Quatermass 2

Amidst a James Bernard score sounding more than a little as if Van Helsing were chasing Count Dracula, a lone car is driving down an isolated road at night. The two people inside, a man and a woman, are trying to get help for the man, Chris, who has a strange burn on his face, as he suddenly grabs the steering wheel from the woman driving. Chris guides his car across the road, ditching out on the other side, almost hitting another car that happens to be driven by Professor Quatermass (Brian Donlevy). Quatermass exits his car to check out the other car, ranting as he approaches. Quatermass immediately notices the burn on Chris’ face, something he had never witnessed before. Quatermass finds pieces of stone around his face, as Chris suddenly awakens, gasping for air. Chris unexpectedly tries running from the car, but soon collapses, Quatermass stating he is suffering from shock. The woman and the professor help to get Chris to the car as the opening credits appear, accompanied by a dramatic James Bernard score.

After the credits end, we wind up in Professor Quatermass’ scientific facility, where two men, Marsh (Bryan Forbes) and Brand (William Franklyn), are tracking meteorites entering the atmosphere at a very slow pace. “There are two possibilities, one, the scanner up there could have been hit by lightning. The other … those things were real, and we lost them because they reached the ground,” Brand theorizes.

A car comes driving up to the facility, a rocket ship in the background. Quatermass exits the car and surveys the facility. Soon entering, he asks the two scientists what’s going on. Quatermass is upset that his two best men are pursuing personal projects instead of focusing on the project at hand. Quatermass gives Marsh two rocks to examine, saying they may be meteorites. Brand assumes the professor had a rough day at the Ministry, and Quatermass immediately apologizes for his behavior. “The moon project, may it rest in peace,” Quatermass says, dropping a folder into the trash.

Quatermass and Brand enter a new room which displays a model of the moon project, actually a moon colony. “Trying to justify this to a committee of quite old bureaucrats,” Quatermass gives up on his dream. And then explaining in depth what the project will offer humanity, all of it is now discarded. “You know what they said … To date, you spent a lot of money on a rocket that isn’t even safe to launch. At the moment, we have projects of far more importance… Brand, isn’t it important enough to be the first to build a colony on the moon against all odds?” Quatermass, in disgust, walks out. The Ministry told the professor to go back and figure out the errors where he went wrong, without spending money. Brand asks what the professor said. He said he quit! But he quickly changed his mind and tells Brand he’ll do it their way … for a while. Walking outside, Brand and Quatermass look at the rocket, “One rocket, crewless, untried.” But Quatermass swears he’ll launch a crewless rocket and bring it back safely to Earth a hundred times. Quatermass wants to check out the rocket base, while Brand goes inside, once again seeing slowly falling rocks on the radar screen.

The following morning, Quatermass enters his scientific facility, and Marsh is anxious to tell him about the rocks. Marsh says they all have a definite shape, that they are hollow and symmetric. The men in the lab link Quatermass’ finding Chris with the burned scar on his face, with the falling rocks from the sky. The rocks were falling near a place, Winnerdon Flats, about 90 miles away.

Quatermass and Marsh drive out to Winnerdon Flats to investigate. About five miles from the city, they notice that the road ahead is not marked on the map, and additionally, it is listed here as government property. They ignore the “Keep Out” sign and venture onto the new road as deep bass string music begins to build. Soon, the road ends abruptly with a sign: “Not To Proceed.” As the duo first exits the car to explore and then returns to drive away, several strange, uniformed men appear out of the woods. Quatermass returns to the old road and stops when they see the fully constructed moon colony just off the road. Shattered brickwork lies along the roadside, possibly part of the disappearing Winnerdon Flats.

