 |
 "The thriller that began 5 million years ago in another world has come to
Earth." So begins the boxcopy on this one. In a London subway where excavation
is going on, a mysterious object is found near a bunch of prehistoric skulls.
Anthropologist Dr. Roney, his assistant Barbara and "space expert" Professor
Quatermass "dig deeper" for answers. Roney and Quatermass come to believe that
"mankind may owe his intellect and latent psychic powers to the intervention of
insectoid creatures from Mars." Also, the mysterious object they find may still
be alive! 1967, 98 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
This is the third big screen outing for Professor Quatermass. He was featured
previously in The Quatermass Xperiment and the imaginatively named Quatermass 2 . Quatermass is a professor who seems to get to called in by the Brits
whenever there's some weird crap going on. In the States this movie was renamed Five Million Years To Earth for no apparent reason. A part of the London subway is being renovated and as
such construction crews are digging around and begin to find strange shaped
prehistoric skulls and bones. Anthropologist Dr. Roney comes in and identifies
the skulls as belonging to some type of primitive ape man. Then a strange metal
object is discovered. We then cut away to some government offices where we
first see Quatermass, who is at this point engaged in an argument with an
official about the addition of some straight-laced colonel to Quatermass's
precious "rocket project team" or something. There's a lot of harumphing and
sticking out of bottom lips, but the Colonel and Quatermass leave together to
get to know each other better over dinner. On the way, they get called to the
subway, where a mysterious metallic object has been found in the pit!  This metal object is finally completely dug out and I'm thinking to myself,
"huh, looks like some kind of spaceship. Probably better haul it out of there
so they can finish getting the subway ready to go." Well, of course all the
scientists and military types are completely befuddled by what it is. The
colonel immediately declares that it must be some kind of gigantic, unexploded
German bomb left over from WW II. Me and Quatermass roll our eyes at that one
as the military conduct all these dumb tests on the object. First they take a
stethoscope to it and they don't hear anything and it won't stick to the object
because it's not magnetic. Then they try to blowtorch it. No go. Then they haul
out this super special drill and it doesn't do anything except vibrate the
interior of the ship so that Quatermass has to make all these ridiculous "my
face is vibrating" faces. Then a hole appears in the ship and all these dead
aliens are revealed in their honeycombed cubby holes. They are long since dead
and look like giant grasshoppers (for the definitive giant grasshopper movie
see 1957's Beginning of the End .) The grasshoppers are hauled out and taken back to the lab to be examined.
This involves sticking them with a scalpel so that green goo oozes out. If they
were dead for five million years, why would there still be any liquid left in
them? The stuff looked a little like a MacDonald's Shamrock Shake. Hand me a
straw Quatermass! Okay, Quatermass and this female assistant start to delve into the history of
the area, Hobb's End, where all this crazy stuff is going on. It turns out that
there was all sorts of supernatural problems back in 1927 when they last farted
around there building the original subway station. Also, before it was called
Hobb's End, it was called Hob's End! Hob was another name for the devil, you
see! And because of all that giant grasshopper devil stuff going on, some
genius decided to add another "b" to the name. That should take care of that!
Problem solved! Also, all the houses in the area are abandoned because of
difficulties of the ectoplasmic variety. Who you gonna call? Anyway, Quatermass
takes all this data and immediately leaps to the most far fetched, least
plausible conclusion - take a deep breath - here we go - these creatures were
Martians, their world was dying, they took apes from earth, brought them back
to Mars, genetically engineered them with Martian qualities so that part of
their race would survive and then shipped them back to earth where they
eventually evolved into humans. The ship they found was a crash landing where
there were no survivors. Whew! Just think what Quatermass could do if he had
some facts to work with!  The colonel listens to this as Quatermass sells that line of hooey to the
government officials. He says, "okay, okay, you're good Quatermass, I'll give
you that. But here's how I think it happened." The colonel then gives his account of the big bugs and
their spaceship. German propaganda stunt. Put the bugs in the ship to make it
seem real. Just wanted to cause a little panic about spaceships. First a
unexploded German bomb and now a propaganda stunt? What is it with the colonel
and the Germans? The war is over! Also, how would the Germans bury this
gigantic spaceship underground in the middle of wartime London? So the
government official and I are looking at these two doofuses (doofi?) realizing
how difficult it is to work with the retarded. The official considers these two
explanations and instantaneously decides that the colonel must be right. So, he
immediately announces that the press and public can go on and take a look at
the thing. This is simply so we can set up the big climax where there are
people killed and stampeded in panic when things go horribly wrong. Wouldn't it
have made more sense just to haul the dang thing out of there and put in a
warehouse and just forget about it? Why do you need to make it a public
attraction? So the spaceship waits for the crowds to arrive and then it starts to glow!
Experience has taught me that when a strange alien spaceship is unearthed and
then starts to glow and pulsate it is never a good sign and this time was no
exception. People scream! They stampede! Their latent Martian killer instincts
surface and they try to kill those without the Martian stuff in 'em (see, the
more evolved you are, the less Martian genes you still have left.)! The colonel
is almost pure Martian and gets zapped by the ship (why?) and turns into a
s'more and falls into the pit (ouch!). Quatermass goes a little nuts and throws
a bar stool at Dr. Roney. Roney then climbs up a crane and confronts the giant
apparition of a Martian that has materialized in the skies above London. The
crane hits this thing and everything explodes leaving Quatermass and the female
assistant on the ground below looking dumbfounded (get in line Prof!). This
movie was interesting and the characters didn't behave as idiotically as usual
for these efforts, but that's all relative. It wasn't the usual alien invasion
movie since the invaders had been dead for five million years and the real
culprits were our baser instincts. They were also way out in front of the whole
genetic manipulation conspiracy angle that The X-Files likes to think it invented. You can have your Scully and Moulder, I'll take
Quatermass and Roney (oh wait, he got fried on the crane). You get some good
extras on the disc. The audio commentary is somewhat interesting because the
writer and director badmouth Brian Donlevy, who played Quatermass in the first
two movies and point out the parts of the movie where Andrew Keir did it much
better than Donlevy could have ever hoped to. Interesting, because I've read
where Keir didn't exactly like working with director Roy Ward Baker.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
|
|
