The Quatermass Collection (1955)

Brilliant and touching

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I recently watched this TV serial back-to-back with the Hammer movie version.It was originally broadcast live, but was recorded off monitors using two different systems. One system only recorded alternate scan lines so the image is often of very low resolution. The recording is also marred by light leakage. In one episode there was clearly a fault with one of the TV cameras. As a result, the image quality is highly variable, but is still good enough for an evaluation of this early TV classic.It inevitably suffers from the limitations of live broadcasting, but also looks under-rehearsed. Actors are noticeably missing their marks, fluffing their lines, jumping their cues and freezing into 'meaningful' close-ups before the camera is ready for them. Quatermass and the Pit was also broadcast live but is a much slicker production all round.It was probably too ambitious for its paltry budget. Even without the cost of the BBC contract staff, $20,000 was an impossibly small sum for a three hour drama. In retrospect, the final episode, set in space, was probably a mistake. The asteroid set was just tarpaulins thrown over studio junk - and that is exactly what it looks like. Although the Hammer movie was shot on a tight budget and was only half as long, it still cost ten times as much.All this can be taken for granted. The real issue is which version tells the story best.Of course, they were made for different media, so told the story in a different way. The TV version was structured to gradually draw the audience into an increasingly paranoid world, week by week, building steadily towards its climax. The movie had to grab them immediately and lead them from plot point to plot point as efficiently as possible.This serial was a distinct improvement on The Quatermass Experiment. It had a tighter, more plausible story, more action, less padding and built to a more satisfying climax. But there was room for improvement.It shows signs of having been written very quickly and could have done with a re-write. When Kneale was hired to write the movie version it was an opportunity to rethink aspects of the story. His overlong screenplay was then trimmed by Jimmy Sangster and Val Guest, who brought a fresh eye to the story and introduced further improvements. A comparison of the two versions demonstrates the advantages of this script development process. I give a few examples.In the movie, the problems with the atomic rocket are established with a just couple of lines of dialogue.In the TV version, this takes two complete scenes. Quatermass is checking his rocket because he has heard the sister rocket in Australia has gone into nuclear melt-down. This is then reinforced by a scene where he views footage of the Austalian disaster. However, to allow Robinson time for his costume change, this second scene starts with Paula Quatermass and Pugh discussing the set-back. When Quatermass appears, the scene then simply repeats information we have now already heard twice.In the movie, Quatermass is introduced to Vincent Broadhead, an MP who is already suspicious about the Winnerton Flats project. He gets Quatermass into the food plant, sneaks off to investigate one of the domes and falls into the corrosive 'food'.In the TV version, he merely gets Quatermass into a meeting of the investigation committee. He is then possessed by an alien. This means another character has to be introduced to get Quatermass into the plant and it is he who falls into the food. But he is just a PR man. Why would he go snooping around? The movie version is both more efficient and more plausible.On TV, Quatermass takes a reporter to the workers' village where he gets infected by an alien. Guards turn up to investigate the 'overshot'. Now convinced Quatermass is right, the reporter phones in his story. Spooked by what he says, the workers march on the plant.In the movie, it is someone else who gets infected. The guards turn up while the reporter is telephoning his paper and shoot him. This provides much better motivation for the workers' subsequent attack on the plant.On TV, we first see a farmer possessed by the aliens, then Dillon, a little girl, Broadhead, a Minister, the reporter and, finally, Pugh. These multiple possessions contribute to the growing paranoia, but are mostly irrelevant to the plot.The movie combines the roles of Dillon and Pugh into a single character (Marsh) and omits most of other possessions. They are not really missed.On TV, we have two climaxes: the destruction of the pressure dome, followed by the destruction of the asteroid in the next episode. The movie combines them, inter-cutting between the rocket base and the siege of the control room. The puncturing of the dome releases the aliens and the destruction of the asteroid kills them, making for a neater and more striking conclusion.Overall, therefore, the TV version has the advantage of a more measured build-up of tension and can include plot details I regret were not in the movie, but is more diffuse, more obviously padded and less well plotted. The movie is arguably a bit too efficient, but in the final analysis, it is not only better made, it is better written too.However, I am delighted this TV version is finally available for viewing. It is long overdue. 15 years ago I learnt from a TV programme that it had survived intact and wrote urging the BBC to release it on video. At long last they have.Now, my only regret is that we will never see if Neale's more expansive screenplay for Hammer might have produced an even better movie.

