Quatermass 2 - Legacy

Legacy

Although commercially successful, Quatermass 2’s release was largely overshadowed by the box-office record breaking performance of Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein, which was also released in May 1957. For this reason, although Nigel Kneale had written a new Quatermass serial for the BBC, Quatermass and the Pit (broadcast December 1958 to January 1959), Hammer did not acquire the rights until 1961 and the film version did not appear until 1967. Quatermass 2 is notable, however, for being the first film Hammer pre-sold to a major US distributor, in this case United Artists. This new finance and distribution deal would become the norm for subsequent Hammer films and led to them eventually winding down their own distribution arm, Exclusive Films, in the mid-1960s.

Critical opinion of Quatermass 2 in the years since its release remains divided. Writing in Science Fiction in the Cinema, John Baxter found the film “a faithful but ponderous adaptation of Kneale's TV sequel. There are effective sequences, director Guest and cameraman Gerald Gibbs shooting with light lancing up through the shadows in a manner reminiscent of Jacques Tourneur's Night (or Curse) of the Demon. Otherwise the film is indifferent”. Similarly, John Brosnan, in his book The Primal Screen wrote, “Quatermass 2 isn't as good as the first one, despite a bigger budget. Again the theme is possession (all four Quatermass stories are variations on the same theme) with Kneale again cleverly mixing sf with the supernatural. The alien invasion may be sf but it is presented with the trappings of traditional horror, such as the V-shaped “mark of the devil” that all possessed people display”. On the other hand, Bill Warren, in Keep Watching The Skies! found Quatermass 2 to be “one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s. It is not notably better than, but the story idea is more involving, the production is livelier and there are more events in the unfolding of the story”. Kim Newman in 1986 praised the film as “extraordinary” and, comparing it to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Newman notes that while Don Siegel’s film is “a general allegory” about dehumanisation and conformity, Quatermass 2 is “a specific attack on the Conservative Government of the time, down to the inclusion of several characters obviously based on real political figures”.

The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss, mentions on the DVD commentary for the First Series, that during the scene where Benjamin phones Barbara to arrange an exit from Royston Vasey, two workmen who have been abducted by Tubs and Edward escape, covered in tar, was inspired by a scene during which Vincent Broadhead is covered in "Synthetic Food" from one of the storage tanks.