Language - English
Genre - Sci - Fi
The
Quatermass Conclusion is the fourth and final Quatermass film and
also the only one not released by hammer horror.
Set
in the near future, stated as the last quarter of the 20th century in
the film, we see that society has become to crumble. All over
the world there are gang wars and most cities are no go areas. The
gangs are composed of teenagers and young adults and anyone of that
age group that are not involved with the gangs are part of a group
known as the Planet People.
We
meet an old Professor Quatermass as he is on his way to a T.V.
station in London, when his taxi drops him off quite away from the
station he is attacked by one of the gangs, he would have been killed
if Joe Kapp, another scientist on his way to the station, had not
intervened. The show Quatermass and Kepp are commenting on is a live
broadcast from the ‘Hands In Space’ a joint space project between
America & Russia. Live on air something happens to the
project and the station seems to break apart. After the show
Quatermass joins up with Kapp to see if he can find out more about
the different gangs in the hope of finding his Granddaughter.
Kapp
is based at a radio observatory which is housed in a building that
goes back to the 15th century. On the land is an ancient stone
circle that dates back to 5000 years.
During
the incident with the hands in space project the observatory picked
up a strange signal.
The
members of the Planet People start to mass at ancient meeting sites
around the world and what is left of the police and army attempt to
break up these meetings. One of the meetings is held at the
stone circle on the observatory's land and Quatermass and Kapp
witness a blinding light hitting the circle and all the people in it
have gone, the planet people leader who was outside the circle
insists that the people have been take up to another planet,
something they prophesied would happen but Quatermass is unconvinced.
As Quatermass looks into the incident he makes some horrific
discoveries and finds a connection to the violence that is happening
around the world.
The
Quatermass Conclusion is slightly different from the other three
films, to start with it is not a horror in the same sense as the
others. It does play on myths and legends in the same way as
Quatermass and the pit but to a lesser extent. The stone
circles and other meeting places were created to warn people of
danger and then surrounded by superstition. There is also no
monster in this film as all we see of the aliens is the beam of
light.
The
character of Quatermass also starts off different, he is older and
feels that he is uncertain of things. He feels that he is
losing his memory and is retired from rocket science. His only
purpose is to find his granddaughter but he finds himself drawn back
to science as he is one of the few people who is not influenced
by the force that is causing the violence.
There
are two sets of people in the Quatermass Conclusion, the young and
the old and both of these can be broke down into a further two
groups. The young are either rioters or Planet People. Most
of the young are in gangs that are fighting and destroying
civilization and this is how the older people see all of the
young. The smaller group of the young are the Planet People, a
hippy like group who are seen as a cult, they renounce science and
believe that they will be saved by aliens who will take them to
another planet.
The
older generation seem to be split into two other groups those that
are fighting against the gangs, mainly shown as the ‘Pay Cops’
and those who are trying to survive. The series the film was
made from was made at the end of the 1970’s and some of the
views in the film are how society was seen . Since the second
world war there was a gap forming between the older generations and
the younger and there were a lot of the older generation that saw
this as a problem, we had had events like the Vietnam war which had
had a lot of protestors and the rise of rock and punk was seen as
antisocial and violent.
This
is where the Quatermass conclusion did something different, it did
not say that young were wrong and the old were right, Quatermass
himself stated that the generations were different and that the young
were open to things that the old could no longer see. In the
film we see that some of the older generation become members of
the gangs or the Planet People and this is representative of the new
way of thinking taking over the old ways but the day is saved by the
old scientists showing that the old ways still have some use, in fact
the final scenes, where the old use the ‘essence of the young’
shows the old ways and the new working together.
The
Quatermass conclusion is a good end to the series. It still has
the feel of the other Quatermass films but also has an end, the world
is changing and the old ways (Quatermass) are giving way to the new.
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