The History of Sci-Fi and Horror's bit about this film started with what I thought was a trailer, as many of the movies were represented as such, and the images just looked like one, with the title appearing next to a skull, the camera zooming into one of the eye sockets until the screen was black, followed by a split trailing down the left side of the black screen before opening up to reveal the streets of London. Turns out, that's the film's actual opening, but it still made me realize how different this film was from the first two, in addition to learning it was made a decade after the second, was shot in color, and had a different actor playing Prof. Quatermass. Butch Patrick gave a brief synopsis of the plot, with how it entailed something being discovered underneath London that's initially thought to be an unexploded bomb from World War II but turns out to be a Martian spacecraft, and it also showed a glimpse of the Martians (which I was not impressed with, as they looked like nothing more than oversized grasshoppers and came off as very fake), as well as shot of a white silhouette of a horned head appearing above some buildings. I didn't come off as intriguing as the first two films, but it didn't matter as, like those, I didn't it until the summer of 2014, when I bought all three of them at the Spooky Empire convention in Orlando. While I can remember enjoying the first one, and then not having much of any reaction to Quatermass 2, I can't recall what my initial thoughts were of Quatermass and the Pit (I do know that I thought a bit more of it), and I must also confess that I didn't re-watch it until the early part of 2020, after I picked up Scream Factory's Blu-Ray release. A lot of people consider this to be the best of the trilogy, as well as one of Hammer's best films overall and a seminal British science fiction film, but I'm not so enthusiastic. I don't dislike it, but I'm not over the moon for it, either. For one, I prefer the creeping, black-and-white terror of the first film above the other two, and while I was kind of iffy about it initially, there are now elements of the second film that I enjoy more as well. For another, this film's story is so complex and intellectual, as well as downright bizarre, that I think it might be a bit much for me. And, while it has good actors, I can take or leave most of the actual characters, and some of the visual effects, which are more numerous here than a typical Hammer film, have not aged well.
Construction on an extension of the subway tunnels beneath Hobbs End in London is halted when the workers discover what appear to be human skeletal remains in the mud. Excavating and examining various specimens, paleontologist Dr. Matthew Roney determines that the remains are of a species of ape-man that lived five million years in the past, making them far older than any previous such finds. The excavation also uncovers the side of an object in the clay wall that appears to be made of metal. Fearing it might be an unexploded warhead, a bomb disposal unit is called in, only to find that the object doesn't react to magnetism and that there's no ticking within it. The unit calls in missile expert Colonel Breen, who, at that moment, has been assigned to the British Experimental Rocket Group, headed by Prof. Bernard Quatermass. Quatermass is not happy about the rocket group being taken over by the military or the idea of having to work with Breen, but accompanies him when he's called over to Hobbs End. Looking at the object, Breen believes it to be some sort of German weapon from World War II, but when an intact skull is found within a chamber on its underside, Roney and Quatermass surmise that it must be five million years old as well. Though Roney feels the ape-men are of earthly origin, Quatermass comes to believe that the object, eventually revealed to be a type of strange craft with unusual properties, is alien in nature. A member of the bomb disposal team sees a frightening apparition while working in a hollow chamber within it, and his description matches up with those of other such specters that Quatermass and Barbara Judd, Roney's assistant, find have been reported in the area through many centuries. Initially, an attempt to break through the chamber's wall with a borazon drill proves ineffectual, when the wall suddenly disintegrates to reveal the preserved bodies of large, insect-like creatures. The bodies, which rapidly deteriorate when exposed to the air, are examined by Roney's team, and Quatermass comes to believe that they are Martians, as well as the inspiration for ancient images of the devil, gargoyles, and other supernatural beings. He theorizes that, in an attempt to escaped their dying world, and unable to adapt to Earth's atmosphere, they experimented on the primitive apes that were then the dominant species and enhanced their intelligence, as well as imparted upon them Martin faculties that still exist in the subconscious of their modern day descendants: man. Though Breen and the government officials dismiss Quatermass' theory, they're unaware that he's not only right but that the craft contains a deadly force that, once unleashed, could destroy London.
