Flight to Mars (1951)

As described in detail in my book, as a direct consequence of Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M being smash hits in 1950, the following year 1951 gave birth to among others The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Lost Continent, The Man from Planet X, The Thing from Another World, When Worlds Collide, and Flight to Mars. 

It is Flight to Mars, the second voyage-to-Mars movie of the modern era (Rocketship X-M being the first) that concerns us now. 

Two views of the damaged earth ship undergoing repairs on Mars. Both images are entirely wondrous matte paintings by Irving Block, except at the very bottom where there are several live-action people soft-matted into the paintings (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

 

 

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Marguerite Chapman as Alita.

Summary: The first spaceship to Mars crash lands on the Red Planet and the five- member crew (Commander Jim Barker, newsman Steve Abbott, and scientists Carol Stafford, Dr. Lane, and Prof. Jackson) is met by a contingent of humanoid Martians from a vast and futuristic underground civilization. The crew is welcomed and allowed free access to the entire city, the better to speedily rebuild their rocket for the return to earth. A beautiful woman Martian scientist, Alita, is assigned to help, but she is drawn to one of the earthlings. Unfortunately, the high Martian Council is scheming to use the completed spaceship as the first in a flotilla of ships with which they will attack earth, as Mars is quickly being depleted of the essential life-sustaining element Corium. The Council intends to kill the earth crew, but fortuitously the earthlings are warned by Alita and her engineer father. Unknown to the Council, rocket repairs are completed faster than anticipated, and, with infuriated Martians chasing them, the earthlings take off for home in a nick of time—with Alita and a council-member coming along—she to marry Jim Barker, and he to be a Martian ambassador to Earth.
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The Monogram Cinecolor film (produced by Walter Mirisch early in a career that would give the world The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, and West Side Story) started (on DVD and my first time viewing the film as an adult) and I was pleasantly surprised that the main title sequence was unexpectedly satisfying—not tremendously so, but clearly well thought out with the words “Flight to Mars” originating in the center of a star much as you’d find on a Christmas card and rushing forward as though from infinity in bright red letters, partially outlined in white, to fill the screen with the distinctive 3D blue perspective lines remaining, which give the title a sense of weight and importance.

(courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

The film's beginning includes colorful matte paintings of the Mars-bound rocket still on its launching pad that are exceptionally beautiful, and the several model shots of the rocket blasting off and hurtling through space are an order of magnitude better than one would expect of an extremely low budget movie. 

 

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Unfortunately the shipboard drama is pedestrian, filled with pointless time-filling colloquial banter, an unrequited shipboard romance, the pre-feminism continual denigration of women, and, not one, but two swarms of hurtling meteors.

(courtesy Wade Williams Distribution)

However, as soon as the rocket crashlands on Mars (due to a smashed landing gear), suddenly I was transported into a world of wonder that was totally unexpected and captivating (complete with Mars presciently having a red sky). Perhaps because my only earlier experiences with the film were on a small black and white TV, I was not expecting the glorious saturated colors, the elegantly painted backdrops and breathtakingly rich matte paintings, as well as the clever otherworldly sets, all designed to bolster a colorful story.

No sooner do the astronauts debark their craft than their path intersects with a situation that many take umbrage with. Mark Thomas McGee (in You Won’t Believe Your Eyes! co-authored with R.J. Robertson) and Bill Warren (in Keep Watching the Skies!) describe the problem:

MCGEE: "I was ten years old when I saw Flight to Mars. It was a Saturday matinee and the theater was packed with kids. We all wondered what would the Martians look like. BOOOOOOOOOO! The Martian leader appeared, wearing one of the colorful space suits from Destination Moon, and it was just Morris Ankrum. No makeup, no nothin’. The disappointment was overwhelming and every kid in that audience gave vent."

WARREN: "When I first saw Flight to Mars at the age of nine ... I couldn’t have been more disappointed when the Martians appeared. They are simply human beings, actors wearing the old Destination Moon pressure suits."

