HAMMER HORROR WEEKEND: Quatermass and the Pit

In his own quiet way, Professor Bernard Quatermass has proved as durable and reliable a British hero as Sherlock Holmes or James Bond. Created by Nigel Kneale for the BBC drama series ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ in 1953 and played by Reginald Tate, the show was a precursor of ‘Dr Who’ and proved so popular (‘Quatermass’ was to audiences in the ’50s what ‘The X Files’ was in the ’90s) that ‘Quatermass II’ made debuted on television in 1955, the same year that Hammer remade the original series for the big screen – titled ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’ (the misspelling drawing attention to its “adults only” rating) – and this is where the whole issue of casting gets a bit murky.

Tate died a month before ‘Quatermass II’, transmitted like its predecessor as a series of live weekly episodes augmented with pre-recorded footage, was due to air. John Robinson was cast at the last minute, even though he had doubts about filling the shoes of the much-loved Tate. ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’, meanwhile, featured Brian Donlevy in a less-than-charismatic performance as Quatermass. Kneale was scornful of both the actor and the production. Nevertheless, he contributed towards the screenplay of ‘Quatermass 2’, the big-screen adaptation, in 1957. Donlevy reprised the role, again blandly.

Between December 1958 and January 1959, BBC transmitted ‘Quatermass and the Pit’, one of the watershed moments in British television. This time, the lead role was essayed by Andre Morrell, who remains the definitive Quatermass for many viewers. A film version was inevitable, although it didn’t appear until 1967. Andrew Keir was cast, and gives arguably the best characterization of Quatermass after Morrell.

(If five actors over three shows and three filmic remakes isn’t scattershot enough, consider that Kneale resurrected Quatermass in the late ’70s, this time produced by Euston Films – the production company behind ‘The Sweeney’ and shown on rival channel ITV – called simply ‘Quatermass’ and starring John Mills; while ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ was remade for television, and again transmitted live, in 2005 with Jason Flemyng as the professor. Not to mention the theatrical production of ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ staged in a Nottinghamshire quarry in 1997 and starring David Longford.)

Hammer’s ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ is a reasonably faithful take on the series, truncating the original’s three hour running time to 95 minutes, excising an entire subplot and ramping up the apocalyptic finale. It also dispenses with the series’ coda in which the steadfast Quatermass makes an appeal to humankind about … (ah, but that would be telling!) … ending instead on a more ambivalent note.

The plot has the extension to a London Underground line halted at Hobbs End station (John Carpenter used the name as homage in ‘In the Mouth of Madness’) when fossils are discovered. Dr Roney (James Donald) and his team of palaeontologists, including Barbara Judd (Barbara Shelley) work to recover as much as possible despite mounting pressure to get the civil engineering works underway again. When they happen upon something they believe to be an unexpected incendiary device from the war, the bomb disposal squad are deployed. Concerned that the object is formed from a substance that doesn’t correlate to any known German bomb, munitions expert Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) is called in. Breen has just got the nod from the corridors of power to take the reins at Quatermass’s rocket project, the military muscling in on scientific research and pissing the professor off no end in the process.

Tagging along while Breen conducts a reconnaissance, Quatermass bears witness to unusual phenomena at the site. As the bullish Breen goes about his business in clipped military fashion, Quatermass, Roney and Barbara uncover a history of unexplained sightings and superstitions based around Hobbs Lane (from Hob’s, an old English term for the devil). When the hull of the object – now revealed to be a craft – is breached, evidence of extraterrestrial life is recovered. Quatermass makes the find public, much to the approbation of the Prime Minister’s office. The government are quick to issue a rebuttal, preferring Breen’s theory of Nazi propaganda. The site is opened to public viewing, and by the time Quatermass puts the pieces together and realizes how dangerous the implications are, London is plunged into chaos.

Working from Kneale’s screenplay, director Roy Ward Baker builds towards the apocalyptic finale without a wasted line of dialogue of frame of film. ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ is one of the fastest paced Hammer productions I’ve seen. Even scenes consisting solely of expositional dialogue are delivered with palpable intensity. The script juggles superstition, religious hysteria, poltergeist activity, mind control and mob violence and bundles them together in an explanation which is still being used in tentpole sci-fi actioners to this day. (No spoilers, but imagine if the aliens in ‘Independence Day’ had been really cynical about it …)

Hammer’s first two Quatermass films were miscast cash-ins on the show’s popularity. The decade-delayed ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ – benefiting from a low-key directorial approach which makes the apocalyptic finale much more effective (and it’s worth mentioning how much apocalypse Baker gets for his limited budget), as well as a solid cast – is the real deal. The TV incarnation remains the best Quatermass outing (the character has also appeared in radio productions and novelizations), but this is a damn good take on the material.

13 FOR HALLOWEEN #11: Dracula: Prince of Darkness

It wouldn’t be a Halloween countdown without a Hammer production or a vampire movie, would it? Well, whaddaya know folks, it’s two-for-one here at The Agitation of the Fangs Mind.

