The making of JAWS (1975) - books and documentaries

Jaws is a movie that just keeps on giving. A huge new book and yet another documentary are still unravelling its mysteries. There's a fascination about almost every aspect of the film's production - the script, the acting, the music, the special effects, the cinematography, the logistics...

In September of this year we went on holiday to Massachusetts, staying in Boston and Provincetown, with a deliberate detour to Martha's Vineyard. The latter is the island that stood in for Amity, the fictional location of the community with a shark problem. In 1974, the island had the very real problem of a huge Hollywood film crew that invaded for five months to shoot Jaws.

To try and get the most of this out-of-the-way destination, I went through everything I had on the making of Jaws to pinpoint the main filming locations. What's left to see? Someone must have done an exhaustive location tour of the island by now, but darned if I could find a complete guide online. I will of course share our  photos of what we found with you, but first, here's what's out there about behind-the-scenes of Jaws.

BOOKS

I went back to the two books originally published in 1975 about the making of the film. These helped form a rough guide to where everything was shot.

At the time of release, photographs of the making of the film were very restricted - you'd more likely see photos of a real shark than the mechanical ones. 'The Making Of The Movie Jaws - On Location On Martha's Vineyard' was written by islander Edith Blake, who took publicity photographs and followed the crew around. This is all from the islanders' perspective and particularly good at naming when and where locations were used.

Scriptwriter Carl Gottlieb wrote the view from inside the production team - 'The Jaws Log'. He candidly talks about how the production scraped through by the skin of its pointy teeth. Starting shooting without a complete script, with unproven special effects, on a project that hadn't been attempted before - a story of the sea that was going to be shot at sea, instead of in a studio tank. Over schedule, over budget, with many physical special effects proving so impossible that they had to be 'shot around' and 'written around' until they simply had to work or there wouldn't have been a movie!

Shooting downwards, the camera angle didn't give away that they're in a lagoon

The bays around the island are shallow enough to enable the crew to set up the underwater tracks level for the shark to run on. They could also rig lights, sink boats in the relative safety of shallow water while appearing to be far out to sea. The bays were also wide enough to offer a clear horizon. Shot from the right angle, there would be no coastline visible. It was like the largest studio tank ever. The shape and depth of the bays was the crucial reason why the island was initially chosen.

Having chosen this as a key location, the production then looked over the island for every other building and beach needed for the story, for interiors and exteriors. The town hall, police house, Brody's house, docks, ferries, beaches were all on the island.

Both those books have since been revised and republished in slightly larger paperbacks. But now the best ever book on Jaws is 'Memories From Martha's Vineyard' which has exhaustively checked around for all the photos taken at the time by the islanders. A hefty coffee table book awash with behind-the-scenes photos.

The islanders who found themselves cast in the movie are also all tracked down, interviewed and presented as they are now! Even if they just had one line in the movie... "Pippit! Pippit!"

A large map helped pinpoint some more locations, but it also reveals some scenes that weren't shot at Martha's Vineyard at all. I've been duped again! Turns out that the Jaws ride at Universal Studio in Hollywood was actually a location - for instance, the reshoot of the discovery of Ben Gardner's boat (a scene originally shot at sea, far less effectively in broad daylight) as well as a lot of underwater footage, like the prop shark attacking the cage, and the upwards shots of kicking legs.

But the book is mainly about the epic island shoot, sifted from hundreds of photos taken by islanders who found that there was little preventing them from getting close up to the action, even unwittingly photographing scenes that never made the final cut, or were reshot later. If you got the deluxe version of the book, there's also a DVD of 8mm footage, like the 'Teddy attack' that was rejected by Spielberg as too much...

But the multitude of rare photographs are more revealing than the documentaries, especially about the technical trickery used for many classic sequences. Like revealed is the rig used for the 'shark entering the pond', the elementary woodwork used to support the camera for so many recognisable scenes.