The Martian spacesuits in Flight to Mars (right) were the very suits worn by the crew of the previous year’s Destination Moon (left), even down to the diagonal zippers. Only the helmets were changed (both photos courtesy Wade Williams Distribution). Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

 

 

 

 

I admit that the first sight of the human Martians wearing what sure looked like the exact same four colorful spacesuits from Destination Moon was a tad disillusioning, but I quickly bounced back and determined to check for myself. Well, the suits in Flight to Mars are in fact the same suits (see figure above) that were made for Destination Moon with the exception that the actors in Destination Moon wore padding under their suits to approximate their appearance in a vacuum, and the helmets of the Martians have been painted to match the brightly colored suits.

Yet, accepting the Martians as humans on faith really does provide rewards that are boundless. Without that notion of humanness firmly in place it would have been impossible to justify the numerous dazzlingly gorgeous young women with perfect posture purposely gliding around the halls of the underground cities in high heels and micro-mini skirts. This humanness also makes plausible Jim Barker and Alita eloping and rocketing to earth (where, one wonders, how she will bear up under earth’s significantly greater gravity, 62 percent greater than Mars’).

Left to right: Marguerite Chapman; Lucille Barkley, also see lobby card

below; Virginia Huston (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution). Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;
copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

Left: A lobby card. Right: A half-sheet poster (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

Principal actresses are Marguerite Chapman as Alita, (probably a nod to the Queen of Mars in the 1924 USSR silent film Aelita), Lucille Barkley as the two-faced villainess Terris, and Virginia Huston as earth scientist Carol Stafford, who is doing on Mars as the Martians do.

With regard to special visual effects, Flight to Mars, was especially blessed with two of the most versatile, clever, and talented effects artists then in the business, Irving Block and Jack Rabin. According to genre film authority Tom Weaver in his informative essay accompanyin   the Flight to Mars DVD, “Block and Rabin built a sleek model spaceship, equipping it with fuel that ignited to produce the rocket propulsion effect. This model was suspended and manipulated in front of a large transparency backdrop of outer space and the Moon. Block also painted the landscape of valleys and snow-capped mountains that is glimpsed through the spaceship’s porthole before the Martian

crash.... 

The underground city

(courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

The underground city, as viewed at a distance in one scene, was part set and part matte shot. It was enhanced by both cartoon animation (representing a row of moving jet cars) and a live-action rocket vehicle pulled on strings up through the foreground.”

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Now recall from a few paragraphs back that Bill Warren and Mark Thomas McGee expressed their sense of betrayal as children when the Martians appeared and turned out to be ordinary humans in Destination Moon spacesuits. However, those were only instances. Other 10-year-old-boys had other reactions. Case in point, exhibitor and restorer of classic films Wade Williams shares his own experience seeing Flight to Mars for the first time (adapted from his website: www.wadewilliamscollection.com):

Williams: "In the fall of 1951, when I was nine-years-old, I saw a new movie that would change the course of my life forever. The film was called Flight to Mars and it opened my mind to new ideas, new frontiers and the promise of a new and exciting future. I promptly traded in my Hoppy outfit, Roy Rogers six shooters and Gene Autry comics for space helmets, rocket ships and ray guns."

Williams was affected by the film to the degree that, as reported in Starlog magazine number 15, he became:

Starlog: "one of the most dedicated and successful cinematic sleuths ... who makes it his business to save genre films, often just in a nick of time. One of his latest acquisitions is the rarely seen, much talked about Flight to Mars, a 1951 Cinecolor feature which Williams describes as 'close to extinct in theatrical form.'”

One-sheet poster (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

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In my view, seeing the film afresh as an adult (rather than on a 10-inch black and white mid-1950s TV set), it is largely a delight due to costuming, casting, craftsmanship, production design, special visual effects, and a certain earnestness. I enjoyed this film far more than, say, Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds. The colorful nice Image/Corinth/The Wade Williams Collection DVD of Flight to Mars is readily available.