Initially, I thought the reason for the ten-year gap between Quatermass 2 and this was due to Hammer becoming sidetracked by the success of their Gothic horrors, which began the same year as Quatermass 2, but, in actuality, they started planning to adapt Quatermass and the Pit into a film just a couple of years after the television serial aired. The problem came down to financing. When development began in 1961, Hammer's chief distributor and financing partner was Columbia Pictures, who expressed no interest in the property (which isn't hard to understand, given how Quatermass meant nothing to American audiences, which led to the first two films being released here under different titles, as would also be the case with this one). By the mid-60's, however, Hammer and Columbia's partnership had ended, and the studio struck a new deal with Seven Arts, Associated British Picture Corporation, and Twentieth Century Fox, who distributed their films like Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Rasputin, the Mad Monk, The Plague of the Zombies, and The Reptile, among others, and they agreed to co-finance Quatermass and the Pit.
After that, Roney isn't seen again until he takes part in Quatermass' attempt to recreate what happened to Sladden and use his machine in conjunction with the rocket group's special video equipment to record what happens within a subject's mind. (Roney himself is the one who proves it'll work, as it manages to record an image from his subconscious after he's fallen asleep.) He and Jerry Watson, a technician from the rocket group, monitor what's happening from a safe distance as Quatermass tries to get the craft's influence to operate through him, when Barbara proves to be the one who's really susceptible to it. Roney is also present when Quatermass presents the recording to Breen and the government officials, only for it to be dismissed like everything else. And during the chaos that occurs during the climax, Roney gets caught up in it and has to snap Quatermass out of the influence the craft's energy exerts over him. Roney himself is never affected by it and they deduce that there may be some who are simply immune to it, while Quatermass describes what was going through his head, particularly a need to kill anything different. He believes it's the Martians' very long delayed plan of colonization coming to pass, and Roney has him join him in trying to find a way to stop it. The core of the craft's energy appears in the form of a spectral, devil-like head looming over the skyline, and Roney theorizes that if he were to make contact with the image using a mass of iron, he might be able to discharge it into the earth. They decide to use a crane arm near the image to do so, with Roney ultimately having to do it himself. He climbs up the crane and tries to swing the arm into the specter, when the ground beneath the crane splits open it and falls towards it. The metal touching it causes an explosion that kills Roney but succeeds in dispersing the energy and saving London.
Edwin Richfield, an actor who previously had a small part in Quatermass 2, appears here as an irritable minister of defense, one who is livid when Quatermass goes public with his and Roney's findings that the creatures found in the craft are Martians, without getting permission to do so, as he's now getting phone calls from various officials about it, including the prime minister. He has Quatermass brought in to explain himself and Quatermass tells him and Colonel Breen his theory about the Martians' experiments on the primitive ape-men and how the effects of such work have been passed down to modern man. The minister then incredulously exclaims, "You realize what you are implying? That we owe our human condition here to the intervention of insects!... So, that's your great theory?!" He, instead, goes with Breen's theory about the ship having been a last minute attempt at propaganda on the Nazis' part, with the creatures having been convincing fakes to lend credence to it, and tells the home secretary that the whole thing was nothing but a false alarm. Later, when Quatermass and his team show them the recording of the Martian purge from Barbara's mind while under the ship's influence, the defense minister, after describing it as "most curious," again writes it off as nothing more than an image created by Barbara's overactive imagination. He then decides to let the press go down and look at the object, angrily telling Quatermass to stay out of it when he tries to warn him of the danger, leading to the massive disaster that occurs in the third act.