An astonishing book, from fans who didn't even get to see it in the cinema first time round.
Interview with the author of Memories From Martha's Vineyard here

I bought this on the island but didn't have time to read it there. There's a very useful map in it though.

This website was the best guide to how the locations had changed in 35 years, and got us to the best sights. The guide, in two parts, is unfortunately incomplete, only covering the East side of the island.

DOCUMENTARIES

They've little information on locations, but while I'm on the subject, here's a starter guide to the best Jaws documentaries.

The very best ever is the jawesome two-and-a-half hour documentary spread over three sides of the 1995 Signature Collection laserdisc box set. This was subsequently shortened for the 30th Anniversary DVD release. Laurent Bouzereau's epic programme included a few tantalising clips of deleted FX scenes - including a glimpse of that Teddy scene (the guy in the rowing boat - "You guys all right?"). I guess that the relatively small amount of behind-the-scenes footage indicates that Spielberg is still reluctant to demystify the movie too much.

The interviews, including plenty of Spielberg, are the main meat and extremely entertaining, mainly because Richard Dreyfuss is so much fun in it.

In The Teeth Of Jaws (1997) was made for a Jaws evening on the BBC. An hour long, it featured new interviews with Edith Blake, Peter Benchley, Richard Dreyfuss, Zanuck and Brown, though the Spielberg footage is taken from the laserdisc documentary. It offers contemporary footage of the surviving Orca and the film barge at rest in Menemsha (both have since been moved to a less public location). Plus there's a great account of all the writers who tackled the pivotal USS Indianapolis monologue, leaving Robert Shaw, himself a writer, to take all the versions of the scene and nail the final version the night before it was filmed.

The Shark Is Still Working (2009) is an independent production which includes a raft of new interviews designed to supplement what was covered in the 1995 laserdisc documentary. It includes newer interviews with many involved in the production who are sadly no longer with us. The above artwork is how it's planned DVD release would originally have appeared. (The Shark Is Still Working will now be included with the September 2012 Blu-ray release of the new Jaws restoration). Even after everything I've seen on the film, I'm still hungry for more and can't wait to see what they've done. The documentary has a page on Facebook.

Check out this interview with the producers of The Shark Is Still Working here on Cinema Retro...

http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/68-Major-New-Documentary-on-Jaws-Exclusive-Interview!.html

MAGAZINES

I didn't see many serious articles about the making of Jaws in the UK. The usual sources that I'd normally rely on failed to reveal very much. The only detailed coverage I'd expect were Cinefantastique (which reviewed it) and American Cinematographer which did a small piece on it. Hard information about the special effects had to wait for the much later documentaries.

Here's one article that I have from 1976, for the UK release. They actually went and interviewed Spielberg! Because Jaws stayed in UK cinemas for months longer than expected, Film Review presumably ran out of 'puff piece' press releases and had to come up with new material!

It also talks at length about how the film avoided a more restrictive rating. In the UK, Jaws had an 'A' certificate. Anything harsher would have barred anyone under the age of 14 - if it had an 'AA' certificate. James Ferman, then head of the BBFC, is said to have considered the decision carefully, but thought that the second half of the film was an epic adventure film that 10 and 11 year-old boys would enjoy. Worried that younger viewers would get nightmares, Ferman arranged a special screening for children and consulted child psychiatrists. In the end the 'A' certificate was "reinforced" with an extra warning - on the poster is (a fairly small) tagline "May be particularly disturbing to younger unaccompanied children." Strange that the censors will bend over backwards for a blockbuster...

The same article mentions that Spielberg got three percent of the profits! Ker-ching!

A ton of US magazine coverage can be found here at JawsCollector.com.

My review of Jaws is here - having seen it on its first run in the cinema and on every format since.

The first part of my photo-guide to Amity Island will surface shortly...

THE TRACK (1975) and more from Mimsy Farmer

My Mimsy mini-marathon

Perhaps I'm too used to variable acting in horror films, because once in a while a presence or performance leaps out and reminds me what quality looks like.