Here is a nice Flight to Mars trailer (YouTube).

Flight to Mars (1951)

USA. Monogram Pictures Corporation. Cinecolor. 1.37:1. 71m.

CREDITS: Director Lesley Selander. Producer Walter Mirisch. Associate Producer Richard Heermance. Screenplay Arthur Strawn. Score Marlin Skiles. Director of Photography Harry Neumann. Production Designer Edward S. Haworth. Editor Richard Heermance. Color Consultants Wilton R. Holm, Clifford D. Shank. Special Photographic Effects Jack Cosgrove, Jack Rabin (uncredited), Irving Block (uncredited).

CAST: Alita Marguerite Chapman. Steve Abbott Cameron Mitchell. Dr. Jim Barker Arthur Franz. Carol Stafford Virginia Huston. Dr. Lane John Litel. Ikron Morris Ankrum. Prof. Jackson Richard Gaines. Terris Lucille Barkley. Tillamar Robert H. Barratt.

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.

Queen of Blood (1966) / Mechte Navstrechu (1963)

Two views of Florence Marly’s eerie performance

as the green alien vampire woman.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;

copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

Soon after the releases of three films in their native Soviet Union, legendary B-movie maestro Roger Corman, along with American International Pictures, gained access to these amazingly well-crafted high-budget science fiction epics—Nebo Zovyot, Planeta Bur, and Mechte Navstrechu. The first two were refashioned into three sci-fi films for American teenagers by some of Corman’s young apprentice filmmakers, including a couple named Coppola and Bogdanovich.

Mechte Navstrechu, however, Corman handed over to apprentice avant garde filmmaker Curtis Harrington along with $35,000 production cash and an eight-day shooting schedule. In fact, Harrington was able to create something of a minor masterpiece, the science fiction horror picture Queen of Blood. He salvaged much of the extremely colorful, almost psychedelically rich, footage from the original, lensed some new shots with American actors, changed the ending of the story, borrowed a few rifts from Forbidden Planet’s tonality score, and assembled Queen of Blood. The color shots from Mechte Navstrechu are exotically gorgeous. Incredible matte paintings and elaborate models and sets were all lit with new concepts in colored lighting.

Queen of Blood is historically important because it partly inspired the creation of the film Alien, along with Planet of Vampires and It! The Terror from Beyond Space.


Queen of Blood (1966)

In Queen of Blood the Earth is at peace and science has advanced. Earth is virtually a utopia. A message is received from another galaxy. Some aliens wish to get to know us better and are sending a ship with their emissaries, but the embassy ship crash lands on Mars. A rescue mission is sent from earth. There is no exposition about the months required to travel from earth and Mars.

Of course, the ship encounters solar flares (it never fails; it’s always either meteors of solar flares that cause havoc), which uses precious fuel that would otherwise be used for Mars landing and take-off maneuvers. The earth crew of three, including Laura James, lands on Mars. They locate the alien spacecraft with one crewmember dead at his post. There had to be others. Where are they? The problem is that they used so much fuel avoiding the solar flares that they don’t have enough to cruise around the planet looking for more alien astronauts.

Queen of Blood opens with a lovingly conceived,

colorful abstract title sequence that may be the

best thing in a generally commendable movie—

as did many of Corman's films whether he made

them himself, as in many of his Edgar Allan 
Poes, or produced them as in this case.

Two earth astronauts, including Allan Brenner, who were not selected for this initial trip, provide chief scientist Basil Rathbone with a plan. They will take a smaller ship to Mars, distribute several reconnaissance satellites in orbit around the planet, land on Phobos, then use their two-passenger rescue craft to go down to the planet to join their fellow astronauts (which Brenner and James are happy about, as they are in love). However, following their landing on Phobos, they must launch the tiny two-man rescue craft in 29 minutes or they will have to wait a week until Phobos and Mars are lined up properly.

