The Quatermass Xperiment – 1955 | 82mins | Sci-Fi, Horror | B&W

Plot Synopsis

The title, The Quatermass Xperiment, was a marketing device designed to draw a prospective audience’s attention to its status as an X certificate film. The X certificate, denoting a film for adults only, had been introduced in 1951 and had rapidly become associated with a growing explicitness vis-a-vis the representation of sex and violence.

The Quatermass Xperiment opens when a rocket crashes near a cottage in the country, two of the astronauts are missing with only their empty spacesuits remaining. The sole survivor is Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), the astronaut victim of Professor Quatermass’s (Brian Donleavy’s) failed rocket experiment. Carroons’ body begins to transform into a Frankenstein-like plant creature, the alien infestation is a primitive biological organism that absorbs human bodies. Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner) is on hand to investigate the strange mutation – but only succeeds in irritating Quatermass in his own scientific research. The film concludes with the escape of Carroon, who begins killing humans and animals to feed his metamorphosis. The monster is discovered in Westminster Abbey by a live television outside broadcast team who promptly cease transmission, thus cutting off the television audience – but not the cinema audience – from the sight of Quatermass dealing with the threat of the alien via a large electric shock.