Starring: Brian Donlevy, Jack Warner, Margia Dean, Thora Hird, David King-Wood, Harold Lang, Lionel Jeffries, Richard Wordsworth
Review: When a rocket ship returns to Earth, Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) is shocked to learn that only one of the three astronauts made it home alive. The survivor (Richard Wordsworth) is unable to communicate and appears to have contracted a mysterious illness that begins to change him into, the film's alternate title, The Creeping Unknown.
The Quatermass Xperiment is the one that put Hammer Films on the map back in the mid-50s. This Horror/ Sci-Fi masterpiece is smart, chilling, and feels so real! That's thanks to Nigel Kneale's original teleplay, the tight script, and the almost documentary style direction by Val Guest.
The other two big pluses here are the lead performances from Brian Donlevy and Richard Wordsworth. Donlevy as Quatermass is brilliant with his stone-faced determination and matter-of-fact manner really makes the threat seem real and deadlier than you could imagine. Kneale didn't care for him, but I think he's perfectly cast here. Now, Richard Wordsworth's doomed astronaut Victor Caroon has a tougher job during the run time. He's got to play his plague space survivor without speaking. His body language, facial expressions, and ever altering body are the true star of this picture. He completely sells the fear, horror, and agony of things to come so well that you buy it all, hook, line, and sinker.
Most might see The Quatermass Xperiment as your typical B-movie that you would catch occasionally on late-night TV, but it's truly one of the most well-made, suspenseful, and thoroughly entertaining Sci-Fi pictures of all-time. Outer space is scary and this one drive the point home most definitely.
Fun Fact: Actress, cake decorator and former fiancée of Paul McCartney, a young Jane Asher plays the little girl trying her unsuspecting best to befriend a transmogrifying Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth). The chance encounter is reminiscent of James Whale's classic Frankenstein (1931), wherein Little Maria and the Frankenstein monster meet.