Latest news with #Quatermass
Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Aged 11, Quatermass gave me the willies. Now it's even scarier
There's been much attention paid lately to the original Quatermass sci-fi horror series, which went out in the 1950s in black and white on the BBC. And rightly so – they're still scary enough to give you the sweats. But for my two cents, it's the colour 1979 revival by ITV (available to stream on ITVX Premium) that should give us the screaming abdabs today. This big budget mini-series starring John Mills was, along with the first TV screening of Chinatown, a highlight of ITV's re-opening night, after a long strike blacked out the channel for the whole summer. (Other highlights were Crossroads and George & Mildred, so you can't say ITV weren't bringing us the full spread of brow, high to low.) But reviews and ratings were stinking. This was the age of Star Wars in the cinema, and Blake's 7 and Buck Rogers on TV – swashbuckling stuff. Quatermass, which depicts a broken-down dystopian near-future in harrowing, Threads -like detail, was badly out of step. Close Encounters has a similar documentary feel, but its benevolent musical aliens and flattering vision of humanity are the Pollyanna to Quatermass's Greta Thunberg. Like its predecessors, the series was written by Nigel Kneale, a man whose talent was for thinking, 'What's the worst that could happen?' and then trebling it. (He was married to Judith Kerr, creator of Mog and The Tiger Who Came To Tea – never were opposites more attracted.) The reviews slated Quatermass for being a slow downer, and for featuring hippies as a main plot element, which in the age of punk rock made it seem dated. (In fact, Kneale had written the script years before, but the gestation process of television had kept it incubating for a decade.) But Kneale was 46 years too early; this Quatermass is the dystopia for our time. The Britain of Quatermass is beset by blackouts, fraying infrastructure, and the rise of private security in place of a defunct police force. OAP Professor Quatermass himself has retired to the country, and doesn't realise how catastrophically far things have fallen until he enters London at the start. The cities are torn apart by gang warfare – he is brutally mugged in the opening moments, which sets the tone for the whole thing. Television itself is represented by the Tituppy Bumpity Show, a pornographic entertainment for kids complete with furries, dildos and rainbow-bright cut-outs which looks exactly – and I do mean exactly – like an LGBTQ+ event in schools, or one of Channel 4's self-satisfied excursions into 'inclusivity'. And there's a generation gap – well, more of a canyon. We meet a youth cult-cum-protest movement called the Planet People, whose members look exactly – and I do mean exactly – like our own Just Stop Oil/Antifa/Queers for Palestine marchers, though slimmer and cleaner. (Amusingly, both Corrie's Brian Tilsley and Toyah Willcox can be seen among this throng.) The wilful ignorance and smugness of the Planet People – 'Stop trying to know things!' one of them shouts at our hero – are very reminiscent of the recent Glastonbury crowds chanting ' Death, death to the IDF '; though regrettably our real-life modern Planet People aren't scooped up in huge bursts of 'lovely lightning' to be gobbled up at a space buffet. For the drama unfolds to reveal that all the decay and dissolution is not accidental or pointless, as in real life, but the work of an alien intelligence that's harvesting delicious young human meat. The Planet People are following an implanted instinct – they literally are a herd – and the human race is so much pâté de foie gras, nom nom nom. Our civilised periods are just fattening-up exercises, human dignity merely our rations of fodder. The earth is a battery farm. Horror is about tapping into primal human fears, but Kneale was unique. Because he not only does that, but he tells you that's what he's doing, as he is doing it. Quatermass is obviously dated in other ways. We have an old man as the hero, and a white, middle-class old man at that. It's age, experience, Western science and culture – mixed with Jewish ingenuity – that are the only hope of saving the day. Imagine trying to get that past TV execs today – a show with a leading man aged 71 would be unthinkable. As in all Kneale's work, though, female characters are up front. Brenda Fricker, Barbara Kellerman and Margaret Tyzack all play competent, intelligent professionals. Unlike modern TV, this feels perfectly unforced – they're just there. Quatermass, like a lot of 1970s drama, (think of Upstairs Downstairs, I, Claudius, Rock Follies) has an outspokenness, and casually assumes its viewers are intelligent and paying close attention. The production values of these shows are often rotten by our standards (though not in this case – it looks amazing, bar a plasticky stone circle), but they confront very uncomfortable subjects – race, sex, violence – in ways that ours stick flimsy plasters over. Watching when I was aged just 11, Quatermass gave me the willies. The aliens, not so much; it was the bleak future of Britain that shook my infant soul. In the intervening years, I sometimes thought back and chuckled complacently at Nigel Kneale – well, he got that wrong, I worried for nothing. But looking around us in 2025, I'm not so sure. Come, lovely lightning, and drop on us!
