses in its scientific inquiries, such as taking the first steps towards exploration of outer space, but we all better be ready for the inevitable drawbacks or, uh, fallout, so to speak.

At the start of the film, one of our rocketships crashlands to Earth, ending up in a farmer's field. The experiment is over at this early stage of the film. Now begins the negative aspects. Of the 3 astronauts, only one stumbles out of the ship; the other two are mysteriously missing — only their spacesuits remain.

Uh-oh.



The surviving astronaut (Richard Wordsworth) is infected with something. The actor, Wordsworth, gets a lot of praise nowadays and he really creeped me out when I saw this as a kid. (Hey, I guess that's why they renamed it The Creeping Unknown).

He begins to metamorphoses into something else and absorbs other living material. I didn't really get all this when I first watched it at a younger age. He first absorbs a small cactus plant by slamming it with his fist. Thereafter, his hand looks a bit on the monstrous side.


___________

Brian Donlevy plays the scientist Quatermass in this and the 2nd film. Many fans feel he was miscast in the role. They feel Quatermass should have been more open to thoughtful introspection and even some regret over events in the films, despite his scientific bent. Also, Quatermass is supposed to be British and Donlevy was not.

But Donlevy plays him with bulldog determination, never wavering and never showing much personality beyond a plain ornery attitude. In fact, the wife of the doomed astronaut finds Quatermass to be so annoying and obnoxiousthat she defiantly spirits her husband out of the hospital in an act of petulance, causing all the problems in the 2nd half of the film.

Quatermass, as played by Donlevy, has no sympathy for her later, calling her an idiot. Well, he may have had a point; her action was truly irresponsible.

__________

The make-up FX involving the corpses were pretty effective for the fifties, still disturbing tooday. Some of this reminded me of the later Island of Terror (1966).

Things get very creepy in the last 15 minutes, when the audience doesn't really see what the astronaut has changed into. All we see is this trail of slime that indicates 'something' has passed through this way. The reveal at the very end, at Westminster Abbey, is naturally a letdown — think basically The Blob with tentacles.

As always, our imaginations work better in cases like this.

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10

_______________

A much later film, The Astronaut's Wife (1999), is pointed out by most familiar with this film as sort of a remake or rip-off of this older film. I also think of Species II (1998), in that the plot in that one also involved an astronaut coming back infected with something. There are also similarities to The Thing (1982), the John Carpenter version.



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PostPosted: Wed Mar 27, 2019 3:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I've discovered that the reviews by Bogmeister which I like the most are often about the movies I enjoy the least! Confused

He has a way of pointing out the merits I've been missing in these films, or just discussing their faults in a way that's very interesting.

In fact, Bogmeister seems to gravitate towards the less popular, low budget movies — probably because he knows that a great deal has already been written about the true Classics, so he knows he'd have a hard time finding something new to say.

Instead, he takes the path less traveled and winds up giving his readers a fresh perspective on movies that might not have interested them very much over the years.

Man, I sure miss that guy . . . Sad

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Phantom
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 23, 2020 7:03 pm    Post subject: Quatermass Xperiment Reply with quote

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

Based on a British teleplay that riveted audiences to their seats for several nights, this is the movie that put Hammer Films on the map as the heirs to Universal’s horror cycle of the nineteen thirties and forties.

Author Nigel Kneale, writer of the tv series, objected to several elements of this adaptation, especially the casting of American actor Brian Donlevy in the role of Prof. Quatermass and Margia Dean as the wife of Victor Carroon, sole survivor of the expedition into space. American film distributor Robert L. Lippert has suggested them to increase appeal for US audiences, not to mention that he and Dean were having an affair.



While most of the criticism is aimed at Donlevy as an American Quatermass who bulldozes his way through the movie, I find his characterization compelling. This is a man who has engineered the first manned trek into space in what appears to be an operation independent of the British government. It may have required just such an abrasive scientist to pull it off. “Well that’s something to say. Quatermass sent it up and he brought it back down.”



The sole survivor of the flight crawls out of the crashed ship. Note the upside down door. If the nose of the ship is pointing down, shouldn’t the door be in the opposite direction?



Many of the lines in the script justify Donlevy’s brusque performance. “There’s no room for personal feelings in science, Judith.”, “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”



Richard Wordsworth as Victor Carroon delivers a savage performance as a man slowly being consumed by an internal alien force, fully cognizant of what is happening to him, yet rendered mute and able to communicate only through the horror and pain in his eyes and one hand which clenches and unclenches with violent fury.





