Rating: 
Summary: Memorable and effective Hammer sci-fi
Review: Nigel Kneale's sci-fi drama started off back in the fifties as a black-and-white TV play starring Andre Morell as Professor Quatermass, before Hammer decided to remake it with studio stalwart Andrew Keir in the title role. Although critics appear on the whole to regard the Morell film as the definitive version, this 1968 retelling is an impressive effort.
I sympathize with David Pirie, who criticized Roy Ward Baker for the "limitless number of close-ups in an attempt to convey tension". Certainly the close-ups are a little overdone, and Tristram Cary's otherwise brilliant score is a little too obvious too early on, yet still Quatermass and the Pit is a gripping, tense thriller with considerable suspense and atmosphere.
A strong supporting cast includes James Donald, Barbara Shelley and Julian Glover.
Rating:
Summary: Ghosts of Mars
Review: Workers in London excavating a tunnel for a new "Underground" station, unearth more than...earth in the few first minutes of this Brit classic c. 1968. Preparing to open a station at the ominously named "Hobbs End", they find bones of a long dead somebody that either resembled a very short ugly ape, or an uglier old man. Nearby, they find an object - a bigger one. Harder than diamond, as large as a small truck, yet non-magnetic, it immediately sparks the interest of Bernard Quatermass.Who? I confess, I never heard of Quatermass before catching this flick on the late-night movie (the idea of late-night movies is itself a fossil of an older, doomed and otherworldly civilization). Even if you've never heard of Quatermass, you're still likely to find this an unimaginably creepy flick, the inspiration for at least several John Carpenter movies, and an incredible chiller. As scientists "reconstruct" the skeleton and excavate the "object", the authorities dream up a reasonable explanation for both, which (coming from the government) won't fool you for a moment. (The object is an unexploded Nazi "V-weapon", they say; besides being unexciting, the answer fails to explain how the Nazis synthesized a non-ferrous substance that can stand up to a diamond-tipped drill, and doesn't begin to explain how an object that big came down without disturbing any of the houses on top - buildings that look far older than the war). Quatermass isn't so sure, but he pieces together the clues in a way that not only gives both the object and the dwarf an exotic origin, but one that bodes ill for both the roots and end of mankind. Quatermass believes the object a spacecraft from Mars, an artifact of a now dead species that created life on various planets before dying out - invasion by proxy. Though far advanced from us, the Martians are hardly benevolent - hinted by the fact that the human race may be the longest-living legacy to their evil. Consumed by an impulse towards race war, the Martians killed themselves off in conflicts meant to resemble the Munich parades of the late 1930s (the idea of the ship being a Nazi weapon seems apt, metaphorically speaking). Now free of its tomb, the Martian ship exerts anew its influence on the human race, one that both feeds off our fears and hatred of others, and empowers it. "Five" is a classic flick - a relentless chiller that never actually shocks you. Still, there are some bits you wish the script was less subtle about - like near the end when it's unclear that normal Londoners are becoming aliens, empowered and yet enslaved by the ghost of an intelligence that's been dead for millions of years. Also, you wish the script gave Quatermass a bit more to on when it allowed him to conclude that the ship was built by a technologically advanced yet racially minded (and therefore evil) species of Martians. Bravely, the flick offers decidedly non-divine explanation for the creation of man that nevertheless embraces the existence of good and evil. If you're looking for a conventional sci-fi epic in which the alien invaders are foiled in the end, look somewhere else. This is definitely a thinking sci-fi epic.
Rating:
Summary: Hobbs End
Review: One of my favorite British Scifi movies I wont repeat a synopsis of the story as others have done a very good job of that. I will simply say that this movie seems to be a pivotal piece between the at times Rank B style Scifi movies of the 50's and a next step up to some more thoughtful and well thought out story and special effects. It left me breathless at moments the first time I saw it. I tend to be one of those guys who covers my eyes like a big kid at the scary parts. And this one had me covered several times over. Anyway, this is worth the money because it is very simply one of the best runs for our money that came along in a long time. It was released initially titled 3 or 5 million years to Earth which was quite disturbing when I went to look for that title. Finally I found it by accident in a DVD store with its correct British title.
Leave it the Americans to screw up stuff that didn't need fixing.
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