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Quatermass 2 review – Hammer turns up the heat in enjoyable alien invader sequel
Here is the 1957 sequel to Hammer's box office smash The Quatermass Xperiment from 1955; it is enjoyable, though the law of diminishing returns is coming into play. Like the first film, it is based on the original BBC drama (the second series, in fact) and Brian Donleavy is back as Quatermass himself: the brusque, unsmiling American rocket scientist working closely with the British government and permanently exasperated with them. Once again, Quatermass finds himself at the centre of a deadly alien attempt to take over Planet Earth. While debating whether or not to fire a nuclear powered rocket up into space, Quatermass comes into contact with a woman whose boyfriend has been injured by what appear to be football-sized meteorites, which his white-coated assistants have been already tracking on their radar scopes. It appears that these sinister rocks are marking the skin of those humans unlucky enough to come into contact with them, the victims becoming brainwashed by the aliens. These aliens have already infiltrated humanity so extensively that there is a top-secret conspiracy at the heart of the government to develop a vast secure facility in the remote English countryside, supposedly to develop synthetic food but really to nurture the invaders. The Shell Haven oil refinery in the Thames estuary doubles as this eerily vast domed complex – some audacious action sequences result – while director Val Guest has at his disposal some classic British character acting talent, with William Franklyn and Bryan Forbes as Quatermass's assistants. The extended shootout at the end accounts for this sequel's bigger budget, although overall it drags a bit. It's good to see Sidney James as the chucklingly inebriated journalist who Quatermass thinks might come in useful to print the truth; sadly, we never find out if his paper ever actually published the sensational story he was dictating down the phone. Quatermass 2 is in UK cinemas from 6 July, and is on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from 14 July.
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Quatermass 2 review – Hammer turns up the heat in enjoyable alien invader sequel
Here is the 1957 sequel to Hammer's box office smash The Quatermass Xperiment from 1955; it is enjoyable, though the law of diminishing returns is coming into play. Like the first film, it is based on the original BBC drama (the second series, in fact) and Brian Donleavy is back as Quatermass himself: the brusque, unsmiling American rocket scientist working closely with the British government and permanently exasperated with them. Once again, Quatermass finds himself at the centre of a deadly alien attempt to take over Planet Earth. While debating whether or not to fire a nuclear powered rocket up into space, Quatermass comes into contact with a woman whose boyfriend has been injured by what appear to be football-sized meteorites, which his white-coated assistants have been already tracking on their radar scopes. It appears that these sinister rocks are marking the skin of those humans unlucky enough to come into contact with them, the victims becoming brainwashed by the aliens. These aliens have already infiltrated humanity so extensively that there is a top-secret conspiracy at the heart of the government to develop a vast secure facility in the remote English countryside, supposedly to develop synthetic food but really to nurture the invaders. The Shell Haven oil refinery in the Thames estuary doubles as this eerily vast domed complex – some audacious action sequences result – while director Val Guest has at his disposal some classic British character acting talent, with William Franklyn and Bryan Forbes as Quatermass's assistants. The extended shootout at the end accounts for this sequel's bigger budget, although overall it drags a bit. It's good to see Sidney James as the chucklingly inebriated journalist whom Quatermass thinks might come in useful to print the truth; sadly, we never find out if his paper ever actually published the sensational story he was dictating down the phone. Quatermass 2 is in UK cinemas from 6 July, and is on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from 14 July.