Released in the U.S. in 1957, paranoia dominated the cinema. Who could be trusted, and who was alien-controlled? A year earlier, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was released, dealing with hive-minded creatures from space that were consuming humanity one person at a time, with seed pods. But their invasion purpose was clear, not so much here. Four years earlier, Invaders from Mars was released, dealing with another type of hive community once again invading Earth, with Mutants. Again, taken one by one, the invaders could be your father or even a neighbor. Who to trust, and who would believe you? Your own backyard was not safe. But Quatermass 2 might be the most intelligent screenplay of them all, because Nigel Kneale was a science fiction beast. His screenplay is perhaps the more adult one, at least tied with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, filled with his vivid imagination. But this is the least known movie of the three, but it deserves further notice.

Looking more closely, they see a barrage of falling meteorites among the scattered brickwork. Suddenly, a loud siren sounds, and the professor wonders if it's meant for Marsh and him. Marsh finds an undisturbed meteorite in a hole. Holding it up near his face, he feels a rumbling and suddenly, the rock scatters, smoke discharges, making him cough. When Quartermass examines further, he discovers the same burn mark on his face that he also saw on Chris earlier. The siren continues as a military-style truck armed with five soldiers and a metal probe is dispatched. Marsh can barely stand, coughing away, as the truck drives toward them. The truck, with other agents in the background, descends on Quatermass and Marsh. The men, armed, scan the ground with their probe. The men who are holding guns on the intruders also bear the same facial burns. They take Marsh away, and when Quatermass attempts to follow, he is butted with a rifle and falls down, the men still saying nothing. Then he is picked up and held arm-in-arm by the men. The professor is led to his car and told to drive away. The first words they say.

Driving to the nearest city, Quatermass asks where he can find the police, and he is told 15 miles away, but the professor asks, there aren’t any local police here, and the woman answers that the Commissioner, the closest thing to police, is located in the Community Center. Quatermass finds the Secretary in the Center and receives a cold response when he asks about the huge facility with the giant dome. The Secretary points out the sign which reads: “Remember, Secrets Mean Sealed Lips.” The Secretary then explains that our people work on this construction project in exchange for agreeing to keep their lips shut. Quatermass then travels to the nearest police department and is told he was trespassing and the guards had the right to arrest your friend. Quatermass, in frustration, walks out.

Driving back to his scientific facility, Quatermass tells Brand he found the area where those so-called meteorites were falling, but Quatermass says they are not meteorites, “but some sort of container. Marsh picked one up, and it burst in his face, ammonium gas and something else. Something alive, I saw it on his face, then it was gone, but the mark was there. And then the guards came and took him away. It was Winnerdon Flats …” Quatermass tells Brand that the moon project was there fully intact “and that the guards took Marsh there. And the mark, it was on their faces too!” Quatermass says he went to the police, “and they won’t act. Tomorrow I’m going to London, taking it to the top level … I think we are on the verge of something ugly!”

Examining the falling objects found at Winnerdon Falls, the professor says, “If an object like that were to approach the Earth’s atmosphere at the correct angle, it might break speed and land relatively slowly. The same principle as rocket defense … Knowledge, mathematics, and precise planning. Intelligence.”

Now in London, Quatermass sees a truck with the same markings as the one from Winnerdon Flats. Quatermass then sees Inspector Lomax, now portrayed by John Longdon, who says, “It has been a while since we met. Last time you brought me more trouble than I’ve known before or since …” Quatermass gets directly to the point, asking, “Inspector, just how much do you know about a place called Winnerdon Flats? What’s going on there? What’s its purpose?” Lomax replies, I thought better of you, spoiling a perfect friendship. You must know as well as I do that Winnerdon Flats is top secret. It’s your little habit to ride roughshod over everything.” Then Quatermass shows Lomax a rock found there.

“When the stone broke up, suppose a bit of it hit Marsh, the mark might have been a cut. That should be harmless enough,” Lomax responds to Quatermass’ story about Chris. Lomax mentions Vincent Broadhead, a member of Parliament, who has been trying to start a public inquiry into Winnerdon Flats. You should talk to him. Quatermass pushes for Lomax to tell him how the plant is used. Lomax responds, “It’s a government project that makes synthetic food.”

