We've seen how Hammer slowly went down in the late sixties and early seventies, but I think it's time we went back a bit and took at one of their earlier hits and one of their first genuinely original characters. Released in the US as the Creeping Unknown in 1956, the strange saga of Professor Bernard Quatermass is the perfect blend of science fiction and horror. In 1953 the BBC staged an adaptation of Nigel Kneale's groundbreaking tale of rockets and monsters on the loose in London. Hammer, looking to release more movies in the American market, took the serial and redid the story with a new cast and a slightly altered script.
A rocket crash lands in a farmer's field. Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) is rushed out, as the ship is part of his British Rocket Group. Quatermass and Dr. Briscoe (David King-Wood) are checking the ship, Quatermass overjoyed at the ship's return despite it being lost for 57 hours. A knocking from the inside reminds him that there was a crew.
Opening the ship reveals only one man instead of the assigned three. Victor Caroon (Richard Wordsworth) is the sole crewman and he's nearly catatonic. There are two other pressure suits, both unopened and undamaged save for a thick slime inside. Scotland Yard Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner) is at first convinced that Caroon somehow murdered the other two, but Quatermass barely convinces the policeman to put Caroon is his custody rather than take him to jail.
Briscoe and Caroon's wife Julia (Margia Dean) believe that Caroon should be in a hospital rather than a lab, something that Quatermass finally gives in and transfer him to a private hospital wing while he examines the in flight camera. The footage shows the other crewmen being killed by some kind of energy pulse, while Caroon is simply disabled.
Speaking of Caroon, he isn't doing very well. His body seems to be changing into something wholly different. Julia is by now convinced Quatermass isn't doing a thing for her husband and hires a man to break him out of the hospital. Pity that the changes Caroon has undergone have left him homicidal and a bit peckish. Dispatching his rescuer messily and traumatizing Julia to hysteria, Caroon is now on the loose in greater metropolitan London.
From there, whatever Caroon is turning into goes into a full feeding frenzy. He breaks into a local zoo and eats several big animals, leaving behind large pulsating globs everywhere he goes. Those are what concern Quatermass the most...as they're spores and they're about to hatch. Can Quatermass stop the horror from erupting over London?
The changes made annoyed Kneale to no end, but the biggest change would be of the titular role. In the serial, Reginald Tate was introspective and talked to the monster that Caroon had become. Donlevy, on the other hand, is a rough bastard who thinks only of his rocket group. He's also the only one who can stop Caroon from destroying mankind. Most scientists from the 1950 films were either bookworms or crazy. Quatermass is just a jerk who wants to make rockets. Probably the most sophisticated portrayal of scientists the public had seen at this point.
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