Quatermass 2

Dir: Val Guest

1957

**

After the success of 1955's The Quatermass Xperiment the Hammer studios were keen to produce a follow up. They had an idea that was rejected by Quatermass author Nigel Kneale but they decided to make the film anyone, using a different name for the main character. It is clearly a Quatermass film, it's just that the name is different and it was called X the Unknown. It is a much better film that what would become the official sequel to The Quatermass Xperiment, by a country mile in fact. The story progresses at a painfully slow rate, the special effects are shadow compered to the original and X the Unknown and the great Val Guest seems a shadow of his former self. The 'cinema verite' techniques used in the first film just look amateurish and uninteresting in the follow up. While it is said that Guest and Kneale had an amicable working relationship, for me it is clear that not everyone's heart was in it, and all the effort in visual realism is wasted given the film's terrible performances. A story that starts with such mystery and intrigue soon turns into a tale of who could care less and has little of the terror, suspense and sci-fi horror that everyone loved about the first film. I can't help but agree with Nigel Kneale about the choice of Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. He only seems to have one dimension to his performance and by the end of the film you almost wish that the alien plant/blob things had won. Farst forward to 1967 for what I believe is the best incarnation of the character in Quatermass and the Pit.