Quatermass and The Pit (film) - Reception

Reception

Quatermass and the Pit premiered on 9 November 1967 and went on general release in a double bill with Circus of Fear on 19 November 1967. It was released under the title Five Million Years to Earth in the US in March 1968. The critical reception was generally positive. Writing in The Times, John Russell Taylor found that, “After a slowish beginning, which shows up the deficiencies of acting and direction, things really start hopping when a mysterious missile-like object discovered in a London excavation proves to be a relic of a prehistoric Martian attempt (successful. it would seem) to colonize Earth The development of this situation is scrupulously worked out and the film is genuinely gripping even when (a real test this) the Power of Evil is finally shown personified in hazy glowing outline, a spectacle as a rule more likely to provoke titters than gasps of horror.” Paul Errol of the Evening Standard described the film as a “well-made, but wordy, blob of hokum”, a view echoed by William Hall of the Evening News who described the film as “entertaining hokum” with an “imaginative ending”. A slightly more critical view was espoused by Penelope Mortimer in The Observer who said, “This nonsense makes quite a good film, well put together, competently photographed, on the whole sturdily performed. What it totally lacks is imagination.”