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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1950s
    Movies - 1950s Movies - Q 2 Mins Read

    Quatermass II (1957)

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    Hammer’s version of Nigel Kneale’s television series Quatermass II is a potent, low-budget rollercoaster ride through government conspiracies and alien invasions, set against the chilling backdrop of postwar new town paranoia.

    When scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) hears about a shower of strange meteor-like objects that has landed in a local community, his investigations lead him to a sinister top-secret installation. He soon realises this is, in fact, an acclimatisation centre for invaders from another world.

    The plant is run by local labour, under the supervision of officials who have been dehumanised and ‘taken over’ by the unknown forces released from the fallen meteorites.

    Eventually, Quatermass attacks the plant with the aid of the Wynerton Flats locals, enraged after one of their number has been killed by a meteorite. They manage to gain control of the plant and, by increasing the supply of oxygen, exterminate all the invaders.

    Quatermass’s drive through a weird, alienating countryside to a sinister refinery is arguably the first major representation of landscape-based anxiety in a British feature film.

    The film as a whole speaks eloquently of a postwar encroachment of state institutions out into the rural world, and it suggests that for all the narrative’s extraterrestrial shenanigans, it is ultimately human-based forces that are doing this to us.

    quatermass2_031

    Superb direction by Val Guest and stark black-and-white photography by Gerald Gibbs make this British classic one of the best science-fiction allegories of the 1950s.

    quatermass2Professor Quatermass
    Brian Donlevy
    Inspector Lomax
    John Longden
    Jimmy Hall
    Sidney James
    Marsh
    Bryan Forbes
    Brand
    William Franklyn
    Sheila
    Vera Day
    Dawson
    Charles Lloyd Pack
    Broadhead
    Tom Chatto
    The PRO
    John Van Eyssen
    Gorman
    Percy Herbert
    Ernie
    Michael Ripper

    Director
    Val Guest

    Video

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