Seeing Mimsy Farmer in Dario Argento's Four Flies On Grey Velvet, I think it was at a screening in the Scala, King's Cross, that she first really impressed me. While a serious and versatile actress, she was stuck in a Euro-horror rut in the 1970s, with the emphasis on rut. Her characters were repeatedly ravaged, brutally or otherwise, and she also became known as an actress who was 'okay' with nude scenes. This was a consequence of some 'hippy chick' roles she'd done where she was genuinely comfortable being nude in front of the camera.

I only know this because Video Watchdog magazine did what they do best and tracked her down for a recent interview (cover art at top). It was fantastic to see her again (see the last photo below) and willing to talk about her movie work - good and bad. The lengthy career interview also pointed out several films that I hadn't tried, one in particular that she thought was her best. She's absolutely right. It's very good indeed...

To me Mimsy's characters are at their most interesting in a fix, cornered. The fragile wispy blonde then gains a steely quality. When stressed, she doesn't panic, and the tension in her face, and her anger, is all very real. It's not the same quality as Meiko Kaji burning with revenge, but someone psyching themselves up for danger and refusing to crumble. Her fair hair would normally mark her as the first victim in a horror film. But her trademark short hairstyle suggests that she's not like those other women. She's the least 'blonde' blonde in horror. That's why I like her.

So, after a trawl through my archives, I had a bigger pile of Mimsy than I thought. I watched everything of hers that I had...

FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

(1971, Italy / France, 4 mosche di velluto grigio)

Luckily. this was how I first saw Mimsy, playing the victimised hero's girlfriend. She gets caught up in the chaos as he's blackmailed for murder then cruelly victimised while trying to unveil his tormentor. 

This isn't as tightly plotted as Dario Argento's first two thrillers - it looks like he was more interested in the intricate camerawork of the stalking scenes than the complexity of the story. Like Cat O' Nine Tails, it's a whodunit with a bucket of red herrings and too few clues. But for fans of early Argento, this is a must-see, despite spending an age as the most unavailable of his thrillers. 

Unusually for Argento, the killer isn't unseen but wears an extremely creepy rubber mask. There's still plenty of hypnotic, bravura camerawork from the point-of-view of the murderer. As in the rest of the 'animal trilogy', the murders have an intricate build-up, but not as vicious as his horror films that followed. Despite the serial killings, there's also too much comedy relief, with eccentric characters and even a shitty little car before the one in Deep Red. 

Besides Mimsy, it stars Michael Brandon (Dempsey and Makepeace) and Bud Spencer (star of many spaghetti westerns and Terence Hill buddy movies).

This Argento film only officially appeared on DVD in the US in 2009, and not in the greatest of condition (from a scratched, splicey print). I'm hoping for a much better presentation on Blu-ray, due out in the UK in January 2012 from Shameless Screen Entertainment.

THE TRACK
(1975, France / Italy, La Traque)

Mimsy reckons this is the best film she's been in, though it's not a big showcase role for her. She's excellent in it, central to it, but not the star. It's an ensemble piece with a uniformly good cast. Although 1970s French films aren't my specialty, I still recognised Michael Lonsdale (before he was the Bond-baddie in Moonraker) and Jean-Pierre Marielle who coincidentally played the gay detective in Four Flies On Grey Velvet. Here, Mimsy speaks French fluently, though her character is English.

 

She's a teacher getting away from it all in a French country cottage, who attracts the unwanted attentions of a group of amateur boar hunters. While this is tough to watch, it's not exploitative like some of her earlier 'victim' roles. This might be a derivation of Straw Dogs, but not so much about the victim or her revenge. However it starts off with the familiar 'duel of the cars' that greets her arrival in the country, just like in Death Weekend and The Shuttered Room. It's also a little like The Most Dangerous Game, but set in a very recognisable world. 

The all-male hunting party is made up of every strata of society. Each of them is faced with the decision, should they go to the police...

