Quatermass 2 [Enemy from Space] **** (1957, Brian Donlevy, John Longden, Sidney James, Bryan Forbes, Vera Day, William Franklyn) – Classic Movie Review 3,165

Brian Donlevy is back as Professor Bernard Quatermass in the 1957 British sci-fi horror film Quatermass 2, the second in Hammer’s trio of screen versions of Nigel Kneale’s classic 1950s BBC TV serials.

American star Brian Donlevy is back to reprise his sombre performance as the troubled rocket scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass in Quatermass 2 [Enemy from Space], the second in Hammer Film Productions’ trio of screen versions of Nigel Kneale’s classic 1950s BBC TV serials.

This British 1957 sci-fi horror sequel to The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) may be a bit creaky but it is still commendably involving, taut and atmospheric. It is again directed by Val Guest, who also co-scripts with original story-writer and co-screenwriter Kneale.

In the story this time, hundreds of meteorites are landing in the Winnerden Flats area of the UK and are turning people into intelligent zombies, and a vast food plant masquerading as a secret government research station is built. After his Rocket Group staff find the meteorites are showing up on their radar, Quatermass seeks them out to an area where finds a destroyed village and a mysterious factory, which he finally discovers harbours aliens with deadly designs on planet Earth.

As perhaps expected, especially with the TV original compared unfavourably to the first and third serials, Quatermass 2 is dated and sometimes stagy, with some feeble back projections and some static, talky dialogue scenes, and alas the special effects are antediluvian, especially at the climax. But, nevertheless, it is imaginatively written, decently acted and atmospherically filmed – Gerald Gibbs’s stark, moody black and white location cinematography looks extremely impressive. Val Guest goes for realism, using cinema vérité techniques including hand-held cameras and day for night photography, and achieves it in style.

And the film holds up really very well considering its age and film-making era, and basis as the second serial in the first science fiction series written for a British adult TV audience.

Brian Donlevy may not be the ideal Quatermass, not Nigel Kneale’s idea of him or maybe the audience’s, but he is an intense, commanding presence, rather admirable, rushing around determinedly to save the world. Donlevy has a lot of dialogue to utter and he handles it all perfectly. He is the only actor to play the character twice onscreen.

Nigel Kneale claimed Donlevy’s alcoholism challenged the production: ‘He tried to read it and he had to have go after go after go, so crippled with drink he hardly knew who he was.’ But Val Guest recalled: ‘He wasn’t stone cold sober but he was a pro and he knew his lines. By after lunch he would come to me and say “Give me a breakdown of the story so far. Where have I just been before this scene?” We used to feed him black coffee all morning but then we discovered he was lacing it. But he was a very professional actor and very easy to work with.’

Both Chief Inspector Lomax and Rocket Group staff member Marsh return from The Quatermass Xperiment, with John Longden replacing Jack Warner as Lomax and Bryan Forbes replacing Maurice Kaufmann as Marsh, though neither character featured in the BBC version of Quatermass 2 (1955). John Longden is very good value in a serious turn as Quatermass’s kindly Scotland Yard buddy, rock solid with a satisfying lot to do, and Bryan Forbes is good too, young and eager beaver, until his too early disappearance from the story (he does pop up again momentarily at the end). William Franklyn is good too as Rocket Group staff member Brand, and Sid James is amusing as the boozy newsman Jimmy Hall, comedy relief perhaps, but Sid takes it seriously. The vivacious Vera Day seems to have wandered in from another film as party girl Sheila, one of the Hammer-style local yokels, but she too disappears soon enough.

Also in the cast are Hammer regular Michael Ripper as Ernie, Charles Lloyd Pack, Percy Herbert, Edwin Richfield, Tom Chatto, John Van Eyssen, John Rae, Marianne Stone, Jane Aird and Betty Impey.

The BBC allowed Kneale to collaborate with Hammer on the screen adaptation of his TV serial and he wrote the first draft with input from producer Anthony Hinds. But then director Val Guest worked on subsequent drafts, as he had done before on The Quatermass Xperiment. Guest said Kneale’s script had ‘lots of philosophising and very down-to-earth thinking but it was too long, it would not have held screenwise. So, again, I had to tailor it and sharpen it and hopefully not ruin it.’

