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Phamtom has treated us to three remarkable reviews which are loaded with interesting info and packed with great images!
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Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

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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Robocop (1987)

Robocop (1987)

Multi-level science fiction that takes place in a future Detroit where a corporation named OCP controls everything in the city, including the police. Crime in the city is at catastrophic levels, the rank and file police officers are on the verge of striking and OCP VP Dick Jones thinks he has the answer in a huge killing machine called ED 209 which will clear a large swath of Detroit and make way for a massive rebuilding project that will make the company zillions.



Peter Weller plays Murphy who has been dumped into the high crime precinct in the midst of the job dispute. Weller’s ambition in life was music and his favorite performer was Miles Davis. After getting a B.A. in Theatre and a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he left his native state of Texas to study with legendary acting coach Uta Hagen. He was also a member of the celebrated Actor’s Studio, under the aegis of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasburg. After a string of successes on stage, he made his movie debut in Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979). Despite a long and prolific career (he is still working), Weller has not achieved first class stardom in feature films. Most of his work has been in the television medium.



Murphy’s new partner is Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen) who has just taken out a violent thug that none of the male officers seem able to control. Allen was the daughter of a police lieutenant from Yonkers, NY. She had trained for a dancing career at the High School of Performing Arts. A high profile actress of the 1980’s, she made her first film appearance with Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973) and was with Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976), after which she married director Brian DePalma. Her last film appearance was in My Apocalypse (2008) before retiring to spend her time with family and friends.



Allen’s bubble gum comment over a tiff about who is going to drive the car.



The formidable ED 209, Dick Jones’s project that will clear crime from the city and provide a lucrative military contract worth millions.



Where there’s smoke there used to be a lot of bullets. During a test of ED 209, the machine blows away a volunteer, putting the project in doubt for the board chairman, known only as The Old Man (Dan O’Herlihy). The man’s body lies on a desk at left while his co-workers react in horror. After the barrage of fire power from the robot, it’s amazing there is enough of a body to view.



“Dick, I’m very disappointed in you.” An understatement if there ever was one.



Opportunist and all around snake Morton (Miguel Ferrer) steps in to offer his own replacement project which, he assures The Old Man, can be up and running within a month. The chastised Jones can only glare in suppressed murderous rage. Ferrer was the son of multi-talented Broadway and screen legend Jose Ferrer and wife, Rosemary Clooney (which made him a cousin of George Clooney). Miguel never rose to the level of his famous father during a career that spanned from 1981 to his death in 2017. Although he worked in an era in which character actors flourished, his unusual, homely features may have prevented him from gaining the mainstream audience that made Hackman and De Niro major stars.



On their first assignment together, Lewis turns out to be dangerously incompetent. In arresting a felon, she makes three mistakes at the onset.

First: she makes herself known as the man is relieving himself instead of waiting for him to finish. This allows him to gain time and consider his options.

Second: she stands too close to him, which puts him in striking distance.

Third: she allows her concentration to wander (you can guess); a completely unprofessional moment for someone who is facing a dangerous criminal.

So, she shouldn’t be surprised when the man belts her off her feet and throws her off the platform.



Murphy is ambushed after first getting the drop on the criminal gang. He is surprised to see the arrival of Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), leader of the gang. Smith is familiar to Star Trek fans, having played three different characters over the run of the series. He originally auditioned for the role of Dick Jones. However, after seeing his performance as the volatile murderer, we can be thankful he was given this part. Smith does excellent work, investing the character with a black sense of humor that adds a dimension to what could otherwise have been a stock-psycho killer. The actor is quoted as saying, “I love playing villains. When you’re a bad guy, you get to do many nasty things. It’s a lot of fun.”



In an earlier scene, while being pursued by Murphy and Lewis, he gets rid of a henchman who has just been shot. “Can you fly, Bobby?” he asks, prior to throwing him out of the back of the truck. It is probably the most remembered line in the movie.



Murphy is assassinated by the gang in a scene so brutal it is difficult to watch. It calls up a similar moment in The Godfather where Sonny is drilled on the freeway. The onslaught is so fierce it is impossible for him to have survived, especially after Boddicker steps up to deliver a coup de grace to the head. He is taken to the hospital where doctors futilely attempt to save him while his dying brain calls up visions of his murder intermingled with memories of his wife and son.



Murphy’s body is turned over to Morton who orders his scientists to savagely cut away what can’t be useful to them and replace the parts with metal, effectively turning Murphy into a cyborg with a set of internal commands that echo Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.