This is made even more real by the wilderness location and the absence of background music. The cinematography from Claude Renoir (French Connection II, Barbarella) is beautifully judged, in fact, the whole production is. I've not seen such a well-made, slow-burning thriller in a long time. Made in 1975, it still feels quite modern.

I'd never heard of The Track before the Video Watchdog interview. It's not even on DVD in France. While not the same brand of survival horror that we get now, for anyone wanting something intelligent along the lines of Deliverance, this should really be more available.

MORE

(1969, West Germany / France / Luxembourg)

I'll add this as an example of Mimsy's interesting non-horror work, though this is certainly in cult territory. After her initial time in mainstream movies, she was in a string of biker-rebel flicks before this acid-influenced arthouse drama. What begins as a trendy freewheeling romantic drama slowly and subtly moves into darker territory, constantly distracted by many trippy interludes.

Again Mimsy is perfect as the object of affection for an offbeat hipster, with more to her than meets the eye. She seems completely unfazed by her nude scenes, as befits her character. But I'm guessing this role set a precedent for some less scrupulous directors of her subsequent horror films.

With occasional backing music by none other than Pink Floyd, this is an interesting mystery tour, with much modern resonance (the island of Ibiza has since gained a much druggier reputation for huge dance parties since acid 'rave' culture). The slow, observational pace dates it, but the story could easily be happening right now. Oblique direction and sharp cinematography make it an unusual change from the sensationalism of drug-exploitation movies of the time. I also can't imagine that everything that's on show (sex, drugs, flesh) made it all into cinemas for its original release.

It's an international production, but all performed in English language. More is on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK.

Director Barbet Schroeder also directed Single White Female (1992) and an early episode of Mad Men! More about More on Barbet Schroeders' website - includes an extensive picture gallery.

THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK

(1974, Italy, Il profumo della signora in nero)

Mimsy is again the star, as a young woman coming to terms with her past (who isn't?). It plays a double game between whether she's insane or being driven mad. The ghosts that haunt her seem awfully real. And her friends are talking of voodoo rituals. Hmm.

Really well shot, with an evocative soundtrack, the story meanders for far too long, before a completely crazy ending that I didn't fully understand. But the climax is what puts this on the map and means I'll have to watch it again. Another point of interest was seeing Nike Arrighi again, after her standout role as the 'sensitive' in Hammer's The Devil Rides Out (1968).
Mimsy is ideal for the story, but the pacing let's it all. This has recently been released on DVD in the US (see cover art above).

AUTOPSY 

(1974, Italy)

Autopsy pairs Mimsy up with Ray Lovelock (the star of The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue) and once again she's used and abused. Besides being surrounded by murders and dead bodies, (she works in a pathology lab), there's yet more lingering nude scenes, stranger sex scenes than usual, hints of necrophilia, and some nasty photos of corpses that I suspect are real. All this sensationalism would normally make an Italian horror a must-see, yet it's sabotaged by the dull pace of each scene, from the director of the even duller The Dead Are Alive. While it starts off posing as an apocalypse movie, it finally falls back into a far more predictable storyline.

The boredom and the queasy mix of large-breasted corpses, disfigurement and sex are presumably aimed at the Ed Geins and Dennis Nilsons in the audience. Despite once being called The Magician, it's currently available on DVD as Autopsy.

THE BLACK CAT
(1981, Italy)

In every Lucio Fulci film there's usually one scene that spoils it. Like upright burning dummies that are supposed to be zombies, or clockwork flesh-eating spiders in the library. But The Black Cat is chock full o' silly scenes, Fulci using the frankly silly Argento subplot where a character can control the actions of an animal in order to commit murders. Here we get a killer cat. Not a lion. A small black cat. There are some increasingly far-fetched cat murders which desperately needed to be better staged, like the animal attacks in The Omen films, where you might believe a raven can kill.

Rubber bats on strings aren't scary. You should also not point cameras at them for too long. I'd not even previously registered that Mimsy was in this. Fighting off rubber bats isn't going to win her any new fans.

This is so silly, it loops it's own loopiness and becomes very watchable, helped by one of the best casts Fulci ever had, full of Euro-horror regulars. Besides Mimsy, there's Al Cliver (Zombie Flesh Eaters), Patrick Magee (Tales From The Crypt, A Clockwork Orange) taking it all very seriously, and David Warbeck (The Beyond) not taking it at all seriously - he acts and sounds like Roger Moore! But with daft dialogue and a plot like this, who could blame him? The English country locations and Pino Donaggio score also ease the pain.

Paradoxically, this one is widely available on DVD.





So. Autopsy is for gorehounds, The Perfume of the Lady In Black is arty Italian horror, The Black Cat is for Luci
o Fulci completists, Four Flies On Grey Velvet is an early classic Dario Argento, More is arthouse with a plot. But if you want to see Mimsy at her best, track down La Traque.

Her filmography is rich with relatively unknown cult flicks. I'm particularly keen to see her four late 1960s biker/teen rebel movies. What other Mimsy's do you think I shouldn't miss?

Mimsy and one of her latest creations

Mimsy Farmer has her own website devoted to her painting and sculpture (in French but easy to navigate)

Once again, Video Watchdog has pointed me to where the gold is. The Video Watchdog website is here - for subscriptions and back issues.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1973) and THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1974)

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1973)
THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1974)
(UK, USA, Spain, Panama co-production)

Now that's what I call swashbuckling...

After many versions of Alexander Dumas' classic adventure The Three Musketeers, I'm only really impressed by this adaption that divided the story over two movies, Hobbit-style. The cast, comedy, adventure and quirky humour are somehow never at odds with the original story, using spectacular locations, lush cinematography, and historical accuracy.

Dumas wove fact and fiction together around historical events and characters. This story makes the most of existing locations (mainly around Toledo in Spain) to evoke the period and settings of 17th century France and England. The director of photography is David Watkin who'd filmed The Devils two years earlier. I think Ken Russell's approach  informed the look, approach and even casting of the two musketeers films, which re-use Oliver Reed and Michael Gothard (also the vampire villain in Scream and Scream Again).

While the photography isn't as dark as the candlelit realism soon to be lavished on Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), the lighting still evokes the period long before electricity, but with the slightly more romantic look of a Dutch master. Together with the astonishing costumes and palaces on display, this definitely deserves its new digitally restored Blu-ray release. The two films were popular hits perfect for the British summer school holidays of 1974 and 1975.

The movies raised a benchmark for realism by adding blood and exhaustion to the swordfights. Some are played for laughs, but you always know that the swords and sabres are deadly and that the bloody wounds hurt. Here, all the history is kept quirky because of the well-researched scriptwriter George MacDonald Fraser, author of the still-cherished Flashman books. (They too inspired a lavish location-rich movie starring Alan Bates and Malcolm McDowell, Royal Flash in 1975). Fraser also wrote a cutting book rounding up Hollywood's greatest historical inaccuracies.

The cast is an impressive mixture of European, British and American stars, but all convincingly cast. Watching it digitally for the first time, it was very apparent that the entire dialogue track had been re-recorded afterwards ('looped'). Even at the time, we could tell that some of the extras had had humorous dialogue added in later, such as the sedan chair carriers complaining about Faye Dunaway, ("She's put on weight..."), and passers-by commenting on Raquel Welch running around the streets in her nightgown at night, "Put some clothes on, you saucy bitch!". Also Jean-Pierre Cassel (actor Vincent Cassel's dad) as the confused French king, appears to be performing in English but sounds more like Richard Briers.

