One night, a rocket-ship crashes to Earth near a farmhouse in the English countryside. The authorities are soon on the scene and cordon off the area, as the head of the British-American Rocket Group, Prof. Quatermass, heads to the site, accompanied by his assistant Marsh, physician Gordon Briscoe, Defense Ministry official Blake, and Judith Carroon, the wife of one of the ship's three astronauts. Arriving there, they attempt to establish contact with the crew inside, initially receiving no response but then briefly hearing a light tapping over the radio. Desperate to get inside, Quatermass has the main hatch opened remotely and the sizzling hot rocket sprayed with water. At that point, one of the men, Victor Carroon, tumbles out, but there's no sign of the other two men, Ludwig Reichenheim and Charles Green; all that's found are their empty, and still connected, pressure suits in the cockpit. Carroon is taken to Briscoe's laboratory at Quatermass' institute for observation, while Quatermass himself tries to prevent an investigation by Scotland Yard and is irked when he finds that Carroon's fingerprints were taken behind his back. However, this reveals a disturbing clue: the fingerprints are not even remotely human. What's more, in his examinations, Briscoe discovers that Carroon's body, including the bone structure, seems to be going through a bizarre change. Further examination of the ship's interior reveals an odd, jelly-like substance that Briscoe soon determines is all that's left of Rechenheim and Green, and when the film from the ship's badly damaged interior camera is reviewed, they see the cockpit shaking from some huge impact and the men then reacting to something unseen but apparently terrifying in the cockpit with them, before they all collapse. Quatermass allows Carroon to be taken a regular clinic but Judith, who blames him for what's happened to her husband, hatches a plan to break him out. While the escape plan is successful, Carroon's right hand fuses with a potted cactus in his room and he kills the man hired to help him, leaving his body a shriveled shell. He escapes into the night, while Quatermass and Briscoe discover the horrifying truth: an alien life-form, one that can absorb and fuse with other living beings, as well as reproduce itself, has taken control of Carroon's body and mind. As the authorities search for him, his hideous transformation continues and if he's not stopped, the creature he becomes could potentially release spores that will endanger the entire planet.
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| Anthony Hinds |
That night, Carroon stumbles to a shipyard and, as he falls to the ground and slowly gets up on his knees, shaking in pain, you get a look at the traumatized, frightened man who's slowly but surely being swallowed up by the life-form within him. You can hear him moaning and whimpering, looking close to tears and almost like he's about to start praying, when he's hit by the pain again and takes shelter in an old barge. The next morning, Carroon awakens to hear the sound of a young girl playing onshore with her doll. He attempts to move away without her seeing him but she spots him and tries to get him to play with her. Barely able to control himself, it takes every bit of willpower he has left not to attack the girl, knocking the doll out of her hand and running off in a panic. That's the last bit of humanity you see within Carroon, as when he's later seen peering out at the zoo from the nearby bushes that night, it's obvious that the alien has completely taken over, as he proceeds to rampage through the zoo, draining and absorbing various animals he comes across, until he becomes the enormous, pulsating, tentacled mass of flesh that's seen at Westminster Abbey at the end of the film.
Of the several people who come across Carroon after he escapes from the clinic, one who doesn't live to tell about it is this pharmacist (Toke Townley) who makes the mistake of letting him into the pharmacy as he struggles with the door on the outside. Initially aggravated when Carroon barges in and causes havoc with the chemicals he has in the back, he then sees that the man isn't well at all and decides to have a look at his hand. This proves fatal for him, as Carroon kills him with his cudgel-like appendage and his body is later found hidden in a closet, in the same state as Christie's was. Later, in a scene reminiscent of one of the most famous from James Whale's Frankenstein, Carroon, after spending the night on a small barge at the shipyard, comes across a young girl (Jane Asher) who's playing on the shore with her doll. Like little Maria in Frankenstein, instead of being frightened by Carroon, the girl rather sweetly asks him to play with her, while he backs away, hiding his arm and fighting the urge to attack her with every bit of willpower he has. She finally forces him to smack the doll out of her hand when she won't stop walking towards him, giving him the chance he needs to get away while his thoughts are still his own. One last memorable character is Rosie (Thora Hird), a drunk, loud vagrant with a thick Cockney accent, who rushes into the police station one night to make a report. Obviously, they've dealt with her before, so initially, they don't take her rambling seriously, and she constantly goes off on tangents, so it takes a bit for her to get to the point. Finally, when the officer at the front desk bribes her with a coin she can use to go buy a drink, she tells him she caught a glimpse of a large shape crawling up a wall in the darkness. Knowing full well what's happening, the officer calls Scotland Yard to warn Inspector Lomax. Rosie, meanwhile, hearing that what she saw was real rather than a "gin goblin," prompts faints into the arms of the other officer.