For his first movie with Hammer, Roy Ward Baker was kind of spoiled, as not only was he working with a pretty generous budget for the studio (275,000 pounds), but he and Bernard Robinson were also able to make use of the large backlot and sound-stages of the MGM Borehamwood studio, as no other movies were being shot there at the time. (It might have given him a false impression of working for the studio that was likely corrected on some of the other films he made for them.) As a result, the film has a bigger scope and feel than any of the movies Hammer shot at Bray, especially when they make use of the backlot for the streets outside of the Hobbs End subway station, allowing them to stage large riots of panicking and maddened people, and pieces of the buildings crumbling around the actors. Set-wise, the most significant one is that of the underground tunnel, which is initially a subway tunnel under construction, with a big wall of mud in the back that's excavated over time, revealing a much larger space housing the Martian ship. Regardless, it makes for a very claustrophobic setting, as do the cramped interiors of the ship, and while they're both often well lit by the lights lining the tunnel ceiling, it becomes quite dark in there whenever the lights go out. The other sets in the film are serviceable and look nice, like the meeting room that figures in a few scenes and Dr. Roney's lab at the institute, and I especially like the interiors of the old, rundown buildings across the street from the subway that Quatermass and Barbara Judd investigate early on, as you wouldn't be surprised to learn they're rumored to be haunted (there's a nice, eerie touch of unexplained scratch marks on the wall behind the door). And the movie does make use of location shooting, such as the actual streets of London and St. Nicholas Church for the scene where Sladden runs off in a panic.
Once it's finally revealed in all its glory, the Martian spacecraft proves to be a real beauty of a prop, both in its impressive size and its design: dark-gray, with a shiny, reflective surface, a number of rounded angles in its shape, including its nose-cone, and a vaguely rectangular opening in its side that leads into a small chamber with a wall that has a pentangle-like marking on it. The ship is said and shown to have properties such as being able to withstand continuous exposure to a blowtorch, cause frostbite-like damage to someone who touches it without gloves, even though it itself isn't cold, and an interior that's very slippery. It also appears to withstand the borazon drill that Sladden uses on the wall, but then, a hole suddenly appears in the wall, followed by it disintegrating to reveal a honeycomb-like formation that looks as if it's made of crystal, containing the long-preserved bodies of the locust-like Martians which are exposed to the air when the structure crumbles apart. Most notably, it draws energy from any source it can obtain and its very hull is said to contain memories of life on Mars, suggesting that it is somewhat alive itself. But, while the ship is a cool prop, the same can't be said for the Martians, which look like they're made of plastic; as I said in the introduction, they came off as bad to me even when I saw a clip of their reveal in The History of Sci-Fi and Horror when I was just fourteen. At the time, I didn't know they were meant to be dead, so that alleviates what I initially thought about their stiff movements when they "break" through the chamber they're contained in, but they still don't look that great. They're given a bit more of an organic feel when they begin to deteriorate upon being exposed to the air, with green, slimy blood oozing and dripping out of them, but even then, I find it hard to take it seriously because, purely and simply, they're oversized grasshoppers with three legs arranged in a tripod shape! I don't know who thought that was a cool design and concept, but it doesn't work for me at all.That leads us into the subject of the special and visual effects work, the former of which were specifically created by Les Bowie. As I said in the introduction, some of this stuff has not aged well at all, with even those who hold the film in high regard agreeing that it is a major flaw, but that's mainly on the visual effects side. The physical effects, such as various objects floating in midair (which come to include oil drums and wheelbarrels) and powerful gusts of wind created by the ship's telekinetic influence, and the sets crumbling, with big chunks of them getting blown around the actors during the climax, look quite good (minus how said chunks of concrete bounce like they're made of rubber). The same goes for the miniatures created for the wide-shots of the buildings crumbling and collapsing, and the streets cracking open and rising up, which would have made Eiji Tsuburaya proud. It's in the matting effects where things tend to go sideways. Some of them are fine, like the effect of the wall inside the ship's chamber cracking and disintegrating to reveal the Martians in their crystal-like structure, halo effects that are used to show that the ship is starting to become active during the third act, and the shots of the big spectral image of the Martian head that appears above the city skyline, which is well matted into the live-action footage. But, the effect of the ship repeatedly glowing bright white, with vein-like lines running through it, comes off as rather archaic and non-organic, like it was merely painted on. The same goes for the blue screen effects used during the ending, when Dr. Roney climbs the crane and rides it as it falls into the image of the Martian; the outlines around him and against the matted-in background are painfully obvious. But, the biggest special effects failure, sadly, comes during a moment that's very crucial to the plot: the presentation of the recording of the Martian purge that occurred millions of years ago. The scratchy quality of the imagery aside, it's impossible to take what you're seeing seriously, as what Quatermass describes as a slaughter of any and all mutations discovered within the Martian colony instead looks like hundreds of tiny, stiff puppets running and bouncing along a barely discernible rocky landscape, with some random images flying across the screen, little explosions in the background, and close-ups of the puppets stopping or seemingly lunging at the camera. The actors try to play it off as strange and disturbing, but it comes off about as well as it did in The Giant Claw when the actors acted all shocked upon seeing close-up images of the goofy-looking monster. In fact, it might be even a little worse here, given how that was a silly B-movie, whereas this is meant to be a serious and thoughtful science fiction film.
