Rating: 
Summary: Extra crispy or origional?
Review: Strange meteorites and burning flesh, sounds like an alien threat to me. Quatermass 2 (AKA Enemy From Space) Smacks of the X-files, with it's alien invasion and conspiracy plot. A few town folk mysteriously develope strange radiation burns shortly after a meteor shower. Professor Quatermass ( Brian Donlevy ) investigates only to discover a Military base that resembles a moon base he and his men designed. With no one to trust (sound familiar?) Quatermass must face the menace himself. Great writing, lots of intrigue, and an unusual amount of gunplay and violence for 1956. Needless to say I was pleasaantly suprised. Don't forget the origional trailers at the end!
Rating: 
Summary: DARKEST 5O's SCIENCE-FICTION SUSPENSE THRILLER
Review: Thanks to an excellent literate script by master Nigel Kneale and intensive, atmospheric direction by the underrated Val Guest (who both scored great marks with "Abominable Snowman"), this ranks as one of the best and most disturbing Science-Fiction Thrillers. I don't need to reiterate the intriguing story, but it builds gripping suspense from the word 'Go' and finally escalates into a crucial state-of-alarm that climaxes in a thrilling and terrifying showdown at the secret alien refinary plant in the remote British country. Pretty violent and grim for its time, and it still retains its entertaining and thought-provoking qualities. The confrontation between the workers and the alien-controlled government & military "zombies" has certain Marxist underlying themes of the 'workers revolt againest the oppressive, dictatorial rulers' - who, in shattering fact, are aliens who are truly alien - and thoroughly malevolent. Some kaffka allegories of corrupt government and fascism are conveyed here in the bleakest of ways. Kneale's intelligent, riveting screenplay also served as the basis for the James Bond plots and wild devices that surfaced a few years later in the rebelliously turbulent 6O's - which this insightfully compelling Science-Fiction Classic seems to sinisterly forecast. Not your typical or campy monster movie by any long shots. Also, quite cynical for its time, as Quatermass is forced to become the angst-ridden, alienated hero (anti-hero) in his accidental uncovering of conspiracy (his plans for a proposed moon project is swiped by them) and cover-ups: Very Hitchcockian. Also sounds a lot like X-FILES, doesn't it? I believe this was XF's producers favorite childhood science-fiction film; the dark, ominous influence and inspiration is undoubtably present. Not a kid's flick by any means. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this hauntingly memorable and intensely scary classic. Probably the most starkly realistic vision of what a true alien invasion might be like. Genuine nightmares to take to bed - and wonder.
Rating:
Summary: Paranoid, plausible, intelligent: pure Quatermass
Review: There's simply no equal to the Quatermass films in the effects-driven "science fiction" foisted on today's public. These films, adapted from much longer BBC television "miniseries", rely on intelligent plot development and attention to detail that is notably lacking in anything done in the genre lately. In this film, Quatermass inadvertantly stumbles across a secret military base whose staff will shoot first and ask questions later. (Shades of Area 51!) Unfortunately, the secret of this base is *far* worse than reverse-engineering, and the safety of the world is (again) in Quatermass's hands. It's too bad that Brian Donlevy really makes a poor Quatermass, but he's all we have. He seems to confuse bullying and shouting with projecting authority and confidence, and you end up somewhat surprised no one decks him. Andrew Keir (Quatermass and the Pit) presents a much more palatable Quatermass interpretation. That said, though, I really give this a very high recommendation. When you consider the original was shown on British TV nearly 50 years ago, it is stunning to think just how far ahead of its time the Quatermass series was. They don't write them this well anymore.
Rating:
Summary: Paranoid, plausible, intelligent: pure Quatermass
Review: There's simply no equal to the Quatermass films in the effects-driven "science fiction" foisted on today's public. These films, adapted from much longer BBC television "miniseries", rely on intelligent plot development and attention to detail that is notably lacking in anything done in the genre lately. In this film, Quatermass inadvertantly stumbles across a secret military base whose staff will shoot first and ask questions later. (Shades of Area 51!) Unfortunately, the secret of this base is *far* worse than reverse-engineering, and the safety of the world is (again) in Quatermass's hands. It's too bad that Brian Donlevy really makes a poor Quatermass, but he's all we have. He seems to confuse bullying and shouting with projecting authority and confidence, and you end up somewhat surprised no one decks him. Andrew Keir (Quatermass and the Pit) presents a much more palatable Quatermass interpretation. That said, though, I really give this a very high recommendation. When you consider the original was shown on British TV nearly 50 years ago, it is stunning to think just how far ahead of its time the Quatermass series was. They don't write them this well anymore.