In his aim to make the film come off as believable as possible, Val Guest decided to shoot the movie in a manner that was somewhat cinema verite, intending to make it come off as newsreel footage, as though it were, in his words, "A special programme for the BBC or something." You can definitely see that, as the black-and-white cinematography, while very good, isn't completely polished and has a detectable feeling of grit and graininess to it, and the second unit work, like when the authorities respond to reports of the crashed rocket (which are filmed with long pans back and forth, with little cutting), the manhunt for Carroon, the search for any missing pieces of the creature, and the sequence of London's electricity being diverted to Westminster Abbey, is particularly grainy, to the point where you would be forgiven for thinking that it's possibly stock footage. The use of faux news reports here and there add to the authenticity, and it also helps that, unlike most of Hammer's films, especially their Gothic horrors, a good chunk of it was shot on location. Save for the interiors of the hospital, the institute, Inspector Lomax's office, and Westminster Abbey, everything you see was actually shot in, around, and near London. Guest also made use of handheld camerawork to give the movie a more fluid and less filmic feel (which is said not to have gone over well with the crew, as it was a very unusual approach at the time). And, as would become something of a trademark for Guest and which had been used in previous films, particularly those of Howard Hawks, the most relevant example being his production of The Thing from Another World, he had the actors deliver their lines very quickly and overlap each other.
As you know, one of the things that's a big plus for me in a horror film is really good atmosphere and The Quatermass Xperiment is absolutely dripping with it. First off, it's a black-and-white movie shot in England, so the ever present gray, overcast skies and the genuine feeling of it being very cold (the film was shot from October to December), with everyone wearing heavy coats over their suits and their often visible breath, gives it all a very solemn, depressing vibe. Second, as you can see, the cinematography is very noirish, with deep blacks and lots of shadows, adding even more to the atmosphere and giving it a feeling of the horror films Val Lewton produced for RKO in the 40's. Speaking of which, this movie does make extensive use of that "less is more" approach he was known for, both in how you don't see the creature Carroon is becoming until the very end, with its presence merely suggested for the most part (the footage from inside the rocket, the scene at the zoo, where you just see pieces of the rapidly mutating Carroon, as well as some POV shots and shadows, and Rosie's story of seeing it crawling up along a wall in the dark, are effective examples of this), and also with how you never learn exactly what this thing is. All you know is that it's some alien organism the rocket-ship encountered out in space, that it got inside the ship, killed the other two men, and has now taken possession of Carroon and is using him as a vessel through which to spread across the Earth. It's made even creepier when Quatermass describes it as possibly being an unseen, invisible mass of living energy and that this is the end result of its combining with organisms that have a cellular structure. It's also suggested that the creature's bond with the cactus in Carroon's hospital room has now given it the plant-like ability to multiply through airborne spores and seeds (which explains a moment earlier when Carroon seemed strangely interested in the flowers Judith brought for him at the institute). And finally, going back to the idea of atmosphere, that scene at the zoo is the creepiest in the entire film, with its dark cinematography, use of shadows, brief glimpses of the mutated Carroon, and the complete absence of music, with only the sounds of the frightened animals and the sound of Carroon shuffling across the grounds.
Production design-wise, the film is not as eye-catching or extravagant as what Hammer would produce in the coming years (mainly because it was low budget even by Hammer standards), with the few true sets mainly just being functional. The most memorable are the interior of the rocket, which you see several times and which comes off as high-tech enough for the period but also has a crude, confined feeling to it, and the interiors of Westminster Abbey, where the climax takes place and which actually feels quite large, even though it probably wasn't in reality. In fact, the latter can be seen as something of a prelude to the Gothic movies Hammer would become legendary for. Aside from that, the other sets, like the laboratory, the interiors of the hospital, and such, serve their purpose well enough but don't call attention to themselves. The film also makes use of matte paintings by Les Bowie to give some scenes more of a feeling of scale, like the crash site at the beginning, those at the abbey (they tried to get permission to shoot at the actual abbey but were denied), and the final shot of Quatermass himself at the end, and they work quite well.
