Language - English
Genre - Sci-Fi
Set
a few years after the <Quatermass Xperiment> we find professor
Quatermass working on a project to set up a base on the moon.
He has a new rocket which has been fitted with an atomic engine
which is unstable and the ministry he is working for has just pulled
the funding for his work. Whilst returning from a meeting
Quatermass nearly crashes into another driver who is trying to get
her boyfriend to hospital after he had been burned whilst
looking at something that had fallen out of the sky. At the
same time Quatermass’ assistants
are tracking a number of objects that are falling from the sky.
Finding that the object that had hit the man in the car
was hollow Quatermass hands it to his lab for further testing and
goes to investigate where the others fell. Finding the village
of Winnerden
Flats destroyed and replaced with a facility that looks alot like his
own moon base Quatermass begins to investigate what is going on and
what the connection is with the meteor showers.
Like
the Quatermass xperiment, Quatermass 2 lets the sense of threat
build. We have the two mysteries; what is the facility at
Winnerden
Flats and what are the meteors. The two are linked quite
quickly when Quatermass
finds the ground around Winnerden Flats littered with broken meteors
but it is a while before we find out how dangerous each is.
The
size of the threat of the Winnerden Flats site is not known until the
end of the film, partly because the site is believed to be
manufacturing a synthetic food and what the meteors contain is
thought to be some kind of an infection.
Quatermass
2 seems to be about conspiracy. At first Quatermass believes
that the Winnerden Flats site is a rival project and probably
why his funding was cut. As the film progresses the
function of the site is covered up adding to the mystery so
that when it is revealed to be a plant for making synthetic food
people don't believe them causing Quatermass to investigate further.
Quatermass’ own theory about the site, that is an alien
invasion is also treated with some doubt. Other characters
think that his theories are wild and he is only spreading tales
because it does look like someone else has a more advanced version of
his moon base project. The conspiracy is heightened by the
meteors, as soon as they land the plant guards are out looking for
them, they are dressed in protective suits complete with gas masks
and they won’t speak to anyone. Anyone who handles one of the
meteors when they first fall is take ill and then take away by the
guards, by force if necessary and it is these actions that help
convince people the plant and it’s guards are more of a threat then
first seen.
In
my review of the first Quatermass film (<the quatermass
Xperiment>) I compared the film to Frankenstein and, in the same
way Quatermass 2 has elements of the early Zombie films. The
Pre ‘night of the living dead’ zombie films i have seen have the
zombies more as servants than a brain eating hoard and that can be
said of the people who are infected by the meteors, the guards appear
to be mindless shells who only protect the plant and look for the
other meteors, this may explain why they open a gate to let their
vehicles through even though there is a mob of angry villagers
already there, trying to get in. Those possessed by the meteor
aliens also have a mark, a v shaped cut on them which seems
unnecessary, if the alien is a kind of infection then it would enter
via the mouth or nose, the injuries could be seen as a throwback to
zombie movies. Of course these similarities can be drawn to
most of the ‘body snatcher’ genre of film.
One
of the main things that make the move is the Winnerden Flats plant,
the whole thing seems unearthly but has a very real feel to it. this
is down to the fact that is it filmed at a Shell Oil refinery
which is a huge industrial site with odd shaped buildings and piping
everywhere. It looks other worldly now so it must have been
even more effect back in 1957 when this was made.
I don’t think that Quatermass 2 is the best of the series but it doesn't suffer in the same way as a lot of other number 2 films do I believe that this is due to the stories being relatively unconnected, they are both sci-fi and have alien invasion but it’s different aliens and a different plan. The creature effect are not quite as good as the creature from the first film but it doesn't detract from the film
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