Producers, the Salkind Brothers, made news by filming The Three and The Four Musketeers back-to-back, with the cast under the impression it was one epic film. So despite the story being released as two movies, they'd only received one fee. Christopher Lee points out in The Authorised Screen History that the small print mentioned they were being paid for a 'project', not a movie. The producers tried the same manoeuvre five years later with the first two big-budget Superman movies. This time less successfully - director Richard Lester having to complete Superman II after the production lost actor Gene Hackman (a stand-in is used in many scenes) and director Richard Donner (who recently released his own more serious version).

The musketeers movies were apparently an easier coup, but listening carefully it sounds to me like the American cast didn't return to loop their characters' voices. Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch and Geraldine Chaplin don't sound like themselves in The Four Musketeers.

While Three is an outright funny adventure with almost non-stop action, Four has far more dramatic weight. No less brilliant, the many downbeat moments are worthy of any major historical drama of the time. While there's just as much action, I was initially disappointed (at the age of thirteen) that it wasn't as funny. But the shocks and dramatic turns still left a lasting impression. For both films to show such range, makes them all-round entertainment for all ages, without compromising on the source material or characterisations.

Each swordfight has a unique twist to keep them fresh, without being unbelievable. For example, set in a royal laundry, amongst a firework display, a convent, or even on ice, fight arranger William Hobbs choreographs it all impressively. He later worked on Ridley Scott's The Duellists, Flash Gordon, John Boorman's Excalibur and Terry Gilliam's Brazil among many others. He appears in the film and, like all the main cast, does his own swordfighting. He's best known to horror fans for the climactic duel in Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter. Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed had previously crossed swords in Hammer Films' pirate and civil war swashbucklers. Good practice, but that didn't protect them both from suffering injuries, Reed even impaling his wrist on a blade.

These are my favourite band of Musketeer actors. Michael York has never been less annoying and well cast as an over-enthusiastic, floundering upstart. Frank Finlay is excellent comedy relief, both physically and verbally, and rarely so well used despite the relatively small part. Richard Chamberlain is distinctive as an effete ladies' man. But Oliver Reed gets to deliver a sterling performance, somehow keeping his scenes deadly serious through most of the shenanigans, especially the heart-breaking showdowns in The Four Musketeers.

It's rewarding to see Charlton Heston back in period costume, effortlessly menacing as a behind-the-scenes villain, though still a fleshed-out character, Cardinal Richelieu. Note how aged he appears to be, knowing that this is inbetween his 'action man' roles of The Omega Man and Earthquake.

His brief sparrings with Christopher Lee are electric. An important role for Lee, as he tried hard to escape his Dracula typecasting, demonstrating he can act with the best of them, swordfight like a pro, and effortlessly play a drole, romantic baddie with Faye Dunaway as his lover.

Dunaway is at the top of her game, underplaying the villainess Milady. While Richelieu is the mastermind, the head of church trying to depose the king, Lee and Dunaway's characters do the Cardinal's very dirty work. Her touching performance rounds out her character so much that it makes it hard to fully condemn her. Her very next film would be one of her greatest - Polanski's Chinatown.

Raquel Welch plays the pivotal role of Constance the Queen's dressmaker as an accident-prone simpleton so well, that I initially thought she was indeed a bimbo. After seeing more of her films, I learned she was not just voluptuous but an excellent comedy actress. In Britain she was seen as the sexiest of Hollywood female stars. As luck would have it, Hollywood were keen to make movies in the UK at the time, meaning Welch appeared in many British comedies at the time, spoofing her image of a sex goddess. Hence she played Lillian Lust in Bedazzled offering two lumps with a cup of tea to Dudley Moore, and whipping half-naked slave girls in The Magic Christian.

Roy Kinnear almost steals The Three Musketeers as the hapless, maltreated sidekick Planchet, the workhorse of the many musketeers, often getting the last laugh in the comedy scenes. One of the biggest laughs in the first film is his character failing to steer his galloping horse around a tree. Although the gag is done by a stuntman, it's now no longer funny knowing that Kinnear would die following a horse stunt during the filming of latter day sequel The Return of the Musketeers (1989), which reunited many of the cast and crew from these two films, and again directed by Lester. I've not been able to face watching it, knowing that it cost Kinnear his life.

Richard Lester re-used many more British comedy actors from his time with The Goons and from The Beatles' movies A Hard Day's Night and Help!, like Graham Stark and Bob Todd. But best of all, Goons' writer Spike Milligan shares scenes with Charlton Heston (!) and a bed with Raquel Welch, who plays his wife! That's funny in itself, but Spike builds up his scenes, as well as showing a flair for more serious acting.

While the first movie maybe tries a little too hard to milk amusement out of every last onscreen character, there's little else to fault in these two gems.

Optimum has released both remastered films for DVD and Blu-ray (the sleeve says region A and B compatible). They're available either separately or in double-disc sets. While there are no extras, I'm very happy that these are in circulation in such great presentations. The lush soundtracks, by Michel Legrand and Lalo Schifrin respectively are both on CD.

ZARDOZ lands in the UK - March 1974

ZARDOZ arrives!
Films and Filming, March 1974

Preceded by a lengthy career interview with Sean Connery, Films and Filming magazine devoted a hefty four-page spread of publicity photos from John Boorman's sci-fi parable timed with its UK debut. Zardoz seems to be more popular now than it ever was, but as a benchmark for bad seventies' sci-fi. I think there's far worse out there, but not nearly as entertaining. I thought you might like this peek at it's original presentation.

In the reviews section, we're reminded that also on release in the UK that month, Zardoz was up against Enter The Dragon, Electra Glide In Blue, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (which I saw at the time), Magnum Force and Swallows and Amazons. Being too young to see Zardoz with its 'X' certificate, I had to settle for reading John Boorman's novelisation - which is pictured in my review of the movie.

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967) - invades Blu-ray

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT

(1967, UK, Five Million Years To Earth)

A unified theory that explains everything that's wrong with the world...

For Halloween, we watched all three Hammer films featuring that unlikely sci-fi hero Professor Bernard Quatermass, prompted by the arrival of the new Blu-ray release of Quatermass and the Pit (above).

Although it's the third of the films and adapted from a BBC TV series, this low-budget movie pushes ideas that rival and even mingle with the extra-terrestrial plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As alien visitations go, it looks small scale, not showing the global reaction but just a few streets and buildings in the centre of London. Even so, its claustrophobic approach is still largely effective today, mixing up apocalypse, sci-fi and horror into a unique, fantastic story.

With three hours of TV scripts to cut down into a fairly short film, the story rips along, throwing up some very grand ideas along the way. An Underground subway extension project hits a wall when a large metal object is found buried in the clay. A huge futuristic missile that appears to have landed before the Stone Age. Archaeologists and military experts can only guess what it might be. The more clues they get, the less sense it makes. Only Quatermass's wild theories can explain it all. But while he tries to warn everyone away, curiosity and the need for public transport unleashes forces that threaten to destroy the whole city.

Thankfully, Nigel Kneale gets to adapt his best story for the big screen (unlike Hammer's The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass II). Besides original scripts, Kneale was excellent at adapting other people's work for the screen, such as 1984 and The Woman In Black for TV, and HG Wells' First Men In The Moon for the Ray Harryhausen movie.

Andrew Keir (Dracula - Prince of Darkness) provides Quatermass's most rounded characterisation, better than even Sir John Mills in The Quatermass Conclusion. Besides his usual bullish attitude, the rocket scientist here shows warmth and even vulnerability. He's teamed up with a pair of experts as inquisitive and open-minded as himself, James Donald (The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Great Escape) and Barbara Shelley (also Dracula - Prince of Darkness, Village of the Damned), both of whom steal several scenes when it's their turn.

After her startling transformation from prim and proper wife into a ravening vampire, it was hard to imagine Shelley could top that. But she convinces us that she's possessed in several scary scenes that purely work due to her performance. A telekinetic troublemaker, years before Carrie.