In the next shot, a constable puts down a sign right outside a barrier on the street outside the subway that reads, POLICE NOTICE. UNEXPLODED BOMB. KEEP CLEAR. The bomb disposal unit arrives and is led down to the tunnel and then to the spot where the "bomb" is, as Roney watches from the walkway leading to it. Wiping away some extra mud on it, the leader of the bomb unit, Captain Potter, prepares to use a special stethoscope to listen for any ticking, and is surprised when the magnetized mic at the end won't hold onto the side of it. Holding it there with his hand, he says he doesn't hear any ticking, and also notes that there's no corrosion on the exposed surface. They decide to unearth a little more of it and, while taking a break after doing so, Potter says that he doesn't believe the object is made of any type of metal. An impatient Roney asks how much longer it's going to take, and also notes that, given his young age, he couldn't have the wartime experience necessary for such a job. Irked at his suggestion that they should get a second opinion, he reluctantly does, and a call goes out for Colonel Breen, who's currently having a tense meeting with Prof. Quatermass over the military applications being applied to his moon colonization project and his joining him at the rocket group at the end of the week. After Howell, the government official who arranged the meeting, leaves them alone, Breen invites Quatermass to have dinner with him at his club that night as a way of smoothing things over between them. He's then given the note about his being requested at Hobbs End and decides to go down and look into it, even though he's no longer involved with bomb disposal. He asks Quatermass if he would mind stopping there on the way to dinner and the professor reluctantly grabs his hat and walks out the door. In the next scene, they arrive at Hobbs End, and there's a moment where, while getting out of the back of the chauffeured car, Breen forgets that Quatermass is behind him and nearly closes the door on him as he climbs out. The two of them head down to the tunnel, and a sergeant, Cleghorn, leads them to the spot, where Potter is waiting for them. By this point, they've unearthed more of the object, including a chamber on its underside, but Potter says they've found nothing but impacted clay within it. Breen and Quatermass climb up to have a better look, and while Breen immediately figures it's a German v-weapon, Quatermass isn't so sure. One of the men excavating the object finds something amid the clay within its chamber, and when a light is brought to it and the clay is washed away, it's revealed to be another skull. Potter asks a corporal to fetch Roney but he comes running down upon hearing his name mentioned and climbs up to the object. Breen momentarily stops him, not knowing he is, but Roney yanks his arm free and digs out the skull. Quatermass tells Breen who Roney is and Breen proclaims he no longer has any business there. Roney pays him no mind, as he's ecstatic at the great condition of the skull and quickly takes it back to completely clean it up and examine it more closely.