I've said in other reviews that I find the concept of losing one's humanity to be a very disturbing and unsettling one, which is the main reason why I was quite taken by The Quatermass Xperiment. Even though we don't get to know who he was before he was taken over by the alien, because of Richard Wordsworth's performance and the hideous, body horror transformation he's caught up in, it's still effectively unsettling to watch Victor Carroon slowly but surely lose himself. Really, the only glimpse you get of who Carroon really was is in the early part of the film shot inside the rocket and when he first stumbles out of the rocket and is placed inside the ambulance, as he shakes in pain and tries to speak but is only able to let out some pitiable moans and whisper, "Help me," to Dr. Briscoe. After that, you can tell the alien intelligence has taken almost total control, him virtually powerless to fight it, as it makes him fuse his hand with the cactus, kill Christie and the pharmacist, and drain the life out of them. It's only through sheer force of will that Carroon is able to keep himself from harming his wife and the little girl in the shipyard, and during those moments, you can tell it's a physically painful and draining battle that he ultimately loses. But it's not just that he does, indeed, lose himself to this thing that's entered his body; it's also what it is he ultimately becomes after his rampage at the zoo, which is a big, ugly, tentacled mass of flesh and hair that looks like a monstrous octopus and nothing like the human it started out as. The more inhuman the final monster in these types of transformation movies, the more horrific it is to me, but this might just take the cake, more so than any werewolf or even Brundlefly. And the fact that Carroon went from still having a vaguely humanoid shape to that in just a day or so is really disturbing. One idea they didn't carry over from the television serial to the film that I think would have been interesting, though, is the ending, which originally involved Quatermass appealing to what little of Carroon is still in this creature and persuading it to kill itself. Val Guest decided not to go with that because he thought having the creature be electrocuted to death would make for a more satisfying ending and more appropriate to the film. He also said that he couldn't see Brian Donlevy's Quatermass being very effective in appealing to anyone but I still wish they would have at least tried it, as I like the idea of there still being just enough of a hint of humanity within this thing that you could manage to reason with it (there is a disturbing hint of that when the creature is fatally electrocuted and the cries it lets out do sound human).
The way they realized Carroon's onscreen transformation was, for the most part, a subtle and inspired mixture of makeup and lighting. Makeup man Phil Leakey and cinematographer Walter J. Harvey collaborated in a way of lighting Wordsworth that would accentuate the shadows created by his naturally gaunt and thin features, particularly the pronounced parts of his face like the cheekbones, temples, and eyebrows, and Leakey also often used a rubbery solution to make Wordsworth's skin look moist. When it came to Carroon's mutating right arm, Leakey used a cast of someone who had arthritis in their hand and exaggerated those features, as well as latex and rubber to build up the rest of the arm and shoulder in order to create an effect of it swelling, with visible veins under the skin. For most of the movie, the transformation is very subdued, with the first major change you can make out coming when Carroon's hand fuses with the cactus, turning it into a swollen, thorny club, but it's really only when you get that glimpse of him in the bushes near the zoo, where you see a bit of his face and a piece of flesh he's dragging across the ground, that you can tell he's virtually not even human anymore. Leakey was also in charge of creating the shriveled remains of Carroon's victims, which are pretty grisly by 1950's standards, particularly since you often see that half of their faces have been eaten away, with the skull exposed.
While you don't see the ultimate creature until the movie's climax, you do see signs of it, such as a trail of slime it often leaves behind and a remnant of it Quatermass and Briscoe find at the zoo that proves to have the same predatory behavior as the real thing, swallowing up some mice and breaking out of its chamber to try to prey on other mice kept in the lab. While it does expire before doing so, its influx of growth allows them to see the spores growing on it, threatening to spread all throughout the room, a microcosm of what the actual creature will do to the entire planet. When you finally do see the monster at the end, it's little more than a mass of tripe and rubber they shot against a model of Westminster Abbey that barely moves, save for when it's set afire by the electricity, but man, is it effective to see it slowly crawl and slither across the rafters and extend its tentacles (the idea of that thing creeping its way throughout London, crawling up walls and leaving behind a slime trail, is one that can give you a chill). And again, it hits hard purely from that visceral standpoint of seeing how Victor Caroon is now completely gone. The thing also actually has eyes, which makes it even more disturbing, as is the aforementioned wailing howl it lets out when it's electrocuted to death.
The film starts off fairly innocuously, with a teenage couple walking down a country road late one night, laughing and deciding to play a game of tag and chase each other through a field. They tumble into a small patch of hay near a bail, when the wind suddenly picks up, accompanied by a high-pitched whirring sound. At first, they think it might be a jet, when the boy sees something in the sky and points at it. He tells the girl to get down but she panics and runs for the nearby farmhouse, with her date chasing after her. The house happens to be where she lives and, as the sound grows louder and louder, her father stands outside the door, yelling for them to get in. They barely have time to get through the door and run for cover, when the house is shook by a huge impact that causes part of the ceiling to cave in. It abates just as suddenly as it started, and the man tells the kids to stay put, as he grabs his rifle and makes his way outside, telling his daughter to call the police. Outside, the father slowly approaches the object, a large rocket-ship, that has crashed into the field, its nose dug deep into the ground, when it explodes lightly around the base of it. Soon, hordes of villagers have gathered around the crash site, as the fire department and police move in. One police car drives through the streets, announcing to the onlookers to return to their homes, but, of course, that does nothing to dissuade them, as they gather around outside the fence on the field's edge. (These scenes make me think of Unsolved Mysteries' recreations of the Kecksburg UFO incident in 1965 and, for me, help with the feeling of reality Val Guest was going for.) An ambulance pulls into the field and the paramedics immediately see to the farmer, who's sitting by the fence, smoking a cigarette, and insisting he merely got slightly singed. Another fire engine arrives, though the rocket is still too hot for them to spray down with water. At this time, a radio report goes out about how the object had been spotted before it came down and, while the announcer says there's no danger, he also stresses that onlookers are warned to keep away.