Going to the House of Commons, meeting Vincent Broadhead (Tom Chatto), he asks, “All I ask, Mr. Broadhead, is to break beyond this wall of secrecy. Broadhead states that there is a reason for all the secrecy. Broadhead then adds, “ Winnerdon Flats is a big blunder. The biggest blunder was paid for with public money. They’re trying to cover it up.” Quatermass tells him about armed guards arresting sick men. Broadhead states this mess started about two years ago. Broadheads adds they think they will feed the world, but there’s something very wrong going on. “There’s no distribution center set up for this synthetic food, no organization, none,” Broadhead rants, soon letting on that he’s touring the Winnerdon Flats facility later this afternoon.

Suddenly, the P.R.O. (John Van Eyssen, Harker in Horror of Dracula) of the plant appears to tell Broadhead when his tour starts, giving him access via a handwritten note, and Broadhead asks permission to also bring Quatermass along, which he allows. Checking his wristwatch, we see the burned mark on his wrist, telling the men that the tour starts in one hour. Later, we see the visitor’s car is loaded with several people, and they follow the P.R.O.’s car. Soon, they enter the plant faculty and are led to their destination. But Quatermass sees a sign for a Medical Center and breaks away from the crowd to investigate. He invites Broadcast to come along. Soon, the P.R.O. notices that two men are missing from the tour group and inquires if anyone knows where they are. The P.R.O. tells the tour group to wait here and that he will find the missing men.

Quatermass and Broadhead barge into the Medical Center and find it completely empty, no sign of Marsh. The P.R.O. enters the center and gathers up the two strays, herding them back to the others. Once there, one person asks about the enormous domes and is told the food is stored there. Quatermass sees one pipe labelled ammonia, reminding him of the smell of the gas expelled from the stone. When Broadhead wishes to investigate the food facility, he is gently led back to the tourists. But soon on the tour, he goes missing once again. Soon, a silent alarm is triggered, and a metal door closes, but not before Quatermass sneaks inside, allowing him to exit the facility. Quatermass is running around outside, calling out “Broadhead.” Covering a great deal of the facility, atop one dome, Quatermass hears an agonizing scream as a man emerges. The man descends the outside steps of the dome, Broadhead completely covered in burning, corrosive matter. As Broadhead reaches Quatermass, he screams, “Don’t touch me!” Falling to the ground, he says, I had to find out! It burns, this is the food, it burns … Don’t touch me!” and then he lies very still, dead, as sirens sound and vehicles approach. Quatermass runs for his own safety, eluding the facility guards until he drives off in his car, guns blazing toward him.

Quatermass goes directly to Inspector Lomax’s office and asks him how much power he actually wields. Can he call an emergency action on a large scale … “What if I told you what is really being carried out in Winnerdon Flats is the mass destruction of men’s minds.” Quartermass goes on to share that the other people on the tour are being detained and methodically infected with the same infection Marsh received yesterday. “But I do know they’ll come back like hundreds, maybe thousands, having become infected… Vincent Broadhead is dead. I watched him die a few hours ago in that plant, his whole body covered with some kind of corrosive poisoning, eaten away. Some of the black slime got on my coat …” When Quatermass opens the slime, backed by a newspaper, with headlines saying Broadhead has left on a trade mission, which Quatermass calls a lie. He wants Lomax to invade the plant with a squad of men and discover the truth. But Lomax doesn’t have the authority to do that. “Then get your pathologist to analyze that and confirm it,” pointing to the swatch of black slime. “You’ve got to start an investigation!” Quatermass demands.