In another brief scene that gives me the chills, a timid victim is cut down by the uncaring power of the silent majority. As chaos spreads through the city, blank-faced crowds mindlessly kill any 'others' with their telekinetic powers. It's like the Children of the Damned have all grown up and gone on a rampage. 

Admittedly, the special effects are stretched to their limits, considering it's a low Hammer budget trying to put on a Lifeforce city-wide catastrophe. Some of the exterior sets look too much like a backlot, but the London Underground station interior at the core of the story still looks excellent. On Blu-ray you can now check out all the Hammer movie posters lining the walls! It's clever the way that so much happens on the same street - every house, door and alleyway outside the station entrance gets its own scene.

Wires are occasionally visible, you can see them if you look for them, but not if you're following the story. Barbara's 'vision' is the lowpoint of the film in an over-ambitious scene.

After a lifetime of immediately unravelling every single movie special effect that has fooled my eyes, I now avoid certain 'making of' reveals. I want the creatures of The Mist and Monsters to continue to mystify me. I like to think of Teddy in A.I. as a character rather an effect, so I've avoided any behind-the-scenes footage or articles. I want to remember them the way they were in the story. Similarly, the final ethereal apparition in Quatermass and The Pit. I've no idea quite what I'm looking at - it might as well be real. I don't want to know how they did it - to me I'm looking at the thing from the pit.

While it was regularly shown on late night TV throughout the seventies and eighties, Quatermass and the Pit gathered a growing hive of fans through the years and its continuing popularity has inspired well-produced editions on every home video format.

The new Blu-ray, from Optimum UK, looks superb - it's never looked so sharp, so clean and colourful. The aspect ratio refrains from cropping the original 1.66 image down to the standard Blu-ray 1.77:1 (16:9) shape. So with the 1.66 ratio, there are thin black 'pillars' at the sides of the image, but these might not even be visible on a screen set to 'overscan'. I'd have liked even a little more headroom, but this is the best aspect ratio presentation for the film that I've seen for many years.

 

In the extras (only on the Blu-ray) there's sadly no archive footage behind the scenes, but there is a commentary track from the late writer Nigel Kneale and the late director Roy Ward Baker. Plus a group of insightful and often funny new reflections on the Quatermass phenomenon, with The Pit being everyone's favourite. There are valuable stories from Kneale's widow Judith Kerr, some set recollections from star Julian Glover (Colonel Breen), reminiscences from expert horror fans Kim Newman and Mark Gatiss, (who made me laugh out loud with their descriptions of Brian Donlevy's acting), Hammer expert Marcus Hearn and an American perspective from Joe Dante. The US didn't get the TV series so the name Quatermass didn't mean anything, so it was renamed Five Million Years to Earth (a title which I still confuse with Harryhausen's Twenty Million Miles to Earth).

Several of the commentators tease the idea that Arthur C. Clarke's 1954 novel Childhood's End (to which I'd also add his 1951 short story The Sentinel) may have influenced this Quatermass story. There are several echoes and parallels between The Pit and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but as Newman observes, Kneale deals with the immense ideas a lot less pretentiously!

SPOILER-FRENZY: AVOID THE U.S. TRAILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM BEFORE! It's also included in the extras.

All six episodes of the original BBC TV series (from 1958) are also out on DVD - a low-budget TV production recorded as it went out live on air! The surviving episodes of The Quatermass Experiment and all of Quatermass II is also in this DVD set. The series expand on many of the ideas and scenes in the films. It maybe less distracting to read the TV scripts, which have also been re-published through the years (like the editions below).

  

Tristram Cary's scary electronic soundtrack offered in many scenes instead of an orchestral score were released on a couple of CDs (the best is pictured below, and includes a couple of surviving tracks from the first two films). The haunting closing track provides a fantastic end to the story, but was in fact a library track.

More great publicity photos and posters from the film are over at Coming Attractions Of The Past.