Prof. Quatermass, Marsh, Blake, Dr. Briscoe, and Judith Carroon soon arrive at the site in a van, the latter being so worried about her husband that she gets out of the van, pushes her way through the crowd, and runs onto the field, while the others wait for the barrier to be lifted. Once the van is allowed on the field, Marsh uses a transmitter in the back to try to communicate with the ship's men, while Quatermass takes charge of the operation from the police, saying they'll have to wait several hours for the ship to cool off. Marsh gets no response from inside the rocket, despite his continuous attempts to contact the astronauts, when he suddenly hears something. Quatermass takes the transmitter's headphones and says he hears a tapping from inside the rocket. He then tries to contact the astronauts himself, telling them where they've landed, but gets no response and says that the tapping has stopped. He decides they have to open up the rocket up as soon as possible, otherwise the survivor inside might die by the time it's cooled down enough. He tells the fire chief they're going to open the rocket's main door by remote control and that, when they do, he wants every hose they've got blasting it with water. Quatermass also tells a major to clear the field of all unnecessary personnel, while Briscoe meets up with the ambulance that pulls in and tells them to be prepared for any sort of medical emergency. The firemen come running in, unfurling their hoses, and Quatermass tells the chief to wait for his signal. Marsh prepares to open the rocket door, counting down from ten, and when he hits zero, he hits the button. As the door slowly opens, Quatermass signals the chief, who blows a whistle prompting the firemen to spray the doorway with water. Eventually, it opens up completely and a figure crawls out. Quatermass has the chief signal the men to turn the water off, as the figure tumbles down the small embankment around the rocket's buried nose. They rush to his aid, as he raises the visor on his helmet to reveal he's Victor Carroon. Briscoe, Judith, and the police help carry Carroon to the ambulance, while Quatermass, Marsh, and Blake rush inside the rocket to see to the other men.
Inside, they find what appears to be the other two astronauts, Green and Reichenheim, collapsed on the floor, but when Quatermass inspects them closely, he finds that it's only their empty pressure suits. Spying the hatch that leads down to the motors' access chamber, Quatermass and Marsh try to open it, but the mechanism doesn't work, forcing them to use the manual control. Once Marsh manages to unlock the hatch, he and Quatermass open it up, only to find the men aren't down there either, and they have to concede to Blake that they simply aren't onboard the rocket. Quatermass tells Marsh to retrieve the rocket's interior camera, but when he brings it down, he reveals it's been badly damaged and is likely useless. Desperate for answers, Quatermass disembarks and runs to the ambulance. Climbing in the back, he asks Carroon where the men are, even though he's clearly in no condition to talk, and Briscoe has to pull him out and tell him as much. Judith then calls Briscoe into the ambulance, where Carroon is moaning and attempting to say something. As he's unable to get it completely out, Briscoe puts his ear to his mouth to listen. Carroon then appears to sink into catatonia, while Briscoe disembarks and tells Quatermass, Marsh, and Blake, "He said, 'Help me.' That's all he said. 'Help me.'" Inside the ambulance, Judith tries to comfort her suffering husband, but it's clear from his clenching and shaking right fist that there's something far more serious going on with him than mere shock.
Following his meeting with Inspector Lomax, where he expresses his displeasure with their having taken Carroon's fingerprints behind his back and gives them the astronauts' files to placate them, Quatermass heads to his institute's laboratory, where Briscoe is continuing his examinations of Carroon. He tells Quatermass that Carroon's pulse and blood pressure are so low he shouldn't be alive and that nothing he's done has increased the metabolic rate. He then shows Quatermass Carroon's right shoulder, which has become swollen and coarsened, and also has him look at the face, commenting that there's been a change in the bone structure. Judith arrives and, despite Quatermass reassuring her that her husband is coming along fine, Briscoe agrees with her suggestion that he needs to be put in a hospital. Quatermass, however, is staunchly against it, saying a hospital wouldn't know how to treat someone who's been out so far in space and that they need to unlock Carroon's mind to know what they saw and what happened to the others. He gets Briscoe to concede and the doctor decides to prepare for another blood transfusion. He and Quatermass leave the room, the latter telling Judith to stay with Carroon, and when he leaves, Carroon sits up in his chair, looking intently at the door. He also looks around the room and, when Judith has her back turned, looks at her intensely as she rinses some flowers she brought for him, his right hand again shaking and clenching into a fist. While Judith helps Briscoe move Carroon out of the lab, Quatermass returns to his office to find Lomax waiting for him. The inspector returns the files and asks Quatermass to give him his word that the fingerprints in Carroon's files are, indeed, his. To show why he asked, he gives Quatermass the fingerprints his men took off Carroon the night before, and when he looks at them, he's taken aback, as they're not human-like at all. Quatermass then gets a phone call and rushes out when he hangs up, with Lomax right behind him.
