![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
XCII: Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967)
The Hammer adaptation of the BBC sf serial - although the better part of a decade passed between the six parter and the big screen, colour, version. It's a story which is familiar from Childhood's End and, arguably, Doctor Who ("The Daemons") and Mission to Mars. The extension of the Central line at Hobb's Lane uncovers not dragons but five million year old ape fossils and what is at first taken to be a German flying bomb but seems to be something much more alien. Physicist Quatermass (this time Andrew Kier) drops in by accident with Colonel Breen (Julian Glover), and tries to guide everyone to safety whilst announcing the existence of aliens. The army still want to dissect the ship.
This builds up well and convincingly, and it's not until the last quarter that the Total Bollocks Overdrive is engaged. There is a real sense of suspense and building dis-ease. Quatermass and the archeologists slowly trace the story back to earlier centuries.
OK, so Time Team doesn't include brain scanning equipment, but may be it should and women are all but invisible but - you await UNIT's arrival and the real Brigadier, and given it's Julian Glover you expect the Holy Grail to be drunk from.
Totals: 92 (Cinema: 34; DVD: 53; TV: 5)
Housekeeping
That puts me on course for 158 films this year.
Meanwhile, the Top 100 watched this mnth are:
The Hammer adaptation of the BBC sf serial - although the better part of a decade passed between the six parter and the big screen, colour, version. It's a story which is familiar from Childhood's End and, arguably, Doctor Who ("The Daemons") and Mission to Mars. The extension of the Central line at Hobb's Lane uncovers not dragons but five million year old ape fossils and what is at first taken to be a German flying bomb but seems to be something much more alien. Physicist Quatermass (this time Andrew Kier) drops in by accident with Colonel Breen (Julian Glover), and tries to guide everyone to safety whilst announcing the existence of aliens. The army still want to dissect the ship.
This builds up well and convincingly, and it's not until the last quarter that the Total Bollocks Overdrive is engaged. There is a real sense of suspense and building dis-ease. Quatermass and the archeologists slowly trace the story back to earlier centuries.
OK, so Time Team doesn't include brain scanning equipment, but may be it should and women are all but invisible but - you await UNIT's arrival and the real Brigadier, and given it's Julian Glover you expect the Holy Grail to be drunk from.
Totals: 92 (Cinema: 34; DVD: 53; TV: 5)
Housekeeping
That puts me on course for 158 films this year.
Meanwhile, the Top 100 watched this mnth are:
- Fanny och Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
- Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
- The Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander MacKendrick, 1957)
- The Red Shoes (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
Tags: