The Quatermass series: a film retrospective by Mark R. Leeper.
Tuesday, July 18, 2023, marks the 70th anniversary of the first broadcast of the inaugural episode of BBC’s ‘Quatermass’, a series of plays penned by British screenwriter Nigel Kneale.
The series began with ‘The Quatermass Experiment’, which was followed by ‘Quatermass II’, and ‘Quatermass And The Pit’. ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ turned out to be an unexpectedly massive media event. It was so popular that it practically cleared the streets of London, with people tuning in from the comfort of their homes. As the UK’s first Science Fiction TV serial, ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ introduced the first British television hero, Quatermass. Regrettably, only a single chapter of the series remains, as live broadcasts were not recorded or preserved during that period. The popularity of the series continued to grow with each subsequent installment, to the point where churches began to reschedule services to prevent congregations and clergy from missing the broadcasts.
Each play was later adapted into a film by Hammer Films, a British studio that leveraged its initial success with the first two ‘Quatermass’ films to make a name for itself in the realm of horror and Science Fiction. The third film, however, wasn’t produced until the late 1960s. The films retained the original BBC titles, but ‘Experiment’ was deliberately misspelled as ‘Xperiment’ in an attempt to underscore the ‘X’-certificate in Britain, roughly analogous to the US ‘R’ rating, rather than the US ‘X’. In the United States, the films were released under less memorable titles: ‘The Creeping Unknown’, ‘Enemy From Space’, and ‘Five Million Years To Earth’.
In 1980, the final Quatermass story, simply titled ‘Quatermass’, was created for television. Though it was never re-adapted into a film, a feature film named ‘The Quatermass Conclusion’ was produced by condensing the television movie.
In 2005, the BBC revived ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ as a live television play, the first in several years. Interestingly, the original ‘Quatermass’ series served as the inspiration for the ‘Doctor Who’ series. Kneale was approached to write for ‘Doctor Who’, but he declined the offer, believing that the show was too frightening for a children’s series.
© Mark R. Leeper 2023