Onboard the rocket, Marsh points Quatermass, Lomax, and Briscoe to a spot in the cockpit's wall, noting that he's found something. As it's in a crevice, Briscoe uses a long instrument from his bag in order to get at it, pulling it out and revealing it to be a small piece of organic matter. They place it in a small glass tube, while Marsh shows Briscoe a spot where there's another bit of the substance and he takes it as well. When asked what it is, he admits he wants to be sure rather than to simply guess. That's when Marsh tells Quatermass he managed to get the film out of the damaged camera and Quatermass sends him to the film lab to tell them they must develop it, no matter what. Lomax comments, "This is one premiere I don't want to miss." Back at the institute, Briscoe runs tests on the substance, while in the next room, Carroon is asleep in bed, with Judith sleeping in a chair in the corner. He checks on the both of them, as well as checks Carroon's pulse, before going back into the lab. Once he's walked out, Carroon is shown to be awake and his head twitches, his face showing he's clearly in pain. Quatermass walks into the lab and Briscoe tells him the substance is, "Harmless, it's organic, it's jelly. End of analysis." He adds it might be remnants of dead cell tissue, possibly animal or even human. That last bit gets Quatermass' attention and, struggling with what Briscoe is suggesting, asks, "You mean to say that you're asking me to believe that that is the remains of two human beings?" Briscoe doesn't deny it and says there's no word yet from the police analysts, who also have a sample, but he doubts their conclusions will be any different. As they talk, Carroon rises from his bed in the next room and seems drawn to the vase of flowers sitting on the table across from him. He ends up knocking the vase onto the floor, collapsing with it and waking up Judith. She runs into the lab and has Briscoe and Quatermass come in to help her with Carroon. Just as they're about to lift him off the floor, Briscoe notes that there's been another change, Carroon's right hand now looking like his shoulder. Getting him back into his bed, Briscoe also notes that Carroon's skin has changed within the last few moments and goes to get a sedative. Judith then angrily blames Quatermass for what's happening to her husband, when Briscoe walks back in and, as he prepares to administer the sedative, announces that he's sent for an ambulance. Quatermass has no choice but to concede, but also makes it clear that Carroon is to be kept in isolation, with absolutely no visitors unless he says so.
When Marsh finally gets a print of the film from the camera, there's a scene back at the lab where Blake is faced with the crazy possibility that the jelly-like substance is all that's left of Reichenheim and Green and tells Quatermass, Lomax, and Briscoe that the Defense Ministry will think he's gone crazy if he tells them. Quatermass responds by saying he mustn't tell them anything and that he must have total authority in order to keep Carroon isolated, which Lomax tells Blake is all they can do at the moment. The phone on the counter rings and Briscoe answers it: the film is ready. The next scene is in the small projection room, with Marsh running the projector, while the others sit and watch the blurry, soundless footage. At first, everything seems totally normal, with two of the men working at the controls, Carroon waking up the other, who's sleeping in his bunk, and then looking out a window at the front of the cockpit. Carroon even walks up along the side of the wall at one point, supposedly due to the lack of gravity. But, when the next part of the film starts up, the cockpit and the film itself suddenly shake and the men are knocked off their feet, as if the ship had been hit by something. The men then tend to the controls, while Carroon appears to be trying to contact Earth, when a shot of the various gauges shows that the temperature has dropped severely. Standing at the front of the cockpit, the men suddenly turn around and look at the back, as a freakish white, swirling effect envelops the camera lens. One of the men suddenly collapses on the floor, as the others try to help him and correct their course, when the same effect happens again. Now, as Carroon rushes to the controls on the left side of the cockpit, the other man grabs at his throat, apparently under some kind of attack. He collapses and Carroon, after inspecting the bodies of his comrades, runs to some controls in the right-hand corner of the cockpit's front, when the same effect occurs. Carroon, his back to the camera, backs up, his right arm now shaking, as he apparently sees something frightening, when the film suddenly ends. Not sure of what they've just seen, Quatermass tells Marsh to run the film again.