In the mid nineteen seventies I was watching a documentary on television about infamous psychopaths when a shot of Richard Speck sitting in a chair and looking totally demented appeared. It raised the hair on my head. Speck murdered eight student nurses in 1966 and went to jail for life. The resemblance was uncanny. I found this photo on the internet, although it is not as good as the one I saw in the documentary.





Val Guest, who shares a co-credit on the screenplay, directs the proceedings in semi-documentary style and increases the pace with each succeeding incident. Location shots of the crashed rocket and the police cars and ambulance arriving while crowds rubberneck to see what is happening establish an atmosphere of film noir, in which darkness prevails and even the light of day looks filtered and somber.



A table and microphone and you have a radio station. There is a similar spare radio broadcast in The Incredible Shrinking Man.





Carroon’s encounter with a cactus as he is about to be secreted out of the hospital by a paid helper of his wife



In return for the man’s help, or greed, Carroon offs him in the elevator.



A shocking image for audiences of the 1950’s. There is a similar shot in X, the Unknown and in 1958 they reduced Dracula to dust in The Horror of Dracula.



Carroon’s wife is about to learn that you don’t offer a cigarette to a man who is turning into a violent alien.



Dean is entirely dubbed in the movie, either an indication of her acting abilities or director Val Guest getting back at Lippert for forcing the actress on him. To her credit, she does a great scream.





The movie now kicks into high gear. As the alien seeds within him increase the rapidity of his physical transformation, Carroon becomes more frantic, eventually killing a compassionate pharmacist who tries to help him. This is our first look at Carroon’s mutated hand.



His encounter with a little girl (Jane Asher) at a boat dock is reminiscent of the scene in Frankenstein where Boris Karloff inadvertently drowns a child. Sir Paul probably saw this movie in 1956 and never dreamed that he was looking at his future girlfriend.



Guest wisely refrains from showing us the various phases of Wordsworth’s final transformation, most likely for reasons of budget and the technical difficulties of creating a makeup for each succeeding step. There is a tantalizing glimpse of something nasty in the bushes at the zoo and an appendage leaving a slimy trail along the ground, the kind of creepy stuff that causes audiences to sit up straight and wish they could see more.



How do you trail an alien? Follow the slime.



A bit of comedy to release the tension. That’s Thora Hird as Rosie, local lush, who’s seen something terrible and want’s the police to do something about it.

Policeman: How was it walking, Rosie? Fast or slow?
Rosie: Walking? It was kind of crawling up the wall. (Realizing it isn’t the usual dt’s.) You mean I really saw it this time? (As she faints dead away.)





Two of the atmospheric images in the movie that combines science fiction with a modern detective thriller, as Scotland Yard attempts to track down the monster.

Yard Inspector: What manner of thing do we look for now?
Quatermass: You’ll know it when you see it.



The completely transformed alien has reached Westminster Abbey (don’t ask how) during a television broadcast.



Unfortunately, the revelation of the creature is a disappointment and looks more like the fake vomit that used to be advertised on the back page of comic books. Here it is being cooked with about a zillion volts siphoned from the London electrical grid.



The last image of the scientist who, after all the mayhem, has learned nothing about conscience or compassion.

Quatermass’s assistant: What will you do now?

Quatermass: I’m going to start again.

Over the years there have been reports of people actually dying of fright while watching a horror movie, one man in England supposedly croaking while seeing Lon Chaney in London After Midnight. None of them have proven true.

However…

According to the IMDb trivia page:

The film achieved a degree of notoriety Stateside when in 1956 the parents of Stewart Cohen attempted to sue the Lake Theater and distributors United Artists for negligence after their nine-year-old son died of a ruptured artery in the cinema lobby at a double-bill of this and The Black Sleep (1956). Cohen entered the Guinness Book of Records as the only known case of someone literally dying of fright at a horror film.

Apparently, to get the full effect of The Quatermass Xperiment, you had to see it when you were a child.

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 23, 2020 10:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Brilliant analysis! Thank you Phantom!
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 23, 2020 11:00 pm    Post subject: Re: Quatermass Xperiment Reply with quote

Phantom wrote:

The last image of the scientist who, after all the mayhem, has learned nothing about conscience or compassion.

Quatermass’s assistant: What will you do now?
Quatermass: I’m going to start again.

I see nothing to indicate Quatermass lacks compassion or a conscience. He's only saying that science and the search for knowledge must go on, even at the occasional expense of a human life. That one brief line expresses the same sentiment as the rather windy speech given by Raymond Massey at the end of Things to Come (1936).
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