Terence Fisher’s 1958 adaptation of ‘Dracula’ – Jimmy Sangster’s script making huge diversions from Bram Stoker’s classic novel – was a relatively low-budget affair with stagey sets, functional dialogue and a generally pulpy approach to its material. It was a huge success, mainly due to the charisma of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, both essaying roles which came to define them, and a balls-to-the-wall ending in which Van Helsing, almost overpowered by Dracula, drags a curtain from the wall, the beam of light striking his nemesis, then advances on him holding two candlesticks together in a makeshift crucifix. Iconic stuff!

Despite its popularity with audiences – and despite the fact that Hammer Studios eventually produced nine Dracula titles – it was eight years before Fisher and Lee reteamed for a direct sequel. (There was an in-name-only sequel in 1960, ‘Brides of Dracula’, in which Cushing reprises the Van Helsing role but the Count himself does not appear.) ‘Dracula: Prince of Darkness’ opens with a re-encapsulation of the ending, then jumps ahead ten years. A group of fearful looking villagers are carrying a funeral bier through a forest. The deceased is a woman in her twenties. Her distraught mother is prevented from approaching the girl’s body. One of the villagers readies a wooden stake and hoists a hammer. A shot rings out. The stern figure of Father Sandor (Andrew Keir), rifle in hand, approaches the funeral party and warns that they are about to commit blasphemy. He examines the corpse; there are no bite marks. No evidence of vampirism. He counsels the villagers that the horror is past; that Dracula has been destroyed.

Nonetheless, the next time we encounter Father Sandor he’s conversing with two English couples on the Grand Tour and warning them not to go anywhere near the castle at Carlsbad. He doesn’t give a reason, but for anyone paying attention – ie. those of us who happened to notice that the movie had “Dracula” in the title – it’s painfully obvious.

Nonetheless, our quartet of know-it-all travellers – brothers Alan and Charles Kent (Charles Tingwell and Francis Matthews) and their respective spouses Helen and Diana (Barbara Shelley and Suzan Farmer) – head for Carlsbad only to be forcibly ejected from their carriage at the outskirts of the town by a distinctly agitated driver who refuses, at knifepoint, to go any further. They’re just contemplating the less-than-four-star accommodation presented by a woodshed when a driverless carriage comes pelting out of nowhere and comes to a halt right in front of them. They hop in and Charles takes the reins. The horses won’t respond to his directions, though, and the party wind up at the castle.

This is where the shit hits the fan. Or, more to the point, where the blood dribbles into the sarcophagus.

Fisher does several really commendable things in this film, but makes one huge mistake (and I’m not even counting the plot hole regarding crucifixes and coffins). Kudos where they’re do, so let’s accentuate the positive. Firstly, he plays absolutely fair by the ending of the earlier film. Dracula doesn’t just reappear, or pull some Saturday morning serial deus ex machina; there’s a properly exposited and unhurried build-up to his resurrection. Secondly, for a film that’s not ostensibly adapted from Stoker’s novel a la its predecessor, the sequel is arguably closer in spirit – particularly with regard to the brainwashed Ludwig (Thorley Walters), a stand-in for the novel’s Renfield. Thirdly, the filmmakers pay proper attention to vampire lore, most effectively in the denouement which is one of the few instances in the genre where running water is used against the bloodsucker rather than light, garlic, crucifixes or a stake through the heart.

(It might sound like I’m stating the obvious or preaching to the converted harping on about the running water thing, but you’d be surprised how many vampire movies completely ignore this rule. Think about the boathouse attack in ‘Twilight’ or the swimming bath finale of ‘Let the Right One In’ – the latter particularly annoying because so much attention is paid to the matter of a vampire having to be invited across the threshold. Bear this in mind next time you watch ‘Let the Right One In’ or read the novel. Who invites Ely into the bath-house?)

But I digress. ‘Dracula: Prince of Darkness’ works well on many levels. It’s steadily paced, a slow-burn sense of the inevitable infusing the first half. The finale delivers the goods in proper race-against-the-clock style. The problem is, it’s a good 45 minutes into an 86 minute film before Christopher Lee shows up and, as effective a performance as Philip Latham turns in as the sinister manservant Klove, when the film has “Dracula” in the title as it’s a Hammer production, it’s Christopher Lee in a cape with sharp teeth and eyes like the fires of hell that we want to see.

Nor does the film grace him with any dialogue (according to Lee, the script was so bad he refused to say any of the lines!) This denies us the darkly charming aristocrat of the first film, but works well considering that ‘Dracula: Prince of Darkness’ is about the resurrection of Dracula. The thing that comes back to (un)life thanks to Klove’s machinations is quite simply a feral beast, hissing and primal. If Christopher Lee charms and chills in equal measure in ‘Dracula’, he just plain terrifies here.