Rent Quatermass 2 (1957)

Terrific - Quatermass 2 review by sb

FILM & REVIEW Second in todays Quatermass double bill and as always it’s the superior of the two. This time Donlevy is caught up in a mysterious meteor shower and they all see to land around some kind of top secret plant with numerous armed guards. He is warned off but not before his assistant picks up one of the rocks but it bursts infecting him. Quatermass engages the help of a politician who doesn’t buy the story the plant is making synthetic food for humans but a sight visit goes badly wrong and Quatermass barely escapes with his life. He contacts Scotland Yard but sees some of the same burn marks on the chief commissioner and realises some kind of alien intelligence had infected powerful people to help build and maintain the plant. With the help off sozzeled crime reporter Sid James he returns and with the help of local villagers takes on the menace. It’s works really well as a 50’s sci-fi paranoid thriller with excellent use of the Shell Oil refinery at Stanford standing in for the alien base with sinister gas mask wearing troops adding to the sense of unease. Hammer regular composer James Bernard’s score is full of atonal shrieking violins enhancing this with fine special effects for the time with some quite gruesome undercurrents - terrific stuff - 4/5

Seminal Sci-fi. - Quatermass 2 review by Steve

The sequel to The Quatermass Xperiment gets tangled up in the same snag. In editing a three hour BBC serial to an 80m feature film, it is writer Nigel Kneale's beguiling pseudo-scientific detail which inevitably gets cut, leaving behind a low budget sci-fi concept similar to those produced by Hollywood B studios.

There's a bigger budget than Xperiment and the effects are better, though still rudimentary. But the extra money wasn't spent on the cast, as the ensemble support is quite disappointing. Brian Donlevy is back as the Professor, more of a battering ram than a super-brain, but he actually carries the film pretty well.

The set up is similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which the BBC version predates. An isolated research complex in Cumbria is bombarded with small missiles which house an alien lifeform. These take over a human host and form a compliant hive intelligence. Its reach goes all the way up to the top- a satirical barb from Kneale aimed at the Tory government.

With the official channels suspect, the alien HQ is assaulted by an angry mob waving sticks! The Quatermass films are landmarks in British sci-fi, and this is another engrossing episode, imaginatively directed with limited resources. The release of the monsters from their incubator is a thrilling horror moment. And yes, it's the first ever sequel to be numbered.