The Quatermass Xperiment [The Creeping Unknown] **** (1955, Brian Donlevy, Jack Warner, Margia Dean, Gordon Jackson) – Classic Movie Review 3,164

Hammer Film Productions’ trail-blazing 1955 British sci-fi horror film The Quatermass Xperiment (US title The Creeping Unknown) is based on Nigel Kneale’s enormously successful 1953 BBC TV serial The Quatermass Experiment.

The 1955 British film The Quatermass Xperiment is notable as Hammer Film Productions’ first venture into horror movies, as Hammer’s first film adapted from a TV drama, and as the first X-certificate movie from a British company. It was a major success, especially in the UK, establishing Hammer’s name worldwide.

Hammer boss Michael Carreras later said: ‘The film that must take all the credit for the whole Hammer series of horror films was really The Quatermass Xperiment.’ The following year, three of the four Hammer films were horror movies: X the Unknown, Quatermass 2 and The Curse of Frankenstein – and the studio became synonymous with horror.

Director Val Guest’s 1955 first spin-off from Nigel Kneale’s highly popular BBC TV serials is a cheaply but carefully made slice of sci-fi horror, in which sole surviving astronaut Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) returns to planet Earth in a rocket that crashes on farmland, with an alien fungus drinking up his lifeblood. Soon his arm grows, reproduces and needs to kill to eat.

Professor Bernard Quatermass has sent a manned rocket ship into space, apparently without official permission, and it returns suddenly and unexpectedly to Earth, surprising and amazing the gawking UK locals, but two of the astronauts are missing and the survivor is desperately ill and unable to communicate.

American star Brian Donlevy unexpectedly plays Professor Bernard Quatermass, the rocketship’s designer, and you don’t expect to find cosy Jack Warner (swapping his TV role as PC Dixon for a Scotland Yard inspector’s job) in a sci-fi film — nor Thora Hird come to that, especially as an old drunk hauled into a police station.

Yet Jack Warner keeps his co-starring role serious enough, bonding effectively with the dismissive and imperious Quatermass, which Brian Donlevy plays commandingly. It’s not Nigel Neale’s Quatermass, but it is a screen-grabbing one. Thora Hird has only one scene, in a comedy relief turn. She does it amusingly well, with Sam Kydd playing the police station sergeant as her straight man, but it’s a relief when it’s over and we can get back to the serious sci-fi horror. Comedy actor Lionel Jeffries also has an effective straight role as puzzled scientist Mr Blake.

Also notable in the cast are Richard Wordsworth as Victor Carroon, making a lot of the suffering monster, David King-Wood as Dr Gordon Briscoe, Maurice Kaufmann as Quatermass’s subordinate Marsh, Harold Lang as creepy Christie, and Jane Asher as the little girl who tangles with the monster in a nice little location sequence. Margia Dean is a weak link as Carroon’s American wife, Mrs Judith Carroon, out of place and off key.

Nigel Neale’s thoughtful original story writing for his 1953 BBC TV serial The Quatermass Experiment may be much changed but it still comes across well in the screenplay by Val Guest and Richard H Landau, while director Guest keeps a tight rein on the movie, filming a fantasy story realistically with plenty of noir-style exterior shooting, notably the zoo footage, thanks to a night shoot at Chessington Zoo (two shillings entry, and one shilling for parking).

The famous climax at Westminster Abbey is most entertaining, even if allowances have to be made for the monster at the top of the scaffolding and the effects. The film is of its time, pioneering and and charming. Visually it is quite a treat, with some very imaginative and stylish cinematography in black and white by Walter Jimmy Harvey, and excellent work on the production designs by J Elder Willis. It is all topped off with a distinguished score by James Bernard that is properly eerie.

The first draft of the screenplay was written by American Richard Landau, speeding the action (the first 30 minutes of the TV version are covered in just two minutes), playing up the horror elements of Kneale’s TV script and demoting Professor Quatermass to a doctor and changing him to more of an action hero than a thoughtful scientist.

The script was then much revised by Val Guest, who cut 30 pages from Landau’s script and enhanced suspense over graphic horror, and tailoring the dialogue to Brian Donlevy’s brusque style.

Donlevy’s no-nonsense portrayal of Quatermass is very different from Reginald Tate’s on TV, annoying Nigel Kneale: “I may have picked Quatermass’s surname out of a phone book, but his first name was carefully chosen: Bernard, after Bernard Lovell, the creator of Jodrell Bank. Pioneer, ultimate questing man. Donlevy played him as a mechanic, a creature with a completely closed mind.’

