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

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

.
“[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. 
.

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).

.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

.

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.

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.

.

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