ernard Quatermass (pronounced to rhyme with "later pass") is an eminent British rocket scientist who previously saved humanity in The Quatermass Experiment (1953) and Quatermass and the Pit (1958), among other adventures. This particular installment stands alone and features the most distinguished actor ever to play the venerable science-fiction icon.
The time is an undefined near future that looks an awful lot like the 1970s. The cities of the world are all rocked by civil unrest and economic collapse. Quatermass (Mills), who has been out of touch for a while, living in retirement while raising his 16-year-old granddaughter, is shocked by the conditions he encounters while summoned into London for a TV appearance. He didn't know about the gangs in the streets or the gladiatorial combat in Wembley Stadium, and he really isn't all that interested in providing commentary on a joint American/Soviet space mission. Indeed, he shocks his hosts by angrily deriding the mission, on the air, as a wasteful, pointless gesture by two dying empires. He's really only interested in showing the TV audience a photograph of his granddaughter, who has gone missing.
Minutes later, when the spacecraft are destroyed under mysterious circumstances, the rant places Quatermass under suspicion as a possible saboteur. Kapp (MacCorkindale), a Jewish radio astronomer and fellow guest on the show, resolves to spirit the older man out of London until the fuss dies down. On their way to the antenna array where Kapp works, Kapp treats Quatermass to a grand tour of the decline of Western civilization, embodied by the appearance of "Planet People," teens and children who have painted the letter P on their cheeks and wandered away from their homes, chanting blank-eyed dogma about being beamed up to another planet. As Kapp and Quatermass drive past one such group, we see what they do not: that one of them is a certain missing granddaughter.
The troubles are revealed as a full-grown planetary crisis when hundreds of Planet People, gathering among the standing stones known as Ringstone Round, are annihilated by a bolt of light from space. The civil unrest, the rise of the Planet People and the destruction of the American/Soviet spacecraft are all part of the same phenomenon. An artifact from the stars has infected Earth's children with a madness, compelling them to march, like lemmings, to central locations where they can be picked off from orbit. Quatermass is the first to see the pattern. "Humanity is being harvested," he says.
The death toll mounts into the hundreds of thousands. The skies turn green. Kapp goes mad with grief as his wife (Kellerman) and children join the victims. All attempts to contact the alien artifact result in failure and death. Quatermass comes up with the only possible strategy: If the young are being influenced by aliens, then the only people capable of working on a solution are the very old. And soon, with the help of this geriatric Manhattan Project, he comes up with a plan: one that involves baiting a clever trap.
End of the world as we knew it
Sir John Mills, who died just this last April, had one of the longest and richest acting careers of the past century. He made his first movie in 1932, and appeared in more than a 123 others, with his most recent appearance in a film set for release this year. His screen career spanned an almost unheard-of eight decades. Most remarkably, he continued playing sighted people on screen even after going blind in 1990.
He was clearly a treasure, and Quatermass, filmed when he was in his early 70s, benefits hugely from his presence. It's very much the story of an old man, who at the story's onset wants nothing more of earthshattering crises and is dragged into this particular alien-invasion story against his will; his age and the age of the senior citizens he drafts to help him are critical factors, as is the inconvenient heart attack that figures in the climax. But Mills still looks robust, with a presence that commands the screen even when he's just smiling indulgently at the nattering of Kapp's children. He's no superhero, no figure larger than life: just a man, horrified as any man would be at the implications of an alien menace that targets Earth's children. He doesn't even come off as all that brilliant, when he's not cogitating. But he's Quatermass, damn it. And he won't let the alien harvesters mess with his planet.
The production values, but for a few space-based sequences, are also very good. Sure, the budget's low. But it's more than adequate to nail the real-world elements (including, memorably, an automobile graveyard where a group of elderly refugees have set up housekeeping), and that gives Quatermass a believability that extends to the many more fantastic developments. The climax among the set pieces is the harvesting of Planet People who have filled London's Wembley stadium: We don't see the actual slaughter, but we see the moments leading up to it, as well as the horrific aftermath, and it's more immediate, more horrific, than many filmic catastrophes rendered pixel-by-pixel in the age of CGI. No story about a vast, invisible alien artifact that brainwashes Earth's youngsters into willingly lining up for their mass incineration has ever felt more real.
The DVD set includes two separate versions of the film: the four-part miniseries, which clocks in at 208 minutes, and a theatrical version (otherwise known as Quatermass IV or Quatermass: The Conclusion), which is shorter by just under an hour. Both are deliberately paced. The miniseries version may slow to near-immobility at spots, but is still preferable.
As for the powerful climax, which inevitably reunites Quatermass with his lost granddaughter at precisely the moment when he does not need to be distracted from pushing an all-important red button: Well, it's contrived and manipulative as hell, but chances are that by then you won't care. Quatermass earns it.