When they look out their porthole they see an alien vessel—their alien visitors’ escape pod that had ejected, crashing into Phobos. They search the pod, find an unconscious green female survivor, and get back to their own ship, all within the 29 allotted minutes. Since the small rescue ship is small, one of the astronauts must stay behind. They flip a coin to decide who stays behind to be picked up when the next earth ship arrives in a week. The rescue craft enters the Martian atmosphere and gets lost in a sandstorm, crashing far from the earth ship. Our brave astronaut, Brenner, carries the alien woman for miles through the horrible sand storm. When everyone is together, they take off for Earth.

This German poster for the Soviet Union’s Mechte Navstrechu (1963) focuses on the strength, 
courage and selflessness of a future Soviet astronaut who is risking his life
saving the life of an alien woman (an episode freely adapted for Queen of Blood).
Creative license places the planet Mars behind him when in fact, he is steadfastly
struggling through a whirling red sandstorm on the surface of Mars.

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Where the original film (see below) focused on a friendly first contact between beings from different worlds, Harrington integrates the Russian footage into an outer-space sci-fi horror movie that may well be one of the inspirations for Ridley Scott’s Alien (along with It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Planet of Vampires; Alien seems to channel each of these three movies more or less equally).

The Queen of Blood trailer (YouTube)

When the alien awakens she displays great dislike for needles and for Laura James, the woman in the earth crew. In short order, one of the men winds up dead with his blood drained from his body. Now they understand what the creature is. She’s a vampire with hypnotic powers. She drains another victim dry and is starting on a third when Laura James spots her and they engage in a cat fight, wherein the alien is scratched, all her blood drains out, and she promptly dies. She was a hemophiliac. As they reach home, they discover that the alien has laid her pulsating eggs by the dozens hidden all over the ship, which the scientists are uncommonly excited about and carefully remove from the ship to be studied.

The alien has laid her pulsating

eggs all over the ship.

The new movie holds up well enough as an interesting invasion from Mars movie. I agree with DVD Savant, who says in his review, “The new footage is cleverly designed to match expensive special effects scenes from the Soviet original.... Harrington’s matching is remarkable.” I was again and again impressed with how carefully Harrington’s costumes and settings matched their Soviet equivalents, especially with the spacesuits and helmets so that cutting from the American planet-surface scenes to the Soviet scenes and vice versa were practically seamless, especially since Corman had provided him with only $35,000 and an 8-day shooting schedule.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;

copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

Florence Marly’s eerie performance as the green alien woman is truly creepy, with the assistance of William Condos’ inventive makeup and the green and white beehive hairdo designed by George Spicer, a look that Tim Burton paid loving homage to in his Mars Attacks!, which was noted by DVD Savant.

Mechte Navstrechu (1963)

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;

copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

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In the 1963 Soviet film Mechte Navstrechu the world is a paradise dotted with enormous statues and immense stages. Cosmonaut Andrei and his cosmonaut girl Tanya are lounging on a pier, and Andrei plays a recording of a song to Tanya, who is enchanted by it. The song emanates into space and is heard by the inhabitants of the planet Centuria, who are themselves so enchanted that they send a spacecraft with a crew of two males and one female to earth to investigate the source of such a nice melody. 

Mechte Navstrechu is gorgeous. Its special visual effects, model work, and production design are all top notch for its era. The scenes of the alien Centurian craft—exteriors, interiors, and shots of it wrecked on the Martian surface are as well-rendered and colorful and amazing to watch as anything put on film at the time. The Luna base looks so real, one wishes one could hop on a shuttle and go there. Scenes with people indoors and talking are a bit slow, but the outdoor shots are propped up by amazing matte paintings and other effects shots that convey the Utopian nature of that whole world. This is a rewarding movie to watch.

The Centaurian spacecraft.