Elsewhere, as rain pours outside, Judith arrives at the clinic and asks the man at the front desk about her husband. When she tells him it's Carroon, the man, reluctantly, calls up and asks how he's doing. He tells Judith that his condition is the same but he's not allowed to send her up, adding that a night nurse named Tucker is looking after Carroon and another nurse, Perkins, will be in shortly. Judith asks if she can wait for Tucker to come off duty and the man directs her to where she can wait for him outside the staff exit. Judith makes her way there and walks out the door, only to then meet up with private detective Christie, who waits for her in the car. She tells him what's going on and who he has to deal with. After paying him his money, the two of them run back to the door and, after looking inside to make sure the coast is clear and explaining to Judith how he's going to go about it, Christie heads for the elevator. He has to momentarily duck back outside when a nurse rounds the corner and, after again making sure no one's around, heads for the elevator again and manages to get inside this time. Taking it the fourth floor, he casually walks over to Room 4B and, inside, tells Tucker he's filling in for Perkins. They make small-talk about Carroon, who's simply lying in bed, staring at nothing, and Tucker leaves. With that, Christie tells Carroon what's going on and that he's going to take him downstairs to Judith. He goes about getting him out of bed and dressed, while out in the hall, Tucker realizes he forgot something and walks back to the room. However, he's distracted by some nice-looking nurses who are wheeling a man in for surgery and joins them in the elevator, offering to take them out later on. Meanwhile, Christie has gotten Carroon clothed and goes to get his suit jacket. During this time, Carroon seems compelled towards the cactus lying on the table by the window, and after Christie slips his jacket on, he goes to get the elevator ready, leaving Carroon by himself. He walks towards the cactus, raises his right hand up in a fist, and brings it down hard on it, quietly gasping and trembling in pain as a result, before pulling his hand back and flinging the pot against the wall, smashing it. Christie returns and retrieves him, walking him to the elevator.
On the way down, Christie notices that Carroon appears to be hiding something in his jacket, something he's not willing to share. Christie forces him to reveal what it is and Carroon retaliates by cornering and bludgeoning him with his right hand. On the bottom floor, Carroon steps out of the elevator alone and Judith, seeing him from outside the staff exit, helps him to the car. At that moment, a nurse enters the elevator on its way back up, only to nearly trip over something when she steps in. She then screams in horror when she sees that it's Christie's shriveled corpse, with half of his face dissolved. Meanwhile, Judith and Carroon drive down the street, Carroon continuously staring at her in a very menacing manner, while she talks about getting him the best treatment and how they'll be able to start a new life away from Quatermass and everything else. It's only when she offers him a cigarette and he doesn't respond that she realizes something's not right. She pulls over to the curb and tries to get through to Carroon, but he recoils from her and stares at her intensely and threateningly. She asks him if his hand is hurting him and he removes it from his pocket, pulls a coat out from the backseat, and peels out of the car and down the street. Judith, now having gotten a good look at what's happening to him, screams in horror and continues to do so, as he shuffles off into the night.
At the hospital, Quatermass, Briscoe, and Lomax are on the scene, Briscoe examining Christie's corpse, which is still in the elevator. Quatermass then orders the body to be examined by a pathologist, when a sergeant shows up and tells them that Judith has been picked up, but there's no sign of Carroon himself. He goes on to say that Judith is now in a bad state of shock, she may be in danger of going completely mad, and when they first found her, she was mumbling about a gray hand, with spines like a cactus. Hearing this gives Lomax an idea and he goes to room 4B, where he finds the remains of the pot that contained the cactus. He uses the telephone on the wall and contacts Scotland Yard, while Quatermass and Briscoe examine what's left of the cactus. Now, there's a manhunt out for Carroon, with police cars investigating reports of prowlers, boats searching by way of the river, and so on. There's a moment where a police car drives across a bridge and, once it's out of sight, Carroon climbs up a hill beyond the railing and shambles across the bridge. Back at the clinic, Briscoe closely examines Christie's body, as Quatermass and Lomax look on, and finds that a plant-like growth on the face has eaten away the tissue and turned the bones to powder. Quatermass theorizes the rocket may have passed through the path of an invisible life-form of pure energy drifting out in space and that it got inside the rocket and entered Carroon's cellular structure after killing Reichenheim and Green. While Lomax is still somewhat skeptical, Quatermass is sure he knows what he's saying and Briscoe concurs that Carroon is now little more than a carrier for this life-form, adding that it may have formed a union with the cactus and could now likely multiply. Briscoe also says that, in order to do so, it will have to have food, and looks back towards the room where Christie's body is housed.
The next morning, a pharmacist just finishes taking out the trash and walks back inside and locks the door, when Carroon comes shuffling down the street. Looking through the window, he heads towards the door and tries to open it. Inside, the pharmacist, hearing the door shaking, yells that they're closed, but when it persists, he walks over and opens it. Carroon walks in, ignoring the pharmacist and heading to the back of the place, where bottles of chemicals are stacked on shelves. The pharmacist yells for him to leave them alone but Carroon, letting out a desperate sound, swipes an entire shelf full of the bottles down to the floor. Finally getting a look at Carroon's face, the pharmacist asks him if he's in pain and, noticing he's keeping his right arm hidden under the coat, asks him if it's the cause. He removes it and sees that his right hand has become swollen and club-like, as well as thorny from the cactus. He barely has time to process what he's seeing before Carroon backs him against a counter and bludgeons him with it, the man leaning back and screaming, "No!" (a little too melodramatically, I might add). Afterward, Lomax, who only got home just recently, has to rush out again upon getting a call about what's happened. Back at the pharmacy, Quatermass and Briscoe try to figure out what Carroon was trying to do, with Briscoe figuring that a mixture of chemicals he ingested was probably meant as a means to accelerate the change he's going through. Quatermass argues that Carroon knew nothing about chemistry but Briscoe says that may just be the point: Carroon didn't know, but something else might. Lomax and the police, meanwhile, are trying to figure out what happened to the pharmacist, when his sergeant notices a piece of cloth sticking out from under a closet door. Lomax signals for a cop right outside the front door to come in, while Quatermass slips over to the closet and yanks the door open. Sure enough, the pharmacist's body tumbles out, shriveled and half-dissolved in the same manner as Christie's.
