Quartermass and the pit

Dir: Roy Ward Barker. 1967.

The story is simple enough. 5,000,000 years ago Martians came to Earth to colonise it, and apparently succeeded by geneering apes into humans. One ship crashed however, and is subsequently discovered under London in 1967 during an extension of Hobbs Lane undergroud station. The hero's figure out whats going on whilst (as usual) the politicians and military wallow in denial and try to shut down the intrepid Professor Quartermass and his friends. The film starts off slowly, builds up in pitch until finally erupting into a typical Hammer House ending.

What a great film! It feels a bit like 'The X files' but has the old school Brit sci fi ambience (I was half expecting a Dalek to appear at any moment) and still manages to hold its own against modern sci fi movies. So much so in fact that it seems a certain sombody was taking notes... a martian vehicle of some kind, long buried underground, comes to life and creates mayhem... hmmm where did I see that recently?

In many ways, this film seems to be a reworking of 'The War of the Worlds', taking the time scale between Mars' today and Mars as it may once have been into account. Instead of an armed invasion failing against the humans, Nigel Kneale (who wrote the original scripts) has the Martian invasion creating huimanity as we know it today. Its not HG Wells, but its not far off (the influence of the war of the worlds is even refered to with three legged Martians) and it knocks 'X files - the movie' into a cocked hat.

Great fun for all the family!