The Centurian crew announces their approach to earth, and all the world becomes excited with anticipation. When contact ceases, there is concern, and then one day a space capsule crashes into the sea. The capsule’s message shows that the Centurian spacecraft had crashed onto Mars; then Earth’s nations devise plans to rescue their woebegone visitors. All the plans involve staging the rescue from the Luna spaceport.

Finally, a ship with Tanya aboard takes off, but encounters a solar storm that causes them to use fuel. Unharmed, they land on Mars mere walking distance to the Centurian craft. They find one dead crewman on board, but the remaining two crew that they expect to find are missing. Responding to the crew’s need of assistance, earth send a second crafts with Andrei on board as one of a crew of two to Mars, however it can only land on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, and then they would take a tiny two-man shuttle to the planet’s surface to help with the search.

The crashed Centurian escape pod.

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Arriving at Phobos, they unexpectedly find the Centurian craft’s escape pod with the two missing crew. The male is dead, but the female is barely alive. Naturally the woman needs to be taken to the surface to rendezvous with the earth craft ... but that means one of the two men on the Phobos ship must stay behind and die. Andrei volunteers. His crewmate takes the woman but his shuttle crashes in the middle of a terrible Martian sandstsorm, and he must carry the woman a long distance to the waiting earth ship. He succeeds valiantly, and they all take off to bring the alien woman to earth. Tanya weeps for her lover who has bravely sacrificed himself and is dying on Phobos. Some versions end there, while others end with the entire movie being but a daydream Tanya had while watching the sea from the pier.

The version I watched was dubbed in German, which I don’t speak, and included no English subtitles. The summary just conveyed is a compilation of plot information from various book chapters and articles, most especially the four consecutive data-packed articles by Robert Skotak in Outré magazine, issues 19 through 22, published in 2000. 

Queen of Blood (1966) 
USSR/USA. American International Pictures. C. 1.85:1. 81m. 
CREW: Director Curtis Harrington. Script Curtis Harrington. Producer George Edwards. Associate Producer Stephanie Rothman. Director of Photography Vilis Lapenieks. Editor Leo Shreve. Art Director Al Locatelli. Score Leonard Morand. Set Decorator Leon Smith. Title Sequence Background Paintings John Cline. Makeup William Condos. Hair Stylist George Spicer. Production Manager Gary Kurtz.
CAST: Allan Brenner John Saxon. Dr. Farraday Basil Rathbone. Laura James Judi Meredith. Paul Grant Dennis Hopper. Alien Queen Florence Marly. Anders Brockman Robert Boon. Tony Barrata Don Eitner. 

Mechte Navstrechu (1963) 
U.S.S.R. Odessa Studios. C. 1.85:1. 63m. (alternate titles A Dream Comes True, Begegnung im All, Encounter in Space, Toward Meeting a Dream) 
CREW: Directors Mikhail Koryukov, Otar Koberidge. Script Mikhail Karzhukov, Otar Koberidge. Story A. Berdnik, Ivan Bondin. 
CAST: Andrei Sayenko Boris Borisenko. Tanya Krilova Larisa Gordeichik. 

Formal notice: All images and quotations used in this blog and its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in US copyright law. If any true copyright holder (whether person(s) or organization) wishes an image or quotation to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be complied with as quickly as practical.

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http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-9914-4

Five Million Years to Earth / Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

The title cards of the US (left) and UK versions of the title sequence.

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“[Five Million Years to Earth] is powerful, exciting, and intelligent ... one of the high-water marks of science fiction.... Its formidably taut script is a masterpiece. There are no slow parts, no dragging scenes. Everything crackles with energy ... one of the purest science fiction films ever made.”

—C.J. Henderson in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Films: From 1897 to the Present

"Adapted from his popular BBC-TV serial, Five Million Years to Earth represents author Nigel Kneale’s approach to science fiction in its purest form....  Never before was such an all-encompassing parallel view of the human condition presented in a movie. Hammer and director Roy Ward Baker managed to whip up a satisfying epic on a relative shoestring, the sheer imaginative power of Kneale’s ideas transcending budgetary limitations."