Lomax, buzzing his superior, says, “It better be true.” Just as Lomax is about to tell the incredible facts to the Supervisor, he sees the burn mark on his hand as music swells. Thinking quickly, Lomax changes his story. Meanwhile, Brand tells Quatermass, “We traced the source of these things. It’s in a freak orbit on the dark side of the Earth in a constant state of eclipse, that’s why it’s invisible. It must be something like an asteroid, about 200 yards across.” Lomax enters the room in a state of shock, asking him to describe the mark on Marsh, which he does. Then Lomax utters, “I’ve just seen it … I’m trying to tell myself that there’s nothing to it, that you’re wrong …” as drunken reporter Jimmy (Sydney James) enters the room unexpectedly, very jovial and anxious to chatter. Lomax quickly escorts him out.

“Quatermass, if you could make it public, put it before the whole country, all at once,” Lomax quickly considers. Quatermass responds, “You mean the press?” while Lomax rushes out to fetch Jimmy back again. “A drunk Jimmy Hall is clever, sober, he’s brilliant!” Lomax declares. Lomax tells Jimmy he’ll get the biggest story he’s ever had in his life. Lomax says we’re going to your base with Jimmy.

At Quatermass’ scientific facility, everything is shown to Jimmy and explained to him. Quatermass explains, “I think it’s a multiple organism, a thousand billion intelligences with one single consciousness. Try to imagine an organism to which oxygen is not an essential to life, but a destroyer. An organism that is unable to exist in our atmosphere for more than 3 or 4 seconds, only in a shell like this, sealed in with a mixture of gases: methane, maybe even hydrogen, and when it breaks out, it dies. Unless its energy is expended on an object that can exist in our atmosphere. A human target. Jimmy asks what happens to the human target? “ An immediate invasion of its entire nervous system. Something is implanted, an instinct, a blind compulsion to act for them.” Jimmy is overwhelmed by this scientific talk and finds it hard to believe. Quatermass continues, “First, a few of these things came here, at random, and scattered and expended themselves to a purpose a year ago, phase number two, a concentrated attack, an out-of-the-way village with a government research plant. One night, that area was taken. Now they got themselves a colony … Who knows how many infected people they have in isolation … we got to break this conspiracy of silence and secret orders!” Quartermass tells Brand to increase security here and then wants to see him in the Control Room.

Quatermass’ men told him their analysis of the black slime on his coat. “I never quite met anything like it before. It’s basically an ammonium corrosive, highly concentrated.” Quatermass reports to Jimmy and Lomax. “That black slime … it’s deadly, kills every living thing on Earth. I think it is food for whatever is in those domes. Domes, 200 feet high!”

Back at Winnerdon Flats, a party is occurring in the Community Center, and Ernie (Michael Ripper) is one of the men behind the bar. After some wild solo dancing, Jimmy, Lomax, and Quatermass enter. The camp secretary recognizes Quatermass and alerts other locals. Jimmy pretends to be looking for a job, but one of the locals tells the Secretary that even the locals are on short time, that the plant is almost fully constructed. As the outsiders are escorted outside, Lomax breaks away and calls for everyone’s attention. “Listen to me, this is vitally important to all of you. Please, may I have your attention? I’m a police officer.” Turning things over to Quatermass, Lomax says everyone here is in great danger. Quartermass reports, “It’s about that place you’ve been working on, helping to build. You think that place is producing human food. It’s not. That plant is producing deadly poison, poison to every earthly creature. I can prove everything I’m saying.” A beer bottle is thrown at Quatermass, and a mob of locals grabs the three strangers, ejecting them from the center.

Suddenly, one of those container rocks bursts through the ceiling, near one lone woman. Another young blond woman, Sheila (Vera Day), approaches the rock. Quatermass and Lomax evacuate the bar. While Quatermass is helping disperse people, the young blonde is now holding the rock. Sheila says, “There it is, it’s still warm.” Quatermass warns her to put it down, as slowly as she can. Putting the container on the floor, it explodes, shattering, emitting gas. The woman screams. And suddenly, the burning mark appears on her chest. Quatermass walks outside, hearing whistling, saying, “They're coming down by the hundreds.”

