Quatermass and the Pit DVD+Blu-ray

Hammer Film's third and final cinematic version of the classic Nigel Kneale science fiction epics (originally written for TV) is perhaps the best, although the previou... Read on

Hammer Film's third and final cinematic version of the classic Nigel Kneale science fiction epics (originally written for TV) is perhaps the best, although the previous two films in the series have considerable merits. Director Roy Ward Baker and his screenwriter T.E.B. Clark (responsible, of course, for some of the most cherished Ealing comedy screenplays) perform a creditable filleting job of the original scripts written by Kneale for the famous television adaptations which had unprecedented impact on their first showing. Baker and Clarke retain all the most crucial elements - delivered with understated panache (aided by the matchless - if economical - technical resources of Hammer Studios). What will be piquant for modern viewers is the fact that the investigations by the dour scientist Quatermass (here played by Andrew Keir, in far more appropriate casting than the American Brian Donleavy in the earlier films) involve the fact that the bodies of long dead (but still dangerous) alien creatures are discovered when a new tube line is being built under the London; the plot, like so much else in Kneale's work, has been ruthlessly plundered by other writers over the years - not least by the creators of the revivified Doctor Who, a show which often comes across like a compendium of reheated ideas created by the earlier writer. Hide