Linbeymusol
Wonderful character development!
SeeQuant
Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction
Iseerphia
All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.
Stephan Hammond
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
cinemajesty
Movie Review: "Quatermass: Enemy from Space" (1957) From Hammer Studios, Essex, England comes the second movie on the character of Scientist Quatermass, performed with ease and delight by actor Brian Donlevy (1901-1972), who gets directed by Val Guest (1911-2006) through a scenario of village people get burnt-marked out of a mysterious chemical factory plant in the desert. Quatermass, always on tight budget with his own research bureau/laboratory, starts to investigate and uncovers his stolen moon base plans put into reality, where again an extraterrestrial virus dwells to gigantic showdown-bringing proportions.The story-line created by writer/creator Nigel Kneale (1922-2006) may not be very new by the end of the 1950s with Hollywood productions already mass producing since the early days of that decade, yet under the direction of Val Guest, his uplifting professional cast and an impressive utilization of an estimate 100,000.00 Dollar budget making it appearing close to high-end standards in this time period of motion picture history, where this picture can be considered as well-crafted gem under a mass effect in times of excessive science fiction movie supply.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)
Prichards12345
Nigel Kneale's second Quatermass serial is an exciting and fast-moving affair, in which Professor Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) discovers an alien conspiracy at the heart of the British Government. Strange meteors have been arriving from space in unusually large numbers, and our good Rocket Engineer soon discovers they have something inside...The plot has already been recounted very well by other contributors here, so I won't add anything further other than to say Kneale and Director Val Guest superbly condense the t.v. original into a tense and compelling 85 minutes. Donlevy is slightly better this time around then he was in the first movie, and UK viewers can enjoy the sight of Sid James and William Franklyn amongst the cast. Franklyn's character in Dracula A.D. 1972 dies in exactly the same way as he does here!The story, of course, has a slight resemblance to Invasion of The Bodysnatchers; but this appears to be a case of parallel development rather than any borrowing. Kneale's work is often concerned with dehumanisation, and never more so than here. The monsters at the end are a bit comical, and Kneale and Guest probably wisely omitted the outer space sequence from the original t.v. show - Hammer's special effects (and budget) would have struggled to depict this convincingly.Although Hammer would wait a decade to film the third Kneale Quatermass opus, in many ways the best was yet to come...
vkorchnoifan
I hope that some producer out there will remake this excellent British SF film. The Quatermass films are one of the best SF films to come out of the UK. Quatermass 2 is the best. Almost all of the stars in this film have passed. Thanks for the film and the memories.Vera Day is the only one. A beautiful woman who starred in a another SF film "The Woman Eater". But according to her filmography she is still working in films. Nice to see that. Brian Donlevy, known for tough guy roles, was very credible in this film. All the rest, give the film the good support as actors. I just wish some producer would give it a shot and do a remake. There several UK films that are worthy of remake but this film deserves it.
Tweekums
This science fiction thriller grabs our attention from the first scene where a young couple are driving fairly wildly; something is clearly wrong with the man who has a mark on his face after touching some strange rocks. I assumed these would be the main characters but after nearly crashing into Quatermass and telling him what happened we don't see them again. Professor Quatermass takes the rocks to work but is more concerned that his project to set up a colony on the moon has been cancelled. His colleagues had monitored a strange meteor shower in the area where the couple had driven from and analysis shows that the rocks aren't natural so Quatermass and a colleague go to the site and are shocked to find a large complex which is identical to their planned moon base. When his colleague picks up one of the unbroken rocks something is released and he suddenly becomes ill, Quatermass can't find out what is wrong as security guards take his friend and order him to leave the area. In order to have a look around he gets on an official tour with a member of parliament who has been concerned about the plant. Things don't go well on the tour; the MP dies after contact with the "food" the plant claims to be making and Quatermass is lucky to escape. Once back in London he gets help from a police inspector and a journalist and returns to the plant where they must confront the security forces to discover the plants shocking secret and destroy it, in this task they are helped my local workers who want revenge after one of them is infected.Despite being an old film this looked good as it was filmed at a real chemical works rather than using fake looking models, the only effect that looked poor by today's standards was the monster but that only appears briefly at the end. Today a film of this sort would probably be over two and a half our long, full of special effects and with a romantic side story tagged on, this however is less than an hour and a half long with minimal effects and no romance in sight which keeps things taut throughout. Brian Donlevy was good in the role of Quatermass and Sid James put in a fun cameo performance as the reporter who had a liking for drink. The sinister atmosphere was heightened by having all of the security personnel wear gas masks which effectively rendered then faceless, increasing the feeling that they were mindless automatons.