The Quatermass Xperiment

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The Quatermass Xperiment
The 1955 advertising poster for the film's UK release
Directed by	Val Guest
Produced by	Anthony Hinds
Written by	Richard Landau Val Guest
Starring	Brian Donlevy Jack Warner Margia Dean Richard Wordsworth David King-Wood Gordon Jackson Thora Hird Lionel Jeffries
Music by	James Bernard
Cinematography	Walter Harvey
Editing by	James Needs
Release date(s)	1955
Running time	82 min.
Country	UK, USA
Followed by	Quatermass 2
All Movie Guide profile

The Quatermass Xperiment is a 1955 British science-fiction/horror film, based on the 1953 BBC Television serial The Quatermass Experiment by Nigel Kneale.

The feature film version was adapted by the director, Val Guest, working with American screenwriter Richard Landau. It was produced by the Hammer Film Productions Ltd. company, who changed the title to The Quatermass Xperiment, with its unusual spelling, in order to play on the film's British X-certification (adults only) status, claiming that it was the first British-made movie to have received such a classification. In America, the film was released under the title The Creeping Unknown in 1956, distributed by United Artists as the B-film to the American-made The Black Sleep. Some prints screened on British television have used the conventional spelling of "Experiment".

The film starred American actor Brian Donlevy as Professor Bernard Quatermass, the lead role having gone to him in an attempt to appeal to the North American audience. Robert L. Lippert, who helped finance the film, as he had many of Hammer's earlier films with the same casting stipulation, would distribute the British Hammers in the USA in exchange for the Hammer distribution arm, Exclusive Films, handling Lippert's films in the UK. Other actors starring included future Dixon of Dock Green star Jack Warner as Quatermass' nemesis, Police Inspector Lomax; David King-Wood as Quatermass' space medicine specialist, and Richard Wordsworth in a memorable performance as the film's central figure, Carroon, an astronaut whose body has been invaded by an alien life-form and is being transformed into something unearthly and dangerous. Also appearing were, in a small cameo as a local drunk, Dame Thora Hird (surprisingly given fifth billing); Lippert's girlfriend Margia Dean as Carroon's wife; and Lionel Jeffries as a British bureaucrat. Jane Asher also made an uncredited appearance as a small child, her first screen role.

The film was quite popular at the time, successful enough for Hammer to produce adaptations of the following two Quatermass serials, releasing them to the cinema as Quatermass 2 (1957) and Quatermass and the Pit (1967). It is also of special interest today as a complete copy of the original BBC television version of the story no longer exists.

[edit] Trivia

Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale has vociferously decried the film version of his teleplay, and is especially critical of the casting of and performance by Brian Donlevy as Bernard Quatermass. Kneale has at times alleged that Donlevy was drunk much of the time, although this claim is denied by Val Guest and others associated with the production.

The plot of the film bears similarities to the 1999 Johnny Depp movie The Astronaut's Wife, although it is not known whether the film really was an inspiration or whether this is merely coincidence.

[edit] External links

• Page on the film at The Quatermass Home Page
• The Quatermass Xperiment at the Internet Movie Database

Hammer science-fiction films
The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) | X the Unknown (1956) | Quatermass 2 (1957) | Quatermass and the Pit (1967)