Jimmy, always the newshound, uses the bar phone to telephone his newspaper. Two trucks from the plant approach, as Lomax and Quatermass hide. Using their sensor to scan the bar grounds, they soon enter the bar in uniforms and helmets, Jimmy still talking to his newspaper. The plant guards scan both the broken container and the unconscious girl. Jimmy huddles behind the bar and continues talking away. As two men notice Jimmy talking on the phone, he is immediately gunned down.

Once Jimmy is shot, Quatermass and Lomas escape in a car and head to the plant, where plant guards fire automatic weapons at them as they speed away. Entering the plant, Quatermass’ car runs over and kills one of the guards. Inspecting his truck, he finds steel canisters of ammonia. Quatermass wants Lomax to return to London and persuade the officials, while he tries to infiltrate the plant. Meanwhile, the town citizens, in the best Universal tradition, armed with sticks, are forming a mob also approaching the plant.

Quatermass dons the dead guard’s uniform and mask, now riding in a truck with many other guards. Many trucks arrive at the plant at the same time, moving inside, as the P.A. barks orders. In this hive society, the guards resemble ants, all doing their collective duty. Old canisters are emptied from the dome slots, and new ones are inserted. Quatermass, the odd duck, is simply roaming around, observing. Quatermass finally looks inside the domes, and amid the mist sees pulsating slime/blob creatures. Finally, the guards notice Quatermass is acting weirdly and all begin to converge upon him, but a message from the P.A., an emergency warning, calls them away. The emergency is that the mob is descending upon the plant's main gate. A guard reports the mob being 150 people or fewer. The mob stops one of the vehicles entering and bashes the men with their sticks, guns firing. Some Winnerdon Flats citizens steal the guard’s weapons and fire at them. The mob continues toward the plant. The plant guards are ordered via the P.A. to shoot to kill!

The mob has infiltrated the plant, being fired at by the plant guards. Mayhem has broken loose. A small surviving group of the mob enters a facility. And above them, guards are ready to ambush them, but Quatermass, behind them, kills them all with his stolen weapon, quickly identifying himself to the others. A member of the mob, who used to work at the plant, says this is the Pressure Control Center where they feed the domes from here. Quatermass inspects a wall of gauges: “Ammonia, methane, hydrogen, oxygen,” Quatermass says, “Watch me [to learn how] cut off the gas supplies completely.” But he wants to turn the oxygen up to full pressure. “Inside those domes are creatures from outside this Earth. I’ve seen them. Thousands of tiny creatures conjoined and expanded … the things are a hundred feet high! And each one can infect a human being! And those wretched creatures you call zombies. Take a look at them, you’ll find the mark!” In other words, when the alien rock shatters, one small creature attaches itself to a human being in order to survive, and the 100-foot slime creature contains thousands of such creatures combined. Thousands are becoming one consciousness.

Quatermass has told Brand to launch a rocket with an atomic bomb to destroy the asteroid, from which the aliens are coming, at midnight. Brand and an associate go to the Control Room to prepare to launch the rocket. On the radio, Brand tells everyone to clear the base for firing. The two men flip switches and turn on gauges, and suddenly, Marsh, hosting a burn scar, leads a squad of armed plant guards into the Control Room. They knock the assistant unconscious and surround Brand, but he breaks through just long enough to get fatally shot, but falls upon the rocket launcher plunger to set the rocket free.

The men force open a weapons cabinet and get several anti-tank guns. Ernie spots a flare crossing the sky, and Quatermass says,” No, it’s not a flare, it’s the one thing that might save us, and humanity.” Quatermass watches as the rocket travels over the starry, dark sky.

