Sci-Fi Horror Watch: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

Watched:  07/18/2026

Format:  TCM with John Carpenter and Alicia Malone

Viewing:  First

Director:  Val Guest

SimonUK kept suggesting The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) to me during the podcast era, and I can see why.  I think mostly in England, but also among sci-fi and horror-heads in the US, the Quatermass media - of which there's more than you'd think - is considered foundational or classic.  Thus, it may have inspired things like Doctor Who (which I confess I never got into) and there's no small amount of John Carpenter's early work in this movie.  

And, in fact, I watched it because Carpenter is hosting two days of movies on TCM with Alicia Malone. 

I'd also argue - Stan and Jack may have lifted the origin of the Fantastic Four from this movie in a small way.  And if you know Jack, he was constantly reworking what he saw on the street, in movies and in culture right into his comics, so it wouldn't shock me.

The movie opens as a rocket crashes back to Earth in a field outside of London - an experiment run by scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass (a bizarrely cast Brian Donlevy in this movie).  The rocket is intact, but as the door finally opens, only one astronaut emerges and the other two are missing.  Our remaining astronaut is ill, unable to speak and seems disoriented.  

Quatermass believes in science and achievement above all else, and while everyone else is freaking out about the missing astronauts and the crash, Quatermass is very much of the opinion that he got his rocket back and one-out-of-three returning ain't bad.  However, it's clear something is horribly wrong with the astronaut, Carroon (Richard Wordsworth).  

Carroon's wife is rightfully freaking out while everyone else around him is just, like, "yes, but science.  He's fine."  He is not fine.

SPOILERS

 In fact, that's sort of not Carroon anymore - he's inhabited by an alien who is *changing* him.  He's a lifeform not entirely unlike the one imagined by Carpenter in The Thing, that takes on characteristics of the lifeforms he touches as he consumes them.  And consume them he does - usually just sucking out their life force, sort of draining them.  But also leaving behind versions of the animals and humans that are basically an extension of the creature, a horrible, reproducing thing.  

This movie is, in fact, my jam.  I even like the weirdo casting of Donlevy as Quatermass - something that makes zero sense both in the context of the film and outside of it.  

It's really well shot - really using black and white in a way maybe Hammer should have kept doing instead of relying on tomato-colored blood and variations on the Dracula set over and over.  It's one of the most thoughtfully shot movies I may have ever seen from Hammer.

And the ending?  Top tier.  This was weird and great.  And I dug practical FX throughout.  Just top tier for 1955.  Hammer was really firing on all cylinders.  This is creeping terror, and the name in the US reflects that.  This was released here as The Creeping Unknown, and that name is very on the nose.  

Anyway - I get why various folks keep trying to remake this one, and I think *they should*.  I think Comberbatch would kill it as a Quatermass.