—Gary Gerani in Top 100 Sci-Fi Movies 

My overview book that was published in 2016, Mars in the Movies: A History (see photo right), describes many Mars movies, but only a handful are perfect; 1967's Five Million Years to Earth (known in the UK as Quatermass and the Pit) is one of them. 
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The title sequence of Five Million Years to Earth/Quatermass and the Pit is well done, it being instantly clear that someone thought through how best to condense the film’s themes into the opening few seconds. Kim Newman, in his BFI monograph about the movie, spends a few lines describing the titles. As it is the very rare commentator who ever mentions the titles of any movie in any review or description, I’ll repeat Newman’s words here:

"The words 'Hammer Film Production' appear on a black background. Successive jigsaw-piece cutaways reveal a slightly psychedelic skull. Swirling, infernal images are superimposed on bone—perhaps maps or landscapes—evoking both the red planet Mars and the fires of Hell. Beside this, the title appears in jagged red letters: Quatermass and the Pit (Five Million Years to Earth in the American version)." See top image comparison.

As mentioned by Gary Gerani above, the Hammer Film production Five Million Years to Earth/Quatermass and the Pit was adapted by Nigel Kneale’s from his own popular BBC-TV serial. In England it was known as Quatermass and the Pit. This is because this Hammer Studios film and its two prequels were based on the highly successful, highly popular BBC TV plays broadcast live during the 1950s. These were the Quatermass Experiment (1953), Quatermass II (1955), and Quatermass and the Pit (in six chapters from December 22, 1958, to January 26, 1959). Today we would call this format of programming a miniseries.

So successful were these three miniseries, that Quatermass became an icon in the UK. It is said that businesses closed shop during all three series broadcasts, as the proprietors knew they wouldn’t have any customers because everyone would be home watching television. To this day, the name Quatermass conjures up memories and feelings in the British public that are poignant and thrilling. In fact, it would seem that that would be putting it mildly. Andy Murray in his introduction to his Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale (2006) explains that in 1979 when the fourth installment of the Quatermass saga was first being broadcast in England, his "parents, who'd grown up in the fifties, associated Quatermass with nerve-fraying fear and it was decided it would be too much for my young mind." Not to mention that for the mother of a friend of his, "even today...the mention of the name Quatermass turns her white as a sheet. It's a familiar tale in Britain..."

That said, these Quatermass TV adventures never crossed the Atlantic, neither were they ever spoken of, nor did the name "Quatermass" ever enter American consciousness. In America, Quatermass meant nothing at all. Thus, when the film versions opened in America, they bore totally unrelated titles, The Creeping Unknown, Enemy from Space, and Five Million Years to Earth, respectively.

Unlike the previous two Hammer film adaptions of Kneale's Quatermass teleplays (which he hated), he was quite content with the third film—because he'd written the screenplay himself. As a consequence the two versions are similar despite the TV presentation running two hours longer than the film version.

In short: In Quatermass and the Pit/Five Million Years to Earth we learn that Martians who resemble giant grasshoppers, though long dead, have been influencing the development of humankind through genetic mutation for millions of years and concludes with epic scenes of London being destroyed by vast, nearly occult powers in the form of rampaging lightning-like bursts of paranormal energy focused on a huge glowing alien manifestation made of pure energy  (the giant head of a grasshopper-like Martian, see figure), which is effectively short-circuited by an overhead crane made of steel crashing into its heart. [For A Longer Summary see the end of this post.]

During the climax of both the BBC series and the movie Five Million Years to Earth, a 5-million-year- old Martian spaceship comes to life and emits vast amounts of pure evil energy that form a figure in the sky of “the horned demon,” an image of the grasshopper/insect-like beings who long ago embedded their race memories into the remote ape ancestors of humans, giving rise to the human predisposition for genocide and war, among other inhospitable activities such as telekinesis.

