When it comes to my movie collection purchasing, I don’t fancy myself a gambling man. However, every now and then, something will catch my eye, give me a little smile, tastefully bare a little leg, and promise me a good time for a reasonable price – and, sight unseen, I succumb to temptation.
Those become my blind-buys. Movies I decided were worth the few bucks’ worth of risk to add to the collection knowing nothing about them other than what I can see on the front, back, and IMDB page. Of those, these are the ones that panned out.
When John Carpenter uses something as a point of reference then your ears, eyes, hair, all of it should perk up just a bit about what that referential point is. Whether it’s Black Christmas orThe Thing From Another World chances are it’s something you should know about.
Yet, no matter how loudly he yelled about Quatermass on his Prince of Darkness project, even going so far as to assume the name as the screenwriter, I remained oblivious of the prominent British sci-fi figure. This led to me having no clue that Carpenter’s science vs Satan squaring off came from somewhere other than what I’d assumed was an out-of-focus video cassette dream message he had from the year 1999.
What Did It Cost? – $15.00
What Sold Me?
This was one of my blind buys in which the purchase came on recommendation. I didn’t find it so much as I sought it out, yet still did so sight unseen. I knew nothing about the Quatermass character, television shows, films, stories, breakfast cereals, trading cards, football team, whatever – I knew of none of it. Someone (can’t recall who) at some point (can’t recall when) suggested I seek out Quatermass and the Pit after I mentioned my affection for Prince of Darkness, and then I stored that suggestion in the place where I forget names and places.
At the time, there was no easily accessible release of the film that I could find on any domestic format, so it just remained at the bottom of an IMDB Watch List in the “maybe someday the opportunity will arise where I can actually see this thing” section somewhere between #1,843 and #eleventy-billion. Then, finally, in the year 2019, Shout! released a blu-ray of the film, and I finally got the opportunity to understand why some human I know suggested that I see it.
Why It Was Worth It
Because two Prince of Darknesses is better than one! I’ll try to make that the last time I reference Carpenter’s film when discussing this one, because it seems like I’m short-changing the influencer with what it influenced. When this picture came out, and the television mini-series that preceded it by about a decade, the idea of crossing sci-fi with the supernatural wasn’t common. Even more uncommon would be to interject science-fiction elements into theology, and that’s pretty much what we’re doing here.
While breaking ground on what seems to be an expansion of the London tube system, the construction crew uncover a collection of skeletal remains of beings that seem to fall somewhere slightly outside of the human evolutionary line — but the discoveries don’t end there. As each layer of clay and rock is removed, they find amongst the bodies a metallic structure they initially confuse for an old, undetonated missile. The idea of these two things that should be centuries apart is, of course, confounding. And, the discoveries just keep coming.
It turns out that metallic structure wasn’t a missile, wasn’t made of any metal known to us, and was completely impenetrable. In fact, attempts to drill into it would result in localized earthquakes, telekinetic activity, and screeching visions for anyone nearby. As the investigation ensues, what comes of this apparent extraterrestrial aircraft is the awakening of something dormant that’s both alien and advanced beyond our scientific understanding – yet ancient, and might even be the origination of our concept of evil.
I’d forgotten to mention earlier that the other selling point here is that this was a production of Britain’s Hammer Films, and like many of the great horror pictures from that studio there’s a sophistication and sincerity with how serious it takes its material. It’s a ninety-minute picture in which things don’t really begin to go awry until about one hour into it. That might seem like a long time for something that would otherwise be a thriller to start taking some serious bites, but running time-wise it’s dominantly a scientific and archaeological procedural than it is a sci-fi / supernatural thriller. It’s more Contact than The Relic. Until, it becomes the movie that you can see influencing Carpenter, and it’s a steep descent from Close Encounters into the Ark of the Covenant being opened.
The picture is also entirely unique in that the title character himself doesn’t even dominate the screen, or particularly dictate its direction. Quatermass doesn’t enter the picture until the scientific findings of the dig have military implications, and you don’t even really recognize much of the story has passed without him until his name is uttered, and yet it doesn’t really matter. You’re so engrossed in what is being dug up that you feel like he’s really just an audience proxy, fascinated and terrified by what’s being found just as we are.
And I must say that when that name is spoken, it’s one hell of a name to have next to a pond of Breens and Cleghorns. It’s hard to be dismissed with a name like Quatermass. Hell, it sounds like some quantum realm Schwarzenegger-sized unit of measurement.
“How big is it?”
“It’s 186.02 Quatermasses”
“…That’s a big twinkie.”
What Quatermass does do though is bring flexibility into the understanding of what’s happening with everything that’s being uncovered. Where science is falling short, he’s the scientist to recognize that trying to science one’s way out of a situation beyond our understanding is a quick way to end up buried under centuries of clay. Only to be discovered by another species that thinks itself above the powers of psychokinetic Martian devil locusts that we would have written bible stories about.
Maybe some time in the year 3999.
