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      Five Million Years to Earth

      1967 1h 38m Sci-Fi List
      Reviews 100% Audience Score Fewer than 50 Ratings When prehistoric skeletons are discovered during an expansion of the London Underground, palaeontologist Matthew Roney (James Donald) believes them to be remnants of early man. But the strange metal object found with them is tougher to explain, and Professor Bernard Quatermass (Andrew Keir) thinks it evidence that the creatures came from space. More digging in the area reveals the corpses of actual Martians and a strange energy field that sends London into a panic. Read More Read Less

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      Matthew B For many years Quatermass and the Pit has been my favourite science-fiction movie. I am not talking here about whether it is the best sci-fi film ever made. Is it better than 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example? I doubt that many people would feel that Roy Ward Baker is a better director than Stanley Kubrick. I am not even sure whether Baker was a better director than Val Guest who directed the earlier Quatermass movies, The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. Guest put his individual stamp on the films, and added an element of realism to balance the fantastical stories. Baker brings no particularly new look to the story. What Baker does well is to maintain the pace and excitement, and to tell the story with economy but without sacrificing too much of the intelligent material from Nigel Kneale's original teleseries. The film essentially tells the same story as the TV version, and in half the time. Compare that to The Quatermass Xperiment which tore out the heart of the original story. It is perhaps fortunate that Quatermass and the Pit had to wait several years before it was originally intended to be made. After adapting the first two Quatermass stories, Hammer Film Productions lost interest in the Quatermass series and opted to make horror movies instead. Had the film been made years earlier, it would once again have had Val Guest as director and Brian Donlevy playing Quatermass. I am sure it would have been a decent sequel, but it would have lost too much of the original story. Instead the film came out in 1967, ten years after Quatermass 2. This allowed Nigel Kneale the chance to take more creative control of his story. A new director (who stuck more faithfully to the story) and a better lead actor were chosen. As a result, this was the only film adaptation of his Quatermass stories that Kneale liked. The facts slowly unfold like a detective story, as the scientists put together the pieces. Indeed their findings are so far outside their usual field of knowledge that it is not even certain how far their theories are correct. However later events, and the solutions that the scientists propose seem to work, so presumably they are broadly right. Perhaps it is unsurprising that the story has been leaped on by people who wish to see a counter-culture or alternative message in Kneale's tale. This could not be further from the Kneale's intention. As anyone who has seen Kneale's final Quatermass story, made in the 1970s and simply called Quatermass, will know, Kneale had little time for counter-culture or rebellious youth movements. Instead Kneale puts his trust in rationalism. The explanations Kneale offers in Quatermass and the Pit establish the basic principle that what we see as supernatural or unearthly occurrences probably have a logical explanation. Maybe not the explanation offered here, but something like it. As Quatermass observes at one point, "I suppose it's possible for – ghosts – let's use the word – to be phenomena that were badly observed and wrongly explained." Admittedly, as is often the case in Kneale's stories, the rational and scientific minds are perplexed by unusual phenomena outside their experience. Though Kneale himself appears to be a man of reason, he understands the seductive power of the mind to weave its own unreasonable fears, and he realises that often being rational is not enough to prevail in the end. Quatermass does come out on top in all of Kneale's stories, but there is usually a sacrifice involved, and other Kneale heroes are not as lucky. Here the story is a celebration of science and reason. Scientists are the heroes, and the military are the problem. This is typified in the figure of Colonel Breen, a rigid and narrow-minded man who is unable to cope with a situation outside his understanding. In the original teleseries, his character was balanced by the clear-headed and perceptive Captain Potter, but in the film there is no counterweight of equal size, though Potter and the lower ranking soldiers seem sensible enough. Looming over the entire story is the shadow of World War 2. The events in Quatermass and the Pit are triggered by the fear of an unexploded bomb. The Martians have engaged in genocidal acts reminiscent of the Holocaust. There is a serious concern here that unless we learn to understand the aggressive instincts in humanity, and find a way to manage them, that we may risk rendering Earth as uninhabitable as Mars. Inevitably the film does finally give audiences the exciting conclusion that they have been waiting for, but by the time it arrives, many viewers will have been captured by the slow-burning story, and hopefully given a more satisfying experience than is often found in a conventional action movie. I wrote a longer appreciation of Quatermass and the Pit if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2020/04/03/quatermass-and-the-pit-1967-a-k-a-five-million-years-to-earth/ Rated 5 out of 5 stars 09/03/23 Full Review Blobbo X A classic of its time. Has special place in Blobbo heart. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/09/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      Movie Info

      Synopsis When prehistoric skeletons are discovered during an expansion of the London Underground, palaeontologist Matthew Roney (James Donald) believes them to be remnants of early man. But the strange metal object found with them is tougher to explain, and Professor Bernard Quatermass (Andrew Keir) thinks it evidence that the creatures came from space. More digging in the area reveals the corpses of actual Martians and a strange energy field that sends London into a panic.
      Director
      Roy Ward Baker
      Production Co
      Hammer Film Productions Limited
      Genre
      Sci-Fi
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (DVD)
      Sep 17, 2008
      Runtime
      1h 38m