Quatermass wonders how the skull got inside the chamber without being broken, and he doesn't buy Breen's explanation that it got rammed through when the "missile" came down through the ground. He joins Roney and Barbara, as the former scrapes the clay off the skull, and asks him how it could have kept from being smashed. That's when Roney realizes that it was indeed in the chamber on the object's underside, proving that it's not a bomb, especially when the skull's five million year age is taken into account. Meanwhile, Breen looks over the civil defense records of Hobbs Lane over the years and learns that the only wartime damage was to some abandoned houses, which he believes means that they were evacuated. But, Quatermass is told by a constable that the houses in question were long abandoned before the war, as people simply refused to live in them because of, "Some sort of scare." He leads Quatermass up to the street to show him, and at the same time, Roney advises Barbara to go up and get some fresh air. When she does, she joins Quatermass and the constable as the latter points out the rundown old houses across the street from them. Taking a flashlight, he leads them over to the buildings and they enter through the door, into the hollowed out interior. As he looks around, Quatermass asks the constable if he knows why the buildings were abandoned and he says that when he was young, he knew a kid who lived there and that the family was driven out by strange sounds and unsettling apparitions. Though he says they were just nonsense, he's clearly not comfortable being there, sweating and beginning to breathe in a more labored manner. The door slowly creaks shut by itself, revealing what appear to be claw marks on the wall behind it. Barbara points them out to Quatermass, and when he asks the constable what could have made them, he says it was just kids playing around, but by this point, he looks and sounds like he's a second away from passing out and runs out the door. Quatermass and Barbara join him outside, where he apologizes and says it must have gotten too warm for him in there. Quatermass hands him back his flashlight and the two of them walk back across the street. There, Breen tells him he intends to stay on the case for a day or two and Quatermass, in turn, says he's interested in doing the same, which Breen is okay with. After telling him the entire object should be unearthed by morning, and offering Quatermass a ride home, which he politely declines, the colonel drives off. Quatermass tells Barbara she might want to go down and help Roney pack up, when she notes a newer version of the Hobbs Lane nameplate above an old one, which is spelled, "HOB'S LANE." She comments that the older spelling of the name was once a nickname for the devil.
Later, Barbara brings Quatermass to the church and they're led inside by the vicar. They find Sladden slumped in a chair across from the vicar's desk; he recognizes and greets Barbara, while Quatermass tells the vicar to call the doctor. The vicar, however, says he knows, given the sounds he heard, that Sladden has come into contact with "spiritual evil." Quatermass, despite the vicar's concerns, says he must question him. He asks him what happened down in the tunnel, and initially, Sladden seems totally out of it, but when Quatermass reminds him of the objects that were flying through the air, he becomes panicked. He tells Quatermass, "I had to run, to get away! They were coming!... Them! Them!" The vicar tries to stop the questioning but Sladden continues, "I remember it started, and then, I could only see them! Like you found down there, with their eyes, horns...!" Barbara and Quatermass realize he's talking about the Martians, as Sladden exclaims, "They were alive!... Hopping like a field-mouse, and hundreds and hundreds! I knew I was one!" Quatermass asks him to again to describe how they moved and Sladden exclaims, "Jumping! Leaping!" The vicar, again, tells Quatermass to stop but he asks Sladden where the creatures were and he says, "In and out! Them big places! In and out of them! Oh, huge, right up into the sky!" Quatermass asks, "What color is it? Blue?!", and Sladden, having worn himself out with his raving, mumbles, "No. Dark... dark... purple," and his head slowly slumps over to his left. Suddenly, the sound picks up again and the room starts shaking, with curtains billowing, papers flying off the desk, and a large candelabra nearly toppling over, which Quatermass holds still. It then subsides as suddenly as it drummed up, and the vicar admonishes Quatermass for his interrogation, saying Sladden isn't completely free of whatever it is. Quatermass, in turn, suggests it was always within Sladden, as well as in everyone else, describing it as dormant faculties like clairvoyance and telekinesis. The vicar believes Quatermass is trying to explain it all away with science but the professor tells him, "On the contrary, I agree with you. What's been uncovered is evil, as ancient and diabolic as anything on record. I think what he gave us just now was a vision of life on Mars five million years ago. That, and the unconscious ability to cause movement. They're old powers that can be awakened, somehow, by that thing in the pit." Barbara asks if they should tell the ministry but Quatermass answers they wouldn't believe them, that they need concrete proof. He decides to work from the institute.