Suggested Further Reading:

Hammer Films: The Elstree Studios Years by Wayne Kinsey (as well as in any number of other volumes about Hammer Films)

BFI’s Quatermass and the Pit by Kim Newman

Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray.

The 2005 Region 2 DVD 3-disc set The Quatermass Collection: A Seminal BBC Sci-Fi Trilogy includes a 48- page booklet that is one of the most comprehensive I’ve encountered (see photo of DVD set above).

Quatermass and the Pit by Nigel Kneale, the 1960 Penquin Books first edition paperback publication of the 1958 teleplay in script format. A second edition of this teleplay was published by Arrow Books in 1979 (cover shown below).

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PRODUCTION CREDITS

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Quatermass and the Pit

UK. BBC. BW. Six chapters from December 22, 1958, to January 26, 1959. 3.5 hr. 

CREW: Director Rudolph Cartier. Teleplay Nigel Kneale. Producer Rudolph Cartier. Score Trevor Duncan. Editor Ian Callaway. Production Designer Clifford Hatts. Special Effects Jack Kine, Bernard Wilkie, Peter Day

CAST: Professor Bernard Quatermass André Morell. Dr. Matthew Roney Cec Linder. Colonel James Breen Anthony Bushell. Captain Potter John Stratton. Barbara Judd Christine Finn. Sergeant Michael Ripper

Five Million Years to Earth (aka Quatermass and the Pit)

UK. Associated British-Pathé Limited, A Seven Arts-Hammer Film Production. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. C. 1.66:1. 1967. 97m.

CREW: Director Roy Ward Baker, Script and Story Nigel Kneale. Producer Anthony Nelson Keys. Score Tristram Cary. Musical Supervisor Philip Martell. Director of Photography Arthur Grant. Supervising Art Director Bernard Robinson. Editor Spencer Reeve. Supervising Editor James Needs. Art Director Ken Ryan. Casting Irene Lamb. Special Effects Bowie Films Ltd.

CAST: Dr. Mathew Roney James Donald. Prof. Bernard Quatermass Andrew Keir. Barbara Judd Barbara Shelley. Colonel Breen Julian Glover. Sladden Duncan Lamont. Captain Potter Bryan Marshall. Minister Edwin Richfield. Police Sergeant Ellis Grant Taylor. Journalist Sheila Steafe 

A longer summary:  In London, at the Hobb’s Lane construction site (building demolition in the BBC version, an Underground extension in the film), news is being made. The digging crew finds, first, a human-like skull with an oversized cranium, then a full skeleton. Anthropologist Dr. Mathew Roney is called in to investigate. His assistant is Barbara Judd. Roney’s excitement is off the charts. One of the volunteers is busy scraping some mud from the same spot where the fossils had been found, and she uncovers something black, smooth, and solid, perhaps a buried pipe. As clay is removed from the object, it becomes less and less likely a pipe. Someone theorizes it may be an unexploded bomb left over from World War II.

We meet Professor Bernard Quatermass in the minister’s office, where he is being told that the funding for his rocket project will be drastically reduced. Gazing out the window is the smug unruffled Colonel Breen, who it turns out is now Quatermass’s boss. At this point a message arrives for Breen asking that he use his ordinance background to help decide what the object in the pit might be. Breen and Quatermass make their way to the pit, and Breen is disturbed by all the archeology folderol and non-military people milling around. When he gets short with Roney, Quatermass reminds him that Roney is the “man of the hour” because of the skull and skeleton making headlines. A bit later, the volunteer calls Roney’s attention to a new skull she’s found buried in the mud. Roney leaps to the skull, marveling how perfectly it’s been preserved. Quatermass asks how old Roney estimates the skull is. “About five million years.” Quatermass continues by asking how could the skull be preserved if it had been in the ground long before the missile struck. Roney answers because it was in ... in ... and then he realizes that the skull was preserved because it was inside the missile. 