But Val Guest said: ‘Nigel Kneale was expecting to find Quatermass like he was on television, a sensitive British scientist, not some American stomping around, but to me Donlevy gave it absolute reality. Brian was all right, no problem at all once you kept him sober.’

The film was co-produced by American film producer and distributor Robert L. Lippert, who provided finance and American stars for Hammer’s films and distributed them in the US. Hence American actor Brian Donlevy, whose career was in decline, was brought in by Lippert to play Quatermass to interest for American audiences, and Margia Dean too.

Hammer contacted the BBC on 24 August 1953, two days after the final episode was screened, to seek the film rights, and they sold them for an advance of £500. Kneale was a BBC employee so his scripts were owned by the BBC and he received no payment for the sale of the film rights. Kneale remained bitter.

Also in the cast are David King-Wood, Gordon Jackson, Lionel Jeffries, Harold Lang, Jane Asher, Maurice Kaufmann, Margia Dean, Sam Kydd, Jane Aird, Margaret Anderson, Basil Dignam, Michael Godfrey, Donald Gray, Betty Impey, Arthur Lovegrove, Barry Lowe, Marianne Stone and John Stirling.

Shooting began on 12 October 1954 with a night shoot at Chessington Zoo and continued till December 1954 on a very low budget said to be only £42,000. The low budget hardly shows in the finished product, a huge credit to Val Guest and Hammer Film Productions.

It premièred on 26 August 1955 at the London Pavilion in Piccadilly Circus, with The Eric Winstone Band Show as supporting feature.

It then went on general release in the UK on 20 November in a double bill with the French crime film Rififi, coinciding with the broadcast of the TV sequel Quatermass II.

Runtime: 82 minutes (UK).

X the Unknown (1956) was intended as a sequel but, after objections by Nigel Neale, the eventual actual sequels are Quatermass II (1957) and Quatermass and the Pit (1967).

Shortly after finishing The Quatermass Xperiment, Jack Warner made his first appearance on TV in his iconic role as the title character in Dixon of Dock Green (1955–76).

The cast

The cast are Brian Donlevy as Professor Bernard Quatermass, Richard Wordsworth as Victor Carroon, Jack Warner as Inspector Lomax, David King-Wood as Dr Gordon Briscoe, Margia Dean as Mrs Judith Carroon, Maurice Kaufmann as Marsh, Harold Lang as Christie, Lionel Jeffries as Mr Blake, John Wynn as Detective Sergeant Best, Jane Asher as little girl, Toke Townley as chemist, Bartlett Mullins as zookeeper, Thora Hird as Rosie Wrigley, Sam Kydd as police station sergeant, Gordon Jackson as BBC TV producer, Basil Dignam as Sir Lionel Dean, Marianne Stone as central clinic nurse, Arthur Lovegrove as Sergeant Bromley, Michael Godfrey as fireman, Jane Aird as Mrs Lomax, Margaret Anderson as Maggie, Eric Corrie as Maggie’s boyfriend. Henry Longhurst as Maggie’s father George, Ernest Hare as crash site fire chief, Betty Impey as nurse, Barry Lowe as doctor, Fred Johnson as inspector, Edward Dentith as police constable escorting Rosie, Joe Phelps as policeman, Frank Maher as PC Evans, Guy Standeven as soldier, Philip Johns as TV reporter James Drake as TV technician, Arthur Gross as TV floor director, Frank Phillips as BBC announcer, Harry Brunning as night porter Alf , Mayne Lynton as zoo superintendent.

The Quatermass Xperiment [The Creeping Unknown] is directed by Val Guest, runs 82 minutes, is made by Hammer Film Productions, is released by Exclusive Films (UK) and United Artists (US), is written by Richard H Landau and Val Guest, based on the TV serial The Quatermass Experiment by Nigel Kneale, is shot in black and white by Walter Jimmy Harvey, is produced by Anthony Hinds and Robert P Lippert, is scored by James Bernard, and designed by J Elder Willis.

Margia Dean

American beauty queen and stage and screen actress of royal Greek descent Margia Dean died at her home in Rancho Cucamonga, California, on June 23, 2023, aged 101. She appeared in about 50 films from 1944 to 1964.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3,164

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