That night, Carroon stumbles to the shipyard, at one point collapsing to the ground, where he wheezes and shakes from the horrible pain he's in, before getting back up and walking towards a small barge, which he falls on the ground next to. Come the next morning, a little girl arrives at the spot, pushing a small carriage housing her doll and settling down on the piece of shore next to the barge. Inside, Carroon awakens and climbs up out of the barge, seeing the girl, who has her back to him at first. Hearing him, the girl turns and sees him. Grabbing her doll, she asks him to stay and have "tea" with her, as he backs away. Desperate not to harm the girl, who keeps approaching him and talking, Carroon knocks the doll out of her hand and runs away, as she stays behind to pick up the doll, whose head got knocked off. A couple of hours later, a report of the incident reaches Scotland Yard, with Lomax contacting the police station at Deptford and telling them to search derelict boats, warehouses, and bomb shelters, as well as any other place he may take refuge. Hanging up, Lomax asks, "Where's he getting food? That's what I'd like to know."
Late that night, a zookeeper closes up, riding his bicycle outside the main gate and locking it before heading on home. At first, all is quiet, but then, the animals, including lions, bears, hyenas, wolves, and the apes and monkeys, become agitated and frightened, sensing a monstrous presence, and a creepy push-in towards some bushes suggests there is something lurking in there. Another shot reveals Carroon's face, which is heavily obscured by the leaves and branches but enough of it is shown to make it clear that now, very little, if any, of his humanity is left. He makes his way out of the bushes and towards the heart of the zoo, with all that's revealed of him being his shadow and a large piece of mutated flesh he's dragging across the ground, leaving a trail of slime. Carroon heads for the lion house and moves towards a cage housing both a lion and lioness, both of them unable to escape. The next morning, Lomax arrives at the zoo with Quatermass, Briscoe, and his sergeant, and they're lead to the body of a leopard and then to a small deer, which they're told is one of several the found elsewhere. Quatermass and Briscoe notice the body of the lion in the cage to the left of the dead deer and find that it's been absorbed virtually completely. Under Briscoe's suggestion, Lomax orders the zoo closed completely. The public is turned away and everybody goes about tending to the place, when Briscoe follows a slime trail to the bushes Carroon emerged from the night before and yells for Quatermass and Lomax. In the bush, the three of them find a living remnant of Carroon and place it in a sample box. Lomax asks what they should be looking for now and Quatermass answers, "You'll know it when you see it. Just send your men out with a prayer that we find it in time."
At the institute, Quatermass and Briscoe observe the living remnant from outside a small container housing it. They note that, in less than twelve minutes, it's completely absorbed all but one of the mice they put in the container with it and has tripled in size. The very sight of this makes them fret at the possibility of how large the actual creature is becoming and how quickly it's growing. Meanwhile, a vagrant woman named Rosie, who's often drunk and prone to hallucinations, is brought into a police station, where she reports having seen a large, shapeless form crawling up the side of a wall in the dark. Normally, the officer at the front desk would have dismissed this, but given the situation, he immediately calls Scotland Yard. Lomax gets the call and he, in turn, calls Quatermass and Briscoe, who rush out of the lab, leaving the mouse in the container with the smaller organism. Arriving at the narrow street where Rosie saw the creature, they find a slime trail going up across the face of the wall. Briscoe climbs up a ladder against the wall to the top, while Quatermass, Lomax, and the others look on. Reaching the top, Briscoe finds the slime trail ends right on the edge of the wall and asks for his case of instruments to be brought up. Lomax orders the area cordoned off and the public to be evacuated, adding they must investigate any instance of movement that occurs there that night. Quatermass also tells Lomax he'd best put out a warning for people not to touch anything strange they find in the streets or in their gardens. Back at the institute, the small creature has grown large enough to fill up the entire space inside the container. Having absorbed the last mouse, it breaks through the glass and moves towards another cage full of mice. It reaches one of its tentacles up towards the cage but suddenly dies before it can attack. Quatermass and Briscoe return at that moment and find it on the floor, amazed at how large it's grown. Briscoe notes the patches on it that are capable of producing spores and says that, had it succeeded in completing its life cycle, it would have filled the entire room with those tentacles. Worrying about how many more may be lurking throughout London, Quatermass calls Lomax, who passes on the news to the commissioner, saying that they need troops and civil defense, while also making another call, saying he wants everything from parks and fields to underground tunnels and subways searched.
Soon, soldiers are patrolling the streets and searching the fields, old ruins, and subway tunnels, while the BBC puts out an alert. At Westminster Abbey, a television crew shooting a special on the restoration of the building attempt to start their broadcast, when they lose contact with the man who's supposed to be operating Camera 1. They switch over to Camera 2, only for it to reveal several crew members gathered around a body on the floor. Immediately, they kill the transmission and the director runs inside to see what happened. When he runs through the gate, it's revealed that a large trail of slime is running up the side of the abbey's wall. Rushing to the spot, the director is told by the program's host that the man on the floor fell from the scaffolding up above, and that he was dead before he fell. The director tells one of the crew to call the police, while they decide to go on with the program, moving to another part of the abbey. Lomax arrives at the abbey shortly after and tells his man to fetch Quatermass. Inside, Lomax walks to the spot and, seeing the condition of the body, orders the abbey to be cleared completely, live transmission or not. He heads to the spot where the host is doing his thing, as an assistant attempts to stop him. Lomax asks to see the producers and is told they're in the truck out front. Heading outside and climbing into the truck, Lomax tells them they need to get out but the director all but ignores him, giving direction to Camera 3 instead. Lomax, again, warns they may be in danger but the director tells them that they're live and, switching back to Camera 1, tells the operator to pan up high, when it reveals an enormous, tentacled mass slithering its way across the scaffolding. While Lomax rushes back outside, the director orders the transmission ended and everyone out of the abbey. Quatermass arrives and Lomax directs him and Briscoe to the television truck. Inside, they see the creature on the monitor and realize that, should it manage to release its spores, nothing will be able to stop it from completely engulfing the Earth with them. Quatermass and Briscoe try to come up with a way to destroy it, when they're told it's stopped moving. Briscoe figures it's in a last dormant stage before reproduction begins, producing new, spore-spraying tentacles. Coming up with an idea, Quatermass tells Lomax to run cables to the scaffolding and to tap London's main power line in order to conduct enough electricity to destroy the creature. Lomax worries about the abbey and bringing London to a complete halt but Quatermass warns him that the city will be doomed anyway if the creature spores.
The plan is put into action and London goes dark as all of the electricity is channeled towards the abbey, with a police announcement attempting to keep the peace. As the creature sits atop the scaffolding, continuing to stretch its tentacles, men crawl to connect the cables to the steel. The connections are made and everyone quickly runs out of the abbey. Once it's all clear, the signal is given and the juice is turned on. Thousands of volts of electricity shoot through the metal, immediately causing fire around the creature, which writhes back and forth and emits a horrific, vaguely human, howl as it's burned alive. Inside the television van, Quatermass and Briscoe watch as the creature, now aflame, stops moving. The two of them disembark and, with Lomax, they walk back inside the abbey. They approach the mangled, burning scaffolding and see the dead creature still lying atop it. Lomax comments to Quatermass, "Well, this time you've won. In my simple, Bible way, I did a lot of praying. One world at a time is good enough for me." The professor turns and heads out of the abbey, ignoring those who approach him and ask whether or not it's all clear now. Outside, Blake shows up and confronts Quatermass, demanding to know why he wasn't informed about this situation, but, like everyone else, the professor ignores him and continues on. Marsh then shows up and asks Quatermass if there's anything he can do. This exchange follows: "Yes, Marsh. Gonna need some help." "Help, sir? What are you going to do?" "I'm gonna start again." With that, Quatermass walks off into the night by himself, and the movie ends on a shot of a rocket lifting off, showing that he's made good on his promise.
James Bernard, who would go on to become most Hammer's most renowned composer, made his film debut with The Quatermass Xperiment after having worked on many BBC radio serials. While not as overt or as ever-present as some of his later scores would be (there's only twenty minutes' worth of music in the entire film and it's all strings and percussion), his music does help in giving the movie its atmosphere and mood. The main theme, an atonal string piece that rises and falls on three notes, before transcending into a freakish, screeching section, and which you hear over the opening credits and at the end, as Quatermass walks off after the creature has been killed, perfectly sums up the movie's dark and unnerving mood. The same can also be said of the music that plays when they watch the film of what happened inside the ship, which is a continuously whirling string bit that plays up the terror experienced by the astronauts and also of the feeling of dread Quatermass and the others are feeling as they watch. You can also hear the first hints of the use of percussion, even if it's very brief, that would become something of a trademark of Bernard's in the moments where Carroon's hand is shown trembling and clenching uncontrollably and in the scene between him and Judith in the car, where the music is constant and building.
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