The Quatermass Xperiment is the first of the well-written British Sci-fi films based on Nigel Kneale's Professor Quatermass. The film tells the story of how a rocket had been sent up to space with three aboard and how it lands with seemingly two missing. The man in charge of everything is the professor himself, played starchily by Brian Donlevy. Donlevy's professor has no purpose except to succeed and to do anything and everything his way. He is certainly one of the prototypes of the determined, logical scientists to grace films afterward. The film has a slow start as it really spends a great deal of time showing the two different ways of looking and doing things. On the one hand is the Quatermass way, the logical, scientific, and survivalistic way, and on the other hand is the government way, slow, plodding, and indecisive. Through these the story unfolds that the one man that returned is in actuality a carrier of an alien that has grown through the consumption of human vitals into a slithering blob, growing bigger in stature all the time. Quatermass, with the aid of a Scotland Yard Inspector Lomax, wonderfully played with an amusing turn by Jack Warner, finally succeeds in saving our planet from the menace he was responsible for bringing down. Is he contrite? Does he see the errors of his ways? The film ends with his sending another rocket into space to explore the unknown. The film definitely sees the value of science over all us, including life here on Earth, through the vision, imagination, and drive of Donlevy's Professor Quatermass.
Review of The Quatermass Xperiment