The surviving men are waiting inside the Pressure Control Center for the oxygen to start working. Lomax asks what if we were to fire an anti-tank gun into a dome. Quatermass says such a thing would be completely beyond our control. Quatermass hears the latest message over the P.A. and says the oxygen is working. But the plant officials offer to allow anyone to leave safely. Two Winnerdon Flats citizens take up the offer and walk towards the dome, when shortly, there are screams echoing from the pipes in the Control Center. One of the pipes has cracked. Checking the gauge, the pressure has increased significantly, and Quatermass surmises that something is blocking the pipe. From the cracked pipe, blood drips. “They used them to stop the flow of oxygen. That pipe has been blocked with human pulp!”

Just as The Thing from Another World could not depict unspeakable horror, it could not describe it. So the same technique is used in Quatermass 2. Horror that, in the 1950s, could not actually be shown, but like a good horror radio show of the 1940s, could be verbalized. Imagine showing the two citizens being killed, and then the bloody pulp of their mutilated bodies being shown to block the pipes. Horror not shown is generally more effective. Imagination does all the heavy lifting.

One of the men, angered by the death of the two men, uses his weapon to fire at one dome, causing an explosion. Fearing the release of gas, all the men put on gas masks for protection. And emerging from the jagged dome, the 100-foot-tall slime creature crawls and slithers. The creature approaches the Pressure Control Room and breaks open a wall. Quatermass and crew escape outside, one man dead, evading armed guards firing at them. Soon, another man is dead, and the survivors escape into a jeep and speed away. Bursting through a locked gate, sirens sound. From a safe distance, the survivors see three giant slime creatures moving and pulsating amid fire and debris. At that time, the rocket climbs higher in the sky, and then an explosion occurs. And suddenly, the blob creatures collapse and seem to burn in the ever-increasing fire. A huge windstorm occurs and just as suddenly ends, as the men take off their gas masks. Their plant guard prisoner, formerly sporting the scar, is now dazed but mark-free. “The infection must be wearing off, leaving them, perhaps all of them,” Quatermass declares, slightly smiling.

Lomax quips, “You know what worries me, how am I going to make a final report about all of this?” To which Quatermass replies, “What worries me is how final can it be !” As they walk further down the road, the end credits appear.

The natural question to ask is which is the more effective Quatermass movie, Quatermass Xperiment or Quatermass 2? Well, for such low-budget films, it is a very close call. The Internet Movie Database rates Quatermass 2 one decimal point higher, virtually a tie score. But for me, it is an easy decision: Quatermass 2 wins by more than a nose. As stated in my review of Quatermass Xperiment, Hammer did not have the budget to pull off the special effects effectively. Richard Wordsworth as Victor Carroon was masterfully portrayed, granted. But the cactus blob monster did not appear until the final minutes and stayed motionless at Westminster Abbey, his eyes moving slightly. In the movie, multiple people report that the monster is climbing over walls and doing various actions, but it’s never shown. And this isn’t a case of horror being so intense it is unfilmable in 1957. Many sequences cry out to be shown, but they aren’t. The screenplay is pretty obvious and fairly predictable.

Quatermass 2, less known and revered, absolutely surpasses the first Quatermass movie. The screenplay by director Val Guest and Nigel Kneale is multi-layered and complex in the best way. It is far less predictable than the first and is among the first movies to depict an alien invasion of Earth in a complex manner. The paranoia caused by the enemy from space is mysterious and generally unexplained, and the motive thrives on pure suspense. And the way the exploding rocks descending from space are not fully explained until near the end, withholding answers, is one of the strengths of the movie. Nothing exists here in a tidy little box. The movie makes us wait for answers. And it keeps us guessing. And the blob monsters, on screen longer, here move and do a lot more than the cactus blob monster did in the first film.

For a science fiction horror movie, Quatermass 2 is in my top 20 list of all time and deserves to be there. It’s a film I love to see develop slowly and moodily, among its cloak of suspense. Being low-budget, Hammer does a lot with a little. And I consider it a classic.

BROADHEAD DESCENDS FROM A DOME COVERED IN CORROSIVE POISONING

A 100-FOOT BLOB EMERGES FROM THE SCATTERED DOME AND SLITTERS ONWARD.