Within days, as the reporters start pressing, Roney unveils his educated reconstruction in clay of the ape creatures from the underground, showing enlarged crania. In due course, we learn in rapid succession that Hobb’s Lane was originally named Hob’s Lane, and that Hob was once a nickname for the devil; that homes and buildings in the area had long been abandoned and left to rot because of rumors of strange occurrences; that the spot had long been known for its devilish happenings as Quatermass and Barbara dig deeper through the written records of centuries, always to learn that the spot was “long” associated with evil events. 

A UK half-sheet poster.

Breen has ordered that the possible missile be uncovered. A strange object about the size of a bus comes to light. Also, a large cavity has been discovered in the object; but the cavity represents only half of the interior, the other half being walled up with some smooth material. Drills, even diamond drills, cannot scratch the material. With each passing hour, Breen believes that it is all nothing more than a Nazi hoax, while Quatermass instinctively knows that it is far more. Breen orders a special drill, hoping to pierce the material that divides the object in two. 

The barrier is shattered, revealing several giant green grasshopper carcasses—that are fast dissolving into green pea-soup goo. Roney is able to spray a preservative on the grasshoppers and takes them to his laboratory. Each time we see Roney’s lab, we learn something new. For example, we have learned that Roney is experimenting with a gadget with headsets that is supposed to reveal the past unconscious minds of sensitive humans. Now, we see Quatermass examining one of the grasshoppers with a magnifying glass and tweezers, and he wonders if the creature is a Martian. Roney finds a picture in a journal showing a cave painting similar to the grasshopper beings—a figure of a horned demon.

Roney and Quatermass realize that, yes, the grasshoppers are indeed Martians, that they were struggling to survive on a dying planet, that they decided to do the best they could to survive by proxy, altering primitive apes on earth to mimic their own culture and beliefs; that the plan was carried out; and that the object (a spaceship), creatures, and anthropoid bones discovered in the pit were the remains of a crashed landing five million years before. Breen still believes his hoax idea. Meanwhile a high-voltage electric cable accidentally touches the spaceship, and it comes to life, the entire craft glowing white with pulsing veins, and thumping heart sounds, and all hell breaks out.

It seems that while the Martians had altered a number of anthropoids, there still remained the unaltered variety, meaning that the current human population of earth consists of people who are the product of normal evolution and those that are descendants of the Martian alterations. Due to the energy emanating from the revived spacecraft, the surrogate Martians are gravitating into merciless crowds that are killing the normal humans by telekinesis—a form of the heartless race purging Martians had practiced on their home world. Death and destruction rains over London. Right above the spacecraft, a giant horned being made of pulsing electricity has formed and is the focal point of the energies driving the surrogates to horrifically kill off their neighbors. 

Roney's view as he careens toward the horned demon, riding a huge construction crane to his doom.

Col. Breen has been cooked alive by the powerful energies coming from the buried spacecraft. Exhausted and dirty, Quatermass and Roney feel overwhelmed: It turns out that Roney is all human while Quatermass and Barbara Judd are part Martian. Roney remembers that cold iron is the traditional enemy of the devil. He spots a huge construction crane that is part of the underground project. He climbs to the top and causes it to fall into the giant horned Martian, short circuiting it—while sacrificing himself. Battered and bruised, Quatermass and Barbara catch their breath alone on a deserted but destroyed and flaming street, dimly aware that the horror is over. 

The scenes in the film showing Professor Bernard Quatermass and anthropology asssistant Barbara Judd delving through historical documents further and further back in time made the greatest impression on me. I was stunned by the film. Immediately, I saw eerie similarities to my favorite Arthur C. Clarke novel Childhood's End. In the Kneale film, mankind’s collective unconscious image of the devil is shown to be a remnant memory from the distant past. In Clarke’s novel, contrary-wise, the image of the horned demon has rippled down from the future when the destruction of Earth and the human race is forever associated with an alien race with horns and wings.

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