I can see why this 'alien' invades Earth film would have been influential to directors and perhaps shocking as well to cinema-goers in the fifties. It would certainly have had more power back then and yet while the black and white 'gore' is effectively done it is still relatively tame by today's standards.I was impressed however with some of the ambition and intelligent ideas running throughout the film, and this is important for the film to remain pretty watchable.It concerns the arrival of an alien presence via a crashed rocket. It has managed to inhabit the body of the only survivor of three astronauts who where on the rocket. The alien then mutates with other life forms of both animal and vegetable varieties It inevitably kills animals and humans in the process of doing so, and whilst doing this, it threatens to generate millions of alien offspring. The only person who seems capable of stopping it is Quatermass (Brian Donleavy) with the help of a high ranking police inspector.The actual alien is rendered in an extremely impressive way for the time, and would hold up well today. It is perhaps Richard Wordsworths portrayal as Carroon that gives this film its best moments. Carroon is the surviving astronaut, the alien first inhabits before it transforms into the alien proper. The early moments in the film when you sense the menace and uncanniness in Carroon are very well done. You expect something bad to happen and when it does happen it is done in an effective manner.Another nice moment is when the alien comes across a kid hosting a tea party with a doll, and the kid engages the Carroon character in disarming conversation - the kid herself being blithely unaware of any possible danger. The kid is unharmed by Carroon who instead dismembers her doll before he runs off.The drawbacks are the occasional stilted dialog and rather clumsy 'natural' seeming scenes. It perhaps doesn't quite work as a horror thriller today - the film alien as you might expect does rather put it in the shade in that regard. Yet it is a well done film given the limitations of the time, and central idea of an alien presence who walks or slithers amongst us remains a good one.

I saw this as a child and it scared the living daylights out of me. This is an excellent example where less is more. The less we see the more we are left to imagine. Much of this was budget-oriented, agreed, but the audience filling in the missing blanks ix excruciating. Donlevy is out of place here, unfortunately, but the "silent" character is absolutely phenomenal. The music works quite well for me and I'm a professional musician. The pacing is spot on. It's the first of the Val Guest movies for me and I'll keep my eyes peeled for others. What good horror movies they made in the fifties and early sixties! Curtis Stotlar

Hammer films started out making feature film versions of BBC TV sci- fi serials. These harder edged films although rather tame by today's standards were popular with audiences leading to Hammer specialising in the horror genre.Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) sends a rocket into space containing three astronauts and when it crash lands two of the astronauts are missing but the survivor, Victor Carroon has been taken over by an alien fungus and is slowly mutating.There are shades of Frankenstein in Carroon as he realises that he is becoming a monster and the film has nods to the James Whale Universal classic.The big problem is and a reason why creator Nigel Kneale was unhappy with this version is the characterisation of Quatermass. Donlevy was Irish born but resided in America and here he is portrayed as a ruthless little gangster than a scientist with no time or empathy for anyone. The direct approach is a world away from other portrayals of Quatermass.

Scripted by Richard Landau and director Val Guest, based on Nigel Kneale's BBC TV serial, "The Quatermass Xperiment" a.k.a. "The Creeping Unknown" is an intelligent, atmospheric, and genuinely creepy movie.A spaceship crashes back down to Earth with only one of three astronauts returning with it. Something is clearly quite wrong with the man; as it turns out, he's in the beginning stages of transforming into something else, and the stakes get raised when he inevitably escapes.Brian Donlevy is the stubborn, gruff scientist in charge, Bernard Quatermass, and he's not your typical hero from sci-fi of the era, as he doesn't exactly try to be friendly or likable. He doesn't really have the time for people with different agendas than his own. Kneale and Guest have disagreed on Donlevy's interpretation, with the author failing to be impressed with this take on the role. A strong supporting cast helps to make the movie fun to watch: Jack Warner as the intrepid Inspector Lomax, David King-Wood as Dr. Gordon Briscoe, Lionel Jeffries as Blake, Maurice Kaufmann as Marsh, Thora Hird as the comedy relief character Rosie, and especially Richard Wordsworth as the doomed astronaut Victor Carroon. His role is nearly a silent one, but he conveys a lot through the tortured expression on his face throughout. That's Jane Asher as the little girl who encounters Carroon.Guest generates some pretty good suspense at select points, and the makeup effects are definitely very good for the time. The final incarnation of the creature is appropriately hideous. One scene that really stands out is at a zoo where the music score drops out and the silence becomes palpable. This is, in this reviewer's humble opinion, the creepiest portion of the movie. James Bernard's music is quite scary, and the movie gets off to a Hell of a great start; it hits the ground running. And the pacing is efficient all the way through. This proved to be an early success for Hammer, who entered their long running Gothic period with "The Curse of Frankenstein" two years later; at this time they were known as Exclusive films.Science fiction fans will be sure to find this a genuinely interesting and tense movie that entertains solidly from beginning to end.Eight out of 10.