About me:Wannabe writer/critic currently selling PCs - and my soul - at PC World. Spent a lot of time crashi...
Member since:13.12.2000
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Review rated by 5 Ciao members on average: very helpful
Mention Hammer films, and most people glaze over as they think back to those lurid productions - Peter Cushing stalking through the pea soup in a cardboard graveyard, Christopher Lee with raspberry sauce running down his chin...you know the drill.
So if you mention to them that Hammer also produced quality science fiction pictures like Quatermass and the Pit, and they are somewhat dubious.
Set in London, it begins when workers extending the underground system uncover a strange object. Suspecting it to be an unexploded bomb, the military are called in. Professor Quatermass also arrives to give his opinion.
As more of the object is uncovered, neanderthal skeletons are also discovered around it. Despite its obvious extra-terrestial qualities, the military are still determined to pass it off as a bomb, or a Nazi publicity stunt.
The material the craft is made out of is impervious to anything - even a diamond drill cannot scratch it. When a workman sees the ghost of a neanderthal passing through an interior bulkhead, Quatermass begins to explore the craft's influence on the surrounding area over the centuries.
When the bulkhead is eventually breached, three dead aliens, resembling giant grasshoppers are discovered. Taken away for examination, they quickly disintergrate. Meanwhile, the workman's thoughts are probed, and reveal a scratchy film showing these Martian grasshoppers jumping around, and inducing each other to mass suicide.
Quatermass soon discovers that although these creatures are dead, they still have the power to make a take over bid...
The film was made for a handful of pennies, utilises sets last seen in Dr.Who, and has three dead aliens made out of Play-Do. It should be dreadful, but benefits from an intelligent script and a surplus of ideas that cover everything from Satanism to Psychic alien invasions. Andrew Keir, as Quatermass, chomps on every line like it's a Shakespeare soliloquy.
It also has a constantly building sense of dread, culminating in a towering alien ghost dominating the London skyline. Scarier than Vincent Price wearing a Scream mask, driving Christine through a graveyard at night, while whistling the theme tune from Halloween.
ster of prehistoric skulls and skeletons. Anthropologist Dr. Roney his assistant Barbara Judd and space expert Professor Quatermass are driven by curiosity and dig deepe...
k to the origins of humanity is unearthed beneath a London tube station, only the esteemed Professor Bernard Quatermass can save London's suddenly murderous population ...
![Quatermass And The Pit [DVD] [1967]](http://images.ciao.com/ide/images/icons/no_pic_generic_S1.gif){kind=icon}
22.02.2001 06:59
It's been years since I've seen this - must get it out and rewatch!