REVIEW: QUATERMASS II
REVIEW: RUDOLPH CARTIER [ 1955 ] 189'
REVIEW: B.B.C.
CAST: JOHN ROBINSON, MONICA GREY
CAST: HUGH GRIFFITH, JOHN STONE
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:
WTF-FILMOMETER: THE BIRTHPLACE OF MODERN TELEVISION DRAMA

This review is part of
THE BLOB FAMILY PICNIC B-MOVIE ROUNDTABLE

Two years prior to the production of QUATERMASS II, from July 18th through August 22nd of 1953, the BBC broadcast a weekly serial that took the television-viewing British populace absolutely by storm. Taking in an average audience of 3.9 million viewers per episode (at a time when there were an estimated 4 million in the whole of Britain), THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT was and remains one of the most influential televised dramas ever made. Aside from introducing the world to the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass and completely revolutionizing television production as a whole the serial also brought together famed writer and former-actor Nigel Kneale and Austrian director Rudolph Cartier, who had begun work at the BBC the previous year.

Cartier and Kneale would work together on a number of projects - the most notable of which are the rest of the BBC produced Quatermass serials (the one reviewed here and 1958's QUATERMASS AND THE PIT - 1979's QUATERMASS was produced by Thames Television) and the exquisite BBC teleplay of George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR.

The original THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT was truly revolutionary in its production and is one of the earliest examples of an adult-oriented episodic television drama - it can be seen as an obvious inspiration for everything from DR. WHO to THE X FILES - and, when the BBC commissioned a second series, Kneale and Cartier were all too happy to tread new ground again. Owing its conception entirely to the ITV network's ending of the BBC monopoly on British television that same year, QUATERMASS II would go on to bring in much larger audiences than the previous serial and thrill them with a much wider scope and more keen introspection from writer Kneale on the state of post -war British society.

QUATERMASS II begins with British military training a few new radar operators in the rural countryside. There to track a scheduled jet fly-over, the crew ends up discovering something else entirely. Upon investigating the faint trace of some unidentified falling object, Captain John Dillon finds a concerned elderly woman who leads him to her husband and the falling object. The old farmer, who witnessed the fall, is stooped over the broken remains of what appears to be a meteorite - all he can recall is that it fell out of the sky and that there was a strange smell "like old stables." In spite of orders to make no public record of such findings - orders drawn up after a scare involving such things the previous year - Dillon decides to take the object to be checked out by, who else, but Dr. Quatermass.

The gods seem against Quatermass' various plans for the exploration of space succeeding - fresh off the disastrous consequences of the first manned rocket flight, his latest project has hit a bit of a snag as well. A new nuclear motor devised by him, an important component of the new Quatermass II rocket, ends up causing a runaway nuclear reaction while being tested in Australia - killing the research crew testing it and effectively ending Quatermass' greater plan to colonize the moon. It is into this disconcerting atmosphere of failure that John Dillon, the beloved of Quatermass' daughter Paula, appears with a box full of what he supposes are meteor fragments. The Professor and his assistant Leo Pugh aren't terribly interested in what Dillon has to say until he mentions something against all probability - that three meteors like the one earlier in the day had fallen in the past week in an area scarcely twenty miles across.

Quatermass enlists Dillon's help in going to see the old farmer who saw the object fall - before the two can go, however, Pugh discovers something odd. The meteor, when whole, seems to have been hollow! The old farmer proves to be no help at all - suffering from a chill, he refuses to tell Dillon or Quatermass anything about the mysterious object and, instead, insists that they go away. More luck is had at a nearby pub, where a local drunkard lets it known that roughly a year ago a small and previously unassuming research group seems to have gone quite mad, bulldozed over the entire community of Winnerden Flats, and started the construction of some sort of industrial planet. Intrigued, Quatermass and Dillon head out to investigate.

Upon reaching the area described by the drunkard Quatermass is astonished to discover the construction of what looks very much like his proposed moon base. While driving to get a closer look the two witness the fall of another object, which they rush to find. As luck would have it they find it intact - when Dillon stoops down to pick it up the object cracks open, emitting a mixture of ammonia gas and possibly something more sinister. . .

Following fast in the object's footsteps are a group of armed men in military-esque uniforms - they take Dillon into custody, promising treatment, and order Quatermass to leave the area while he still can. His decision made for him at gunpoint, the Professor begrudgingly wanders off and into the decimated village of Winnerden Flats. There he gets a closer look at the quite ominous industrial site and, unexpectedly, meets up with a tramp (Wilfred Brambell in a small role - most will recognize him more readily as Paul's grandfather in A HARD DAY'S NIGHT [1964]). The tramp relates the sad story of how Winnerden Flats was, for seemingly no reason, wiped off the face of the Earth a year earlier - around the same time of the falling object scare. He also lets it known that work on the industrial site is nearing completion and points Quatermass in the direction of the prefabricated town where the workers reside. With whistles announcing the impending arrival of more of the factory's goons Quatermass scurries off to his car and heads for the prefab town.

His reception there is not a warm one - the local authorities tell him to mind his own business, more or less, and refuse to assist him in finding out what's been done with Dillon. Before he leaves the town he comes across a young girl - ill and seemingly deranged - who possesses the same sort of mark he saw appearing on Dillon's face after coming into contact with whatever was inside the meteoric object. The girl's mother won't allow his questioning and Quatermass leaves the town for good. Back at the laboratory he recounts his failed attempts at seeking official assistance for Dillon and his inability to draw any real information in regards to the enormous industrial plant. When his daughter leaves the room to call the training unit Dillon was stationed with, Pugh reveals to Quatermass the real form of the meteors - hollow craft that seem to have been both intelligently designed and operated. The next day Quatermass heads to London to make an inquiry, wondering whether or not the recent events might be every bit as sinister as those he had dealt with just a few years prior. . .