Filming took place between 28 May 1956 and 13 July 1956. It premièred at the London Pavilion on 24 May1957, and it was released in the UK on June 17, 1957, with the odd choice of Brigitte Bardot supporting feature And God Created Woman, but its success was overshadowed by the success of Hammer’s own The Curse of Frankenstein.

Shooting took place from May 28, 1956 to July 13, 1956.

It was shot at New Elstree Studios, The Waterfront, Elstree, Hertfordshire, England, with location filming at the oil refinery at Shell Haven in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, on the Thames Estuary, which represented the secret Winnerden Flats complex, also used in the BBC serial. Other locations included the new town of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, being built at the time and doubled for the fictional new town of Winnerden Flats.

Val Guest makes extensive and exciting use of both locations, and they are major characters in the film, and a major reason for the film’s success. There is also shooting at Canvey Island, Essex; Chobham Common, Surrey, ; Ivinghoe Beacon, The Ridgeway, Buckinghamshire; Parliament Square, Westminster, London; House of Lords, London and South Downs outside Brighton, East Sussex. There is probably more location shooting than studio work, which is greatly to the film’s advantage, injecting the realism Guest is going for. The studio sets designed by Bernard Robinson are pretty good, considering era and budget, quite well crafted and reasonably spacious, and also used imaginatively by Val Guest and cinematographer Gerald Gibbs.

The whole thing gives off the vibe of painstaking labour of love. It’s an ambitious project and they sure got a lot of value for the budget estimated between £92,000 or £117,731.

Quatermass 2 was released as Enemy from Space in the US and Canada, after changing The Quatermass Xperiment there into The Creeping Unknown.

Followed by Quatermass and the Pit (1967).

Quatermass 2 is the movies first sequel to use just a number after the title. 

The BBFC objected to a scene where a guard from the Winnerden Flats complex murders a family having a picnic, and the scene was cut from the film, even though it exists in the original TV show.

The British science fiction serial Quatermass II was broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955 and survives in its entirety in the BBC archives.

The British science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment broadcast by BBC Television was transmitted live from the BBC’s original television studios at Alexandra Palace in north London during the summer of 1953. But only two of the six half-hour episodes survive in the archives, as the other four were not recorded during their live broadcast.

Bryan Forbes later recalled: ‘I was one of the people attacked by the alien pods. This pod exploded and I ended up with what was supposed to be a terrible alien growth on my face. Come lunchtime and we all went off to the pub. Of course, I couldn’t take this stuff off, the makeup was too complex; the landlord refused to serve me.’

The cast

The cast are Brian Donlevy as Professor Bernard Quatermass, John Longden as Lomax, Sidney James as Jimmy Hall, Bryan Forbes as Marsh, William Franklyn as Brand, Vera Day as Sheila, Charles Lloyd Pack as Dawson, Tom Chatto as Broadhead, John Van Eyssen as the P.R.O., Percy Herbert as Gorman, Michael Ripper as Ernie, John Rae as McLeod, Marianne Stone as secretary, Ronald Wilson as young man, Jane Aird as Mrs McLeod, Betty Impey as Kelly, Lloyd Lamble as Inspector, John Stuart as Commissioner, Gilbert Davis as banker, Joyce Adams as woman MP, Edwin Richfield as Peterson, Barry Lowe as Chris, Jan Holden as Chris’s girlfriend, Howard Williams as Michaels, Philip Baird as lab assistant, Robert Raikes as lab assistant, John Fabian as intern, George Merritt as Superintendent, Arthur Blake as Constable, Michael Balfour as Harry.

Quatermass 2 [Enemy from Space] is directed by Val Guest, runs 85 minutes, is made by Hammer Film Productions, is released by Exclusive Films (UK) and United Artists (US), is written by Nigel Kneale and Val Guest, based on the TV serial Quatermass II by Nigel Kneale, is shot by Gerald Gibbs, is produced by Michael Carreras and Anthony Hinds, scored by James Bernard and John Hollingsworth (conductor), and designed by Bernard Robinson.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3,165

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