The Guardian
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Turn Me On to Elevation: the seven best films to watch on TV this week
Joy (Bel Powley) and her partner William (Nick Robinson) live in a closed community run by the faintly sinister Our Friends organisation. All of them take pills that dull the emotions and render them 'quite content' with their grey existences. Then one day Joy doesn't take her dose and all the messy stuff of life descends on her. Michael Tyburski's drama, with its echoes of Severance's surreal mundanity, tells its cautionary tale humorously and smartly. Powley is terrific as a woman struggling to find the words to express her rediscovered sensations, and the obvious moral of having to take the bad feelings with the good isn't imposed on the plot but arises naturally from a tender love story. Saturday 8 February, 7.45am, 6.10pm, Sky Cinema Premiere Strange creatures have invaded the planet, killing 95% of humanity, but they won't go above 8,000ft – which is where, three years later, the few survivors now live. Among them is Anthony Mackie's Will, who has to descend below the line in Colorado's Rocky Mountains to find medicine for his sick son. He's joined on his quest by physicist Nina (Morena Baccarin) who is trying to find a way to kill the armour-plated 'giant murder bugs'. With the end-of-days feel of The Last of Us, George Nolfi's sci-fi thriller is a satisfying actioner, sharp and to the point. Out now, Prime Video We do love a heroic failure in this country, and there's none more so than explorer Robert Scott, who set out to be the first to reach the South Pole but was beaten to it by a smarter man in the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. There's a lot of stiff upper lips and frostbitten toes in Charles Frend's fact-based rendering of the tragic tale, with the great John Mills the epitome of gentility and pluck as his expedition tromp heavily through beautiful Technicolor snowscapes and -40C temperatures towards second place. Sunday 9 February, 1.15pm, BBC Two Hammer's 1967 adaptation of the third of Nigel Kneale's celebrated BBC sci-fi dramas is easily their best, gripping and well-acted with pretty decent special effects. Andrew Keir is a thoughtful but twinkly-eyed Quatermass, a rocket scientist intrigued when work on a Central line extension in London digs up weird prehistoric ape skulls next to an unusual, possibly alien craft. Supported by palaeontologists James Donald and Barbara Shelley and butting heads with Julian Glover's blinkered military type, he uncovers an ancient, malevolent secret. Sunday 9 February, 11.50pm, Sky Arts Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion A landmark in British sci-fi cinema, this stunningly designed 1936 drama, written by HG Wells and directed by William Cameron Menzies, mingles despair at our warlike nature with dreams of a technocratic utopia of unstoppable progress. Spanning 1940 to 2036, it follows the fortunes of Everytown, assailed by conflict and descending into feudalism, until hope arrives in the form of an advanced, aerial global power. A prescient, futurist classic. Monday 10 February, 3.15am, Talking Pictures TV Ruben Östlund's satirical fire turns towards the art world in his provocative 2017 comedy drama. Specifically, it is aimed at Claes Bang's Christian, the preening director of a Stockholm modern art gallery, whose spurious concerns for the world's troubles – expressed through the works he promotes – are exposed as a sham when his wallet is stolen. His attempt to get it back sets in train a conflict between his comfortable bourgeois life and the everyday world of homeless people and immigrants that surrounds him. An easy target, perhaps, but it's still fun to witness the unruly takedown. Thursday 13 February, 12.35am, Film4 It's the film that brought Matthew McConaughey to public attention, but Richard Linklater's effortlessly rewarding 1993 Texas high-school drama is very much an ensemble piece. After their last day of class before summer vacation (to the sounds of Alice Cooper's School's Out), next year's seniors – nerds, stoners, jocks et al – subject next year's freshmen to hazing rituals, while cruising around, flirting, indulging in minor vandalism, getting wasted and worrying about their futures. One of the great teen dramas. Friday 14 February, 7.55am, 11.50pm, Sky Cinema Greats