Trying his luck first with an inspector, the Professor is met with more secrecy in regards to the Winnerden Flats facility and eventually takes his case as far up as he dares: to the government ministry that heads his rocket research. Mr. Fowler, Quatermass' contact in the ministry and a man with whom he's battled to get funding for his extravagant rocket project, is the first to let Quatermass in on what the Winnerden Flats complex is supposed to be doing - a new sort of synthetic food production. What's more, a man by the name of Vincent Broadhead has already begun an inquiry into the workings at the industrial site and Quatermass is allowed to sit in on the commission. There he discovers more men baring the odd mark seen previously on Dillon and the girl and receives odd reactions from his displaying of the plaster cast of one of the fallen objects. Broadhead eventually asks Quatermass to leave him to the commission and the Professor heads back to Fowler to report what he's seen. Alarmed by their inability to get in touch with the members of the commission, Fowler and Quatermass head back to the inquiry room and find Broadhead - now baring the mark as well - before he is taken away by a strange doctor.

Fowler agrees to assist Quatermass in entering the plant and, before long, the two are meeting with Rupert Ward, a man who's job it was to take people for tours in the plant. He seem afflicted with the mark and has no strange reaction to the site of the plaster cast of the fallen object, so Quatermass and Fowler take advantage of his having a pass into the plant and take a tour themselves. Once there they visit the infirmary - where there's no sign of Dillon - and one of the buildings where the "food" itself is produced before being pumped into the enormous domed receiving tanks. While interrogating a worker on the nature of what is being pumped into the tanks, Ward wanders off on his own. Machine gun fire is overheard and Quatermass and Fowler, deciding that it might be best if they leave the plant, head off to find Ward. In the end they do find him, stumbling out of one of the domes and covered in a corrosive black slime - the so-called "food". Quatermass takes some samples as well as a curious object Ward found inside the dome and, along with Fowler, drive out of the plant.

Back at the laboratory it is learned that the slimy "food" is quite poisonous if ingested even in minute quantities - what's more, Pugh thinks he has discovered the source of the fallen objects. Circling Earth in an unusual orbit so as to be constantly out of sight on the dark side of things is an asteroid. The object Ward entrusted to Quatermass turns out to be a man-made device devised for the same purpose as the falling objects - to deliver a minute but undeniably intelligent and sinister alien force into a living host. What's uncovered is the plot by the creatures to take over the Earth and a conspiracy led by the infected that reaches into the very highest levels of government. As industrial sites similar to that in Winnerden Flats are built elsewhere in the world, Quatermass is forced to face off with a malevolent alien force that already has control of much of the world he knows.

QUATERMASS II makes for compelling viewing even now, some 52 years after its original airing on the BBC, and still manages to pack more than a few punches in its three hour running time. As is to be expected, the script provided by Kneale is superb - instead of focusing on the more fantastic aspects of the genre, as many other writers would, Kneale opted to produce scripts that were more science than fiction and that served as allegories for social issues very present in the world around him. Notable in QUATERMASS II is the dark look at post-war industrialization, government corruption at the hands of corporations, and even the arms race - it's no accident that Quatermass' nuclear-motor-turned-bomb goes off in rural Australia, where the British government was testing nuclear weapons of its own. Kneale's view of the world as presented through the early Quatermass serials was so dark and disturbing at times that the BBC saw fit to include public service warnings at the beginning of some episodes notifying children and those with "nervous dispositions" that it may best be left avoided. That much of his scripting, while the science may be outdated, still remains effective to this day is a testament to the work of one of the greatest screenwriters the world has to offer.

This serial, like the first, drew record viewership - while THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT brought in an average of 3.9 million viewers per episode in 1953, QUATERMASS II managed to attract an average of 8.2 million. An increased budget of £7552 - nearly twice the amount of money that was spent on THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT - allowed Cartier and Kneale to imbue the latest Quatermass adventure with a much wider scope. More 35mm pre-filming of special effects and location shooting was possible for this production in comparison to the previous, making QUATERMASS II one of the most ambitious television productions of its time.

QUATERMASS II, like THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT before it and QUATERMASS AND THE PIT in 1958, was, for the most part, recorded live. The telerecording issues that prevented the BBC from being able to archive EXPERIMENT - the production was filmed using television cameras and simultaneously recorded to 35mm stock for storage - had been mostly resolved at that point, allowing the serial to be one of the first ever television productions to be recorded and then re-broadcast later - in this case on the Monday following the original episode's airing. That's certainly not to say that the production is without technical faults - more than a few lines are flubbed in its running time (Winnerden Flats is referred to by a variety of different names throughout, depending on who is talking, including Quatermass calling it "Winnepin Flats" at one point), shadows of crew and equipment not intended to be in the shot are on a number of occasions, and cameras can even be seen sneaking into the edges of some shots.

In spite of all this, QUATERMASS II remains an effective exercise in science fiction storytelling to this very day and is far more worthwhile than much of what is produced for television today. Often overshadowed by the admittedly superior QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, this second outing of the Professor by Kneale and Cartier is still creepy, suspenseful, and amazingly effective for its age. This is hardly the end of the road for the story, however - Kneale's script was bought by Hammer Productions before the serial even began production, leading to a film remake that is, in many ways, superior to the original production. . .