Rating:
Summary: Soylent Green During WWII
Review: This movie reminded me a lot of Soylent Green, which is about a food factory that uses suspicious ingredients. This movie is actually about a rocket scientist, Quatermass, who comes upon an exact replica of his moon base in rural England. It turns out to be a special project where they make artificial food -- or do they? Quatermass is really a big jerk. He is very rude, cuts people off, and doesn't listen to much that they have to say. Of course everybody respects him for this! I wouldn't have minded seeing Quatermass get slapped around a bit. Anyway, this is a pretty good sci fi/horror movie from the 50's. The setting (large industrial plant in the middle of nowhere during WWII -- which explains a lot of the secrecy) and the fact that it is B&W makes it particularly creepy. The video quality is surprisingly good, better than most cheeseball movies from the 70's and 80's! I think you should give it a spin.
Rating:
Summary: AKA "Enemy From Space"
Review: Well I remember the afternoon I sat as a ten year old, glued to the TV, mesmerized by fear, as this creepy story unfolded!! I can only add my two cents' worth to the above excellent reviews of this 1957 (and wasn't THAT a great year for SF movies?) gem: (1) The score by James "The Devil Rides Out" Bernard. I think a CD is available of some of his film music, including "Q2"....Wonder if ol' Bernard Hermann saw this movie before he scored "sycho"? (2) The "...H U M A N P U L P !!" scene towards the end in the control room. O that the modern movies left more to the imagination!!
Rating:
Summary: Quatermass 2
Review: When I first saw this picture on the TV some 30 odd years ago it frightened the life out of me. I now come to buy the DVD, switch on the commentary and find that I actually live in the town where it was filmed. A shudder went up my spine. This film still holds up after all this time, the pace is fast and that sense of foreboding is always with you to the last. They don't make films like this anymore unfortunately so sit back and watch some of the best vintage SF ever!
Rating:
Summary: Creepy to the Max!
Review: With exception made for the films of George Pal and Andrei Tarkovsky, science fiction cinema appeals to me mostly in black-and-white. Cameron Menzies' Things to Come (1936), for example, would look gaudy and toy-like had it been filmed in one of the color processes; but in black-and-white, the war scenes acquire a documentary grittiness (which Menzies certainly meant them to have) and the miniature work looks grand and convincing. Byron Haskin originally planned to shoot his big-bug flick Them! (1954) in color and 3-D, but finally made it on a lower budget in desert- and storm-drain-friendly black-and-white. The nightmarish-ness of Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is drained away in the two remakes from the late 1970s and early 1990s; Siegel's own vision puts Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter in a labyrinth of threatening shadows where the merest hint of color would spoil the creepy mood. Director Val Guest's Quatermass II (1958), known in its original American release as The Enemy from Space, has a number of points of contact with The Body Snatchers, and is equally effective in conjuring an atmosphere of occult paranoia over a contagious loss of humanity. Brian Donlevy reprises the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British "Rocket Program" and scientific jack-of-all-trades. In the first Quatermass film, The Creeping Unknown (1952), the redoubtable professor battles a gelatinous carnivore that started its human meal by devouring a crew of astronauts pioneering the way into earth orbit. The nemesis in Quatermass II is more diffuse, more intelligent, and potentially far more deadly. It is a collective intelligence able to possess human hosts and coerce them into service. These "zombies," as the film calls them, have taken over a remote government facility and are systematically dispossessing the bodies of government officials, whom they lure into the place in the pretence that it is a "synthetic food factory" about to make agriculture obsolete. Quatermass discovers the place when he goes looking for a meteor-fall detected by radar from his rocket test range. He finds that someone has built, on the site of a demolished village, the "moon base" for which he has just conspicuously failed to get funding. Sinister looking guards appear and take away the professor's aid, who has received a characteristic v-shaped wound from a meteor that he has picked up from the ground. The things crack apart when held. A dark blotch appears on the neck or face of the victim. All the guards show the same lesion. After considerable frustration and a hair's breadth escape from the conversion process, Quatermass penetrates to the truth behind all the skullduggery: aliens are indeed invading the earth, taking over humanity, and growing huge masses of parasite-creatures in the pressure-domes. Guest's direction is stark: he filmed many scenes at a Shell Oil refinery on the Welsh coast and he skillfully inter-cuts location footage with one or two matte-shots, a couple of miniature sets, and some studio interiors. The "alien base" looks steely and inhuman; the parasite-ridden hosts behave in convincingly dehumanized ways and are efficiently monomaniacal. There is no bravado from the players. The superb editing packs much incident into eighty minutes. In one horrific scene, an investigating parliamentarian falls into a vat of alien "food" and is covered head to foot with corrosive slime. All of the Quatermass films are intelligent and Quatermass II is no exception. The musical score contributes a good deal to the atmosphere. Recommended for aficionados of Cold War sci-fi for the silver screen or for fans of The Body Snatchers who are curious about that film's less well known British counterpart.
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