What we see, and Morton doesn’t, is that a fourth directive has been added. Someone has been tampering with his project without his knowledge.



The Robocop costume. I’m not sure what they used in the construction; possibly light plastic. Even so, it must have been a bulky and totally uncomfortable ordeal for Weller who, after being locked into the outfit, was stuck for the day. Boris Karloff once opined that when he was made up in his full Mummy costume by Jack Pierce, they neglected to add a fly. Hopefully, it was discussed with Weller prior to shooting.



On his first mission Murphy encounters an attempted rape. This shot is not typical of Jost Vacano’s camera work or Paul Verhoeven’s direction. Robocop moves ahead at such a breakneck pace, there is almost no time for such artfully stylized images.





The careful destruction/reconstruction of Murphy’s mind into that of Robocop begins to break down when he experiences visions of his murder juxtaposed with memories of his family.



Lewis recognizes her old partner when Robocop twirls his weapon after using it on the firing range. Murphy had done the same trick with his weapon. Encountering him in the corridor, she mentions his name, which triggers his determination to tie all his returning memories together into a cohesive narrative. He uses the police library to find his old address and seek out his family, only to discover that they are gone. In a haunting scene, he wanders his old empty house, images of the family flaring up and almost immediately fading away into the present reality. Of course, actually finding them again in his condition would have been an excruciating disaster.





Murphy stumbles onto one of Boddicker’s henchmen (Paul McCrane) robbing a gas station. McCrane instantly recognizes the man they thought they had killed and blurts out enough of a statement to convict himself of murder and tie him to the Boddicker gang.





Dick Jones, who has been using Boddicker’s organization as his version of Murder Inc., dispatches the assassin to Morton’s home. Had Morton shown even a trace of humor, we might dredge up a modicum of sympathy for him. He had none. So, as the one bad guy in the movie audiences most wanted to see blown to hell, they get their wish.



Murphy invades the cocaine processing plant where Boddicker is doing business. He is backlit in a fog of white powder.





Boddicker incriminates Jones. When Murphy arrives to arrest him, the reason behind Directive 4 becomes clear. Jones has secretly placed a restriction on the cyborg, forbidding it to arrest any member of OCS. Murphy is incapacitated by the directive like Superman collapsing in a kryptonite moment.



Jones sends ED 209 to destroy Murphy. Unable to negotiate the stairs, it ends up in a metallic pile at the bottom of the landing, shrieking like a Banshee in a blender



As a last resort, Jones enlists the police to finish off Murphy. After enduring a withering hail of firepower, he is rescued by Lewis and spirited to an empty factory where he can repair himself.



“You may not like what you are going to see,” he warns her, then proceeds to remove his headgear.



As Lewis reaches out in sympathy, he speaks of his lost family: “I can feel them, but I can’t remember them.” Despite the rapid pace of the movie, Verhoeven finds moments to remind us that the hardcore characters are vulnerable human beings.



Cyborg cuisine. “Will you have the red or the white wine with that, sir?”



The most gruesome image in the movie. In pursuit of Murphy henchman McCrane runs his truck into a tank of toxic waste.





Once again Lewis proves inept. She chases Boddicker until his car overturns, then gets out of her vehicle without first drawing her weapon. Boddicker shoots her, which makes being decked and thrown off a platform seem like a walk in the park. Lewis is a sweet kid but let’s face it, if you want someone to watch your back, look up Lennie Briscoe.



“Murphy, I’m a mess.”



Murphy has his own problems, buried under a ton of steel scrap with Boddicker slamming at him with an iron pipe. Still, he’s optimistic about her chances: “Don’t worry. They can fix you. They can fix anything.”

An interesting idea for a series: Lewis is rebuilt and as Mr. and Mrs. Robocop they raise a family of cyborg children with a family pet…cyborg Lassie. Nick and Nora Charles for the 21st Century, fighting crime while getting blotto on baby food and martinis.







After dispatching Boddicker, Murphy only needs to tie up the final loose end with Dick Jones. This shot doesn’t look a whole lot better in the movie.

Director Verhoeven drives Robocop like a nuclear powered freight train and Basil Poledouris contributes an energetic score with a main theme that sounds like a military march for cyborgs.

Robocop was released at an exciting time for science fiction fans and holds its own among the best of the 1980’s, including, Aliens, The Fly, the Star Wars and Star Trek sequels and the Back to the Future trilogy.
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Tales Of Tomorrow (1951 - 1953)

Tales of Tomorrow

From the Wade Williams dvd release: