#thora hird

The cast includes John Gielgud, Patricia Routledge, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, Judi Dench, Thora Hird, Alex Jennings and many more.

Writer Nigel Kneale may not have been happy with what Hammer Films did with his classic TV serial, but audiences loved Val Guest’s THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955, Prime, YouTube). It not only inspired a run of British science-fiction films but also led its production company, Hammer, to go further into horror with their revised versions of classic monsters like Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein.

When Prof. Bernard Quatermass’ (Brian Donlevy) British-American space rocket crashes in a British field, only one member of the three-man crew is discovered on board. He’s kept in hospital, but escapes (thanks to an idiotic wife) as he’s slowly transformed into an odd blob that threatens to shoot spores around the planet and absorb all life on Earth (which may explain the origins of Elon Musk).

One of Kneale’s chief objections was the casting of Brian Donlevy to make the film more marketable in the U.S. His Americanized Quatermass is far less thoughtful than the role Kneale had written for TV, but it works in Guest’s reimagining of the material. He’s brash and often ruthless, which Donlevy plays with authority. He’s certainly better than the other American import. Margia Dean was cast as the astronaut’s wife either because she had a long-term relationship with the film’s American co-producer’s, Lippert Films, or was having an affair with 20th Century-Fox chair Spyros Skouras, who wanted her to do most of her acting outside the U.S. Sadly, she doesn’t really do any acting. I mean, she moves across the frame and says words, but there’s no conviction behind any of it. Nor is there any attempt to explain her American accent. It’s a mercy that she disappears halfway through the film. She doesn’t even get a death scene, since there’s no life in her for her alienated husband to suck out. We’re just told she’s in shock (how could they tell?) and is left in hospital until she can find a more suitable career.

Fortunately, Richard Wordsworth is much better as the astronaut. Guest keeps his dialog to the minimum, but his gaunt face and physical commitment make him both frightening and sympathetic. He captures the essence of a man fighting against whatever is taking over his body. Jack Warner is also good as the police inspector who insinuates himself into Quartermass’ investigation, and there’s welcome comic relief from Harold Lang as the man Dean hires to get her husband out of the hospital and Thora Hird as an old drunk who spotted the transformed astronaut scaling a wall. You may also notice UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS’ Gordon Jackson as a TV producer and a very young Jane Asher as a girl who finds Wordsworth sleeping by a canal.

Guest’s direction is intelligent and well-paced. The early scenes of police and military dealing with the crashed spaceship have a documentary feel, which helps ground the story, and he wisely substitutes suspense for gore. It’s also not too out there to suggest the film has s sexual subtext. The rocket ship sticking out of the ground has a distinctly phallic look. Lang gets Wordsworth out of the hospital easily because the male nurse on duty is busy trying to pick up two female nurses, And Donlevy’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach to his character points to a critique of toxic masculinity before the term was coined. At the film’s end, despite the destruction wrought by his earlier experiment, he’s planning to resume his space program. The last shot is of another phallic-shaped rocket about to take off and violate the natural order.

The Love Match (1955) David Paltenghi

A Kind of Loving (1961) dir. John Schlesinger

Starring: Alan Bates, June Ritchie, James Bolam, Thora Hird

The Nightcomers will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on May 7 via Kino Lorber Studio Classics. The 1971 movie serves as a prequel to Henry James' influential 1898 gothic horror novella The Turn of the Screw.

Directed by Michael Winner (Death Wish, The Sentinel), the British horror film stars Marlon Brando, Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird, Harry Andrews and Anna Palk. 

Special features are below.

Sailor Beware (Panic in the Parlor) (1956) Gordon Parry

Conspirator (1949) Victor Saville

A Kind of Loving (1962) John Schlesinger