Some time later, Quatermass, Roney, Watson, and Barbara prepare to show the defense minister, Breen, and other officials the recording, telling them that they're about to see a memory recorded within the very hull of the craft in the pit, specifically, "A race purge. A cleansing of the Martian hives." They roll the tape and the images are projected onto a screen at the front of the room. It shows thousands of the creatures running and hopping across a barren landscape, with explosions around them and hordes of them piling up dead. While Barbara is disturbed at having to relive this memory again, Breen and the defense minister clearly don't know what to make of what they're seeing. Once the projection is done, everyone sits in silence for a few seconds, until the minister describes what they've seen as, "Most curious." Howell notes that the creatures were the same as those they found in the craft and Quatermass explains, "You saw that they were killing and being killed. I think we may have witnessed a ritual slaughter to preserve a fixed society, to rid it of mutations... That's the way they lived, and it's the way they intended their substitutes on Earth to live." Breen grumbles, "Not again," but Quatermass tells the minister that he fears this memory of killing could be coupled with the craft's power to redirect human energy. Breen writes it off as nonsense, saying that what he himself felt before was some vibration effects and nothing more. The minister offers up his own explanation: the machine records hallucinations, which is what it picked up from Barbara's overactive imagination. He then flat-out tells Quatermass that he believes he's wrong in this matter and that he's going to admit people down to the tunnel that very night. Quatermass warns him not to but the minister growls, "My duty now is to quiet public alarm, and you, up till now a government officer with the same duty... you keep your damn paws out of things!", and storms out, followed by Breen.
Quatermass tells Roney, "This is the image that was buried in the hull: the compulsion to preserve their colony. Destroy all that didn't belong to it, draining the whole energy of London to turn it into a Martian colony." He further tells him that it is the truth of what's happening, even after millions of years of the ship being buried. Roney has Quatermass follow him through the streets, as buildings fall apart around them and the ground pushes upward, with an unearthly glow shining through the cracks. They avoid falling chunks of concrete, stopping when a section of the street caves in right in front of them, breaking a water line that sprays them in the face. They take cover on the sidewalk, when they look up to see the top of a building collapse, followed by the appearance of a large, spectral image of a Martian's head. Roney tells Quatermass not to look at it and guides him to safety back down the street, in the abandoned building he and Barbara investigated before. Seeing the image out the window, they determine it to be the core of everything that's happening and close the shutters. Thinking of the concept of "mass into energy," and remembering an old legend about the devil's enemy being iron, Roney feels if they touch it with a mass of metal, it may be connected to the ground and discharged into the earth. Though it seems too simple, they decide to go for it, spying a nearby construction crane. Quatermass, despite Roney's warning, opts to try it and the two of them rush out of the building. They head for the gate leading to the construction site, when Quatermass sees Barbara down the street, as she's being drawn to the image. Once they get the gate open, Roney sends Quatermass to stop her, while he starts climbing up the crane. Quatermass runs past a wall of fire, which reaches the base of the crane, and then comes back around and grabs Barbara from behind. She looks at him with a crazed expression and struggles against his grip, forcing him to restrain her.
Like Val Guest and Brian Donlevy, composer James Bernard was not involved with the third Quatermass film; instead, the music score was provided by Tristram Cary. This is going to be another instance where I don't have much to say about the music, which is very sparse, with very long periods without any score, as except for the downbeat, melancholy piece that plays over the ending credits, none of it is that memorable. Moreover, most of it, like the opening title music and the music that plays during a moment of the climax, are far more overbearing and blatant than what Bernard is always criticized for (though, admitedly, the music you hear during the scene where Quatermass and Barbara search around the abandoned building is nicely subtle and somewhat spooky). More impressive than the music was Cary's creation of the vibrating, piercing sound caused by the alien craft, which gets really intense at points and in some instances, like when Sladden flees the station and runs to the church, sounds almost demonic.
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