Quatermass 2

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Quatermass 2
The 1957 advertising poster for the film's UK release
Directed by	Val Guest
Produced by	Anthony Hinds
Written by	Nigel Kneale Val Guest
Starring	Brian Donlevy Sid James John Longdon Bryan Forbes Vera Day William Franklyn
Music by	James Bernard
Cinematography	Gerald Gibbs
Editing by	James Needs
Release date(s)	1957
Running time	85 min.
Country	UK
Preceded by	The Quatermass Xperiment
Followed by	Quatermass and the Pit
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Quatermass 2 (also known as Quatermass II) is a British science-fiction/horror film, produced by the Hammer company and released in 1957. It is based on the BBC Television serial Quatermass II, and is a sequel to the 1955 film The Quatermass Xperiment. In America, it was released under the title Enemy From Space.

[edit] Production

The film was directed by Val Guest, and the script adapted by Guest and the original television writer Nigel Kneale. Kneale had been unhappy that he had been unable to work on the previous Quatermass film adaptation because of his BBC staff contract: however, in 1956 he had left the staff of the Corporation to become a freelance writer, enabling him to work on the film.

The Quatermass Xperiment had been a successful and popular film for Hammer, so much so that they had wanted to make their own sequel originally written for the cinema. Kneale had denied them the use of the Quatermass character, however, so the film - 1956's X the Unknown - was made with a new character and not as part of the Quatermass series. After the transmission of Quatermass II on the BBC in 1955, however, Hammer were quick to buy the rights to make another bona fide Quatermass film.

As with the first film, Quatermass 2 stars American actor Brian Donlevy as Professor Bernard Quatermass. This makes him the only actor to have appeared on-screen as the character twice, although later actor Andrew Keir would also play the role twice, once on film and once on the radio. Nigel Kneale was not a fan of Donlevy's portrayal, and regarded him as the least successful of all the film and television Quatermasses. Also appearing in the film was Sid James, later famous for his roles in Hancock's Half Hour and Bless This House on television and the Carry On films in the cinema.

Quatermass 2 is generally regarded by fans and critics as the least successful of Hammer's three film adaptations of the serials, although Kim Newman praised it as "extraordinary" in the Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986). Comparing the film with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Newman noted that, while Don Siegel's film is "a general allegory" about dehumanisation and conformity, Quatermass 2 is "a specific attack on the Conservative government of the time, down to the inclusion of several characters obviously based on real political figures".

Quatermass 2 was also useful to fans as it had been available on VHS and DVD before the original television serial was released. Hammer would go on to adapt the third BBC serial, Quatermass and the Pit, in 1967.

The film is regarded as being the first 'numbered' sequel, a practice that would become much more prevalent during the 1970s.^[1]

[edit] References

1. ^ Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies

[edit] External links

• Page on the film at The Quatermass Home Page
• Quatermass 2 at the Internet Movie Database