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Quatermass & the Pit 1958 BBC serial in six parts

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Posted at 2020-02-19 20:13:15(253Wks ago) Report Permalink URL

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Welcome to the First Nighter Theater.

Your usual seat? Of course it is available in the balcony

Tonight's offering;
A British science fiction serial transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959.
It was the third and last of the Quatermass serials written by Nigel Kneale. Enjoy
(*more on Nigel & the production below the trailer)

Episode 1
The Halfmen;

Prof. Quatermass is resisting the War office planners of a grisly rocket project known as the Dead Man's Deterrent.
Workmen on a construction/demolition site in Hobbs Lane, London discover a pre-human skull which excites the attention of Dr Matthew Roney (Cec Linder) a paleontologist who is baffled and thrilled by the skulls large brain volume that suggests a primitive man hitherto unknown to science. Dr Roney estimates to be five million years old.

But then comes an interruption - Excavation work at a building site in Hobbs Lane, London, but a strange object is uncovered.
What at first appears to be an unexploded bomb. Most everyone feels a strange, foreboding atmosphere around the object, a sensation of unease. History of the area; Hobbs Lane was formerly Hob’s Lane, Hob being an antiquated name for the Devil, and there are tales of ghosts and poltergeists told by locals and in press articles over decades.

Episode 2
The Ghosts

Quatermass and his newly appointed military superior at the British Rocket Group, Colonel Breen, become involved
in the investigation. To Quatermass it becomes apparent that the object is an alien spacecraft.But Col. Breen believes the projectile is a
bomb, a German propaganda weapon - however it's cold to the touch, slightly radioactive and made of an unknown substance.
Roney's assistant Barbara Judd finds the area has a history of supernatural events dating back hundreds of years.
More fossils are found as the strange metallic object is uncovered. Roney dates the fossils to some five million
years, and one skull comes from the object. Suggesting that the object has been buried all that time, a finding Colonel Breen considers ridiculous, instead hypothesizing that the object is an experimental German bomb that failed to explode during the Blitz. Whatever it is, it is large and hollow, the interior apparently empty but for etchings on one interior bulk head that is an occult pentacle. As the UXO team is mucking out and pumping water from the interior of the craft when Pvt West who was inside the craft screams & claims to have seen an imp-like ghost: 'It went through the wall!'[/i].

Episode 3
Imps and Demons
Further excavation reveals a craft that's outer shell has long since disentigrated. It's hollow inside and another skull is found there. Tests
on the mud and clay near the end of the craft show metallic residue and radiation. And Lab tests postulate some form of nuclear reactor...except that the dating shows over 5 million years old, so the lab questions the samples.
The inside of the craft is covered in what we call symbols associated with witchcraft. The hatch is found a few yards from the craft, but it could have only been unscrewed...from the inside.

Five minutes with a blow torch produces nothing, not even heat off of the hatch.
The inner bulk head reveals a circular edge that may be able to be unscrewed. They use a contractor Sladden with borazon drill which does nothing but sets off spectral sounds and vibratory waves through the area affecting only certain personnel. Roney & Quatermass research the area and find reports dating back to the 13th century of ghosts/demons/sounds in the Hob's area. All have a common thread of people massing and disturbances of the earth around the craft.
Further review of the failed drill attempt shows a hole - not drilled - but melted, from the inside. As they pry off this hatch, Quatermass and Breen come face to face with 3 horned anthropoid creatures suspended in a membrane. As if they are wired into the ship.

Episode 4
The Enchanted
Roney and Quatermass develop their theory about the Martians' visit to Earth, instilling their essence into man's ancestors. It becomes obvious to them that the aliens, had been abducting pre-humans and modifying them through genetic engineering/surgery
to give them psychic abilities like their own before returning them to Earth. A genetic legacy passed down to certain people.

The Captain of the UXO team wonders, if as Quatermass said, that the membrane was nerve endings, since it appeared to be into the very structure of the hull, was it somehow alive.
Breen and Quatermass are summoned to the War Office. Quatermass gives his theory making mankind descendants of the Martian engineered apes.
This is summarily denounced by Breen. Who clings to the belief of a Nazi propaganda weapon that has instilled the fear it was supposed to do...only now instead of WWII.
He explains away the bodies found as those one sees in a carnival side show.Hoaxes made up of parts and pieces.
The Minister readily buys into this as a neat way to get out of the predicament now.
Sladden, alone in the pit, flees in terror as strange forces are conjured up, objects moving of their own volition. And this poltergeist activity follows him to a church.