The 1957 film version of "Quatertmass II" was superior to its predecessor, and one can only assume that the serial was too; again, it obviously goes deeper into the various themes than the film does, but it's interesting to see how Kneale was able to compress his own work without losing the essential quality and potency of his concept (we've seen several films which have had large chunks removed from them with the result that one would hardly recognize the original - but it's certainly not the case with the Quatermass series!).All things considered, I guess I prefer the films to the serials for two reasons: one, the fact that the former - even if still done on a low budget - were invariably more polished (given their crisp photography as opposed to the fuzziness of a TV program); the other reason is the essential tautness of the films - the serials don't necessarily feel draggy and are certainly never boring but, watched in one sitting (which, I guess, was never the intention to begin with!), Kneale's gripping and thought-provoking plots could make for a tiresome overall experience!! John Robinson replaced Reginald Tate (who had died in the meantime) as Professor Quatermass; he does a good job at it but, from the three actors who performed the character on TV (I haven't watched John Mills in the final serial, named simply QUATERMASS, from 1979), he's the one who comes closest to Brian Donlevy's interpretation in the first two films and which so dissatisfied Kneale! The cast also features Hugh Griffith as Quatermass' assistant and future stalwart of British horror cinema Rupert Davies as a government official.The fact of these being live broadcasts was betrayed more than anything else during this particular serial by the surprising number of lines flubbed by the actors throughout - chief among them Robinson himself! Besides, even if scenes that were made memorable by the films (which I obviously watched prior to the serials) generate their own tension and excitement on the small screen, the film's ending is preferable to the one presented here - in which Robinson and Griffith are flown into outer space in order to destroy the planet which was attempting to colonize Earth.

I have to passsionately disagree with people who have come onto this page claiming this is the best of the QUATERMASS serials . I`ve not seen the original BBC QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT but both QUATERMASS AND THE PIT and the 1979 ITV serial are far better than this .!!!! POSSIBLE SPOILERS !!!!The script as you would expect from Nigel Kneale is fairly good but far from his best and there is a slight problem watching this in 2004 and that is the basic plot of mankind being infiltrated by pods taking over human beings has been done to death over the years . We`ve seen three versions of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS , alongside THE PUPPET MASTERS , THE INVADERS etc the plot is rather stale now though to be fair the aliens in this are totally apolitical as compared to being communist . Another thing you`ll notice if you`re watching this on a pirate video tape is that the story itself is very episodic ie when character A is killed off after their use to the plot is finished character B is introduced to push the story forward and after they die character C comes along . Obviously people didn`t notice this when the episodes were broadcast in 1955 but it`s strange when Kneale wrote THE PIT he included a radio report in the first episode which ties in with Quatermass`s TV speech in the final scene . Here there`s no such cohesive flourishBut what more or less ruins the serial are the technical aspects . The acting is to put it kindly patchy at best with only Roger Delgado , Rupert Davies and Hugh Griffith putting in any type of convincing performance . John Robinson was cast at very short notice in the title role and it`s painfully obvious he`s not had enough time to learn the lines never mind get into character which does bring the proceedings down and the rest of the cast give either laughably over emphatic performances , are totally wooden or sound like Dick Van Dyke in MARY POPPINS . To be fair no one from a working class background became actors in the 1950s so maybe I shouldn`t criticise a bunch of RADA trained thespians trying to portray the proles but it`s difficult not to notice the manual workers don`t sound like manual workers , and Monica Grey who plays Paula Quatermass gives probably the most annoyingly stagey performance in the serialDirector Rudolph Cartier work is also patchy . When he`s good like in the classic scene where Quatermass looks into an inspection hatch and sees the alien pods hatching he`s excellent but since I`ve complained about the acting the director should bare some blame for that and there`s too many jarring scenes where it`s obvious location film footage cuts to a studio interior , but again because television was a fledgeling media I shouldn`t criticise too much . Alas Cartier`s biggest mistake is as producer where the serial`s climax takes place on an alien asteroid out in space . Considering the show was broadcast live with severe technical limitations it seems a bad idea from the outset on having the climax take place here as the final result shows , and am I alone thinking the Hammer film version took a more sensible approachSorry if I give the impression I disliked QUATERMASS 2 . I don`t but it`s a severe disappointment especially when I consider QUATERMASS AND THE PIT to be the greatest telefantasy series ever broadcast

Unfortunately, at the current time Quatermass II is really only available in bootlegs of varying quality. That's how I saw it, though the copy I found is of pretty good quality considering the rarity of the material. Like most folks, I watched all the movie versions of the Quatermass saga before seeing any of the hard-to-find BBC television serials. The effects are, of course better in the silver screen treatments, but the television serials let a lot more exposition and explanations get out, so things make even more sense and characters and situations get fleshed out in some rather interesting ways...the movie (Enemy From Space) has an unmanned rocket being launched at the aliens, while the serial has Quatermass and a fellow scientist taking the rocket up to face the aliens.John Robinson makes a great Quatermass...very arrogant and domineering, but at the same time you can sense some concern for humanity in the man. He's no quite as good as John Mills in the last installment of the series (The Quatermass Conclusion), but he does make the serial much more enjoyable than the movie (nothing against Brian Donlevy in that particular production).It's also fun to see Roger Delgado (best known as The Master on Doctor Who) in the role of the reporter who comes with Quatermass to the strange little town of Wynnerton Flats.Unless you frequent the newsgroups and video-trading circles, you don't have much chance of finding this little gem...but if you do, remember that it is definitely worth the four hours to watch.