The Quatermass Xperiment
UK - 1955. Directed by Val Guest

Long before Hammer Films became one of the most influential film factories in the genre with its sexy Frankenstein and Dracula adaptations, the studio produced low budget thrillers alongside cinematic adaptations of existing British television and radio programmes. Without a substantial success to Hammer’s name, executives James Carreras and Anthony Hinds purchased the film rights for a play written by Nigel Kneale (Professor Quatermass), that culminated in the ground-breaking 1953 BBC teleseries The Quatermass Experiment (directed by Rudolph Cartier) for the studio’s next project.

In the series, Professor Bernard Quatermass’ experimental manned rocket returns with only one crew member onboard. As he tries to unravel the mystery of the two missing astronauts, it becomes apparent that the survivor, Carroon, is infected with an alien organism. Escaping from the hospital, Carroon steadily mutates into a monster, killing anyone who crosses its path. When the show aired, it caused a furore through its infusion of horrific imagery within a science fiction narrative, with viewers responding in a BBC Audience Research Report stating it was that it was “tasteless,” “unpleasant” and “harrowing” viewing.

In an attempt to replicate this response and thereby ensure the film’s commercial success Carreras requested that director Val Guest heighten the horrific elements of Kneale’s story: although the process of condensing a three hour serial into a ninety minute film meant that certain scenes had to be reduced or cut entirely, it also meant that the emphasis could be shifted onto Carroon’s mutation. His transformation is graphic, with his arm mutating into a bloated, pulsating appendage. The camera lingers upon the infection as it does upon the deformed corpses of those Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) has killed to feed the transformation. Guest balances this horror with the tragedy of Carroon’s absorption, making him into a creature similar to Frankenstein’s creation – mute, deformed but painfully human. His final transformation is again shown realistically and given considerable screen time as it attaches itself to the vaulted ceiling of Westminster Cathedral.

Other changes were made, most notably to Quatermass himself (Brian Donlevy). Instead of being the serial’s reflective intellectual, the film presents him as a rational but brutal man of science, headstrong and determined. The ending was also changed into a more cinematic spectacle with Quatermass electrocuting the mutated Carroon – all of which was again shown in graphic detail.Carreras’ plan was to gain the dreaded X Certificate (Adults Only) from the BBFC and then exploit it through the misspelling of the film’s title. The strategy worked and as a consequence The Quatermass Xperiment was one of the first British films to receive the X Certificate. Upon its initial release, the film generated large audience figures in Britain and then repeated this success in the United States, making Xperiment Hammer’s first international success. While the sequel went into production, Hammer attempted to replicate the film’s success with X the Unknown (1956). Again trading on the novelty value of the X certificate, Unknown is similar to Xperiment, featuring a Quatermass-esque scientist tackling a radioactive creature buried deep beneath the Scottish moors.

By ripping itself off, Hammer ironically produced one of the first of Xperiment’s many pretenders. The combination of horror and sci-fi soon became an established subgenre and the idea of a mutating astronaut was “borrowed” in films such as The Hideous Sun Demon (1959), First Man into Space (1959). The Incredible Melting Man (1977), Alien (1979), Event Horizon (1997) and The Astronaut’s Wife (1999). The film and teleseries also had an effect on television, with a number of episodes of the BBC’s Doctor Who expanding upon the basic premise of Quatermass. Similarly, Chris Carter’s The X-Files shares Quatermass’ themes of alien invasion, parasitic life forms infecting humans and governmental agencies whose experiments go awry.

Because Guest chose to shoot the film in black and white and, wherever possible, with a hand-held camera, he created a documentary feel that emphasized both the realism of the narrative and its Gothic pretensions. This approach became the foundation of the Hammer Horror “look” and is somewhat synonymous with the British horror film and still appears in movies such as Hellraiser, 28 Days Later and The Descent.

Perhaps most significant, The Quatermass Xperiment also single-handedly changed the course of Hammer Films, opening the studio up to the potential of horror cinema, and allowed for the classic “Hammer Horrors” to be made, which led to a British horror boom. Perhaps for this contribution alone, Quatermass can be considered to be a very successful experiment indeed.