Episode 5
The Wild Hunt
Roney has been working a a modified brain EEG scanner. Which he calls an "Optical Electroencephalograph" that interprets signals from the vision center of the brain into televised pictures.

At the site Roney's main assistant Barbara Judd dons the device and it reveals alien picture memory of Mars: Her mind grasps memories stored in the craft of [i]'the Wild Hunt' - a frenetic purging of the Martian hives of all not up to standards.Those without the capacity of telekeisis, second sight, wind creation and so on.
Quatermass & Roney present this to the powers that be, and are summarily dismissed as Col Breen still insists it's nothing more than a German weapon of propaganda and along with vibration effects are the cause of exactly what happened. They open the site at night to all. Press, Radio, TV.
A technician hooking up a high power cable in the craft sets off a massive electrical charge killing one. But then changes start to rapidly
occur in the wall of the craft. It is now fully energized and the embedded intelligence is awake...

Episode 6
Hob
The craft begins to glow and gives off a fluctuating tones.Chaos reigns in the pit and the long-dormant Martian Supreme Intelligence begins to assert itself in many people in the area - including Quatermass himself - driving them to start a new purge, A new Wild Hunt begins. Roney finds Quatermass and forces him into a pub. Outside the sounds of screams and murder. Huge crowds running wild. Breen and a few others crouch mezmerized near the glowing craft.Captain Potter and Ann have taken refuge in the 'haunted house'. Those descended from the Martian apes use Telekinetic forces hurl objects/debris against others not like them. The craft melts open and an energy form rises up over London.

Roney finding that he is one of those immune to the
psychic call strives to defeat it. By calling upon the old myth of Iron and the Devil.

Trailer;

The Writer;

Nigel Kneale is one of those writers whom other writers fawn over, particularly within the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
His influence is vast and continues to this day. In the UK, Kneale and his most lasting creation, Professor Bernard Quatermass, are well known.
Kneale's first serial for the BBC was 1953's The Quatermass Experiment (1953), which introduced the brilliant and philosophical scientist in an exciting story about the first manned spaceflight and its terrible consequences. Its massive success led to two more serials featuring the character,
1955's Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit (1958). These were all live television productions, by the way, involving complex staging and extremely ambitious special effects for the time, many done by Kneale himself.

In Quatermass and the Pit, Kneale doesn't use science to dispel superstition but to prove that the frightening myths and legends were always true.
During the film's suspenseful climax, Dr. Roney puts his faith in the probability that the scientific truth behind an old superstition will defeat the "evil".

During this period immigration into Britain from the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean was on the increase, causing some resentment among elements of the British. At the time Kneale was working on his script black communities in Nottingham and London came under attack from mobs of white Britons; Kneale became keen to develop the serial as an allegory for the emerging racial tensions that culminated in the Notting Hill race riots of August and September 1958.

62 years later...not much has changed has it? Anywhere.

The Production;
Made just before videotape became general at the BBC, all six episodes of Quatermass and the Pit were only preserved
for a possible repeat by being telerecorded on 35 mm film.This was achieved with a specially-synchronised
film camera capturing the output of a video monitor; the process had been refined throughout the 1950s and
recordings of Quatermass and the Pit are of high technical quality.

Incredibly, each episode was mostly live, broadcast from BBC studios in Hammersmith, London, with only a few sequences previously shoton film (due to technical issues such as location shooting or reliance on physical special effects etc) & inserted during the performance.
Any mistakes can’t be fixed by an editor!
Fortunately everyone seems to have been well prepared. rehearsals took place between the Tuesday
and Saturday prior to each Monday transmission. Camera rehearsals taking place on the day of transmission.
There’s clearly that tension of live performance, slight timing issues that might have been edited on film had to be accepted here.
There’s a lovely moment when Quatermass walks into an office and the door doesn’t close behind him as intended, and he turns during
his line and closes it in passing before putting his hat and coat away. Its just a little thing, really, but its a ‘real’ moment that
the actor has to nonchalantly react to, as if he were in a theater. The tension and edginess of being a live performance translates well into the subject matter and tactile horrors of the story.
Best
Paladin