The Ghouls: Book One - horror fiction into film

THE GHOULS: BOOK ONE

The Stories Behind the Classic Horror Films

The Devil In A Nunnery by Francis Oscar Mann

The System Of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether by Edgar Allan Poe
Feathertop by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Magician by Somerset Maugham
Spurs by Tod Robbins
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker
The Devil And Daniel Webster by Steven Vincent Benet

Novels that inspire horror movies are easy to find, but short stories might need more detective work. They might only be found in old anthologies or even magazines. So when I saw these two paperbacks, I pounced on them! The Ghouls: Books One and Two were edited by Peter Haining, with nine short stories in each, every one used as source material for a horror film.

I bought these paperbacks just after they were published in 1974 (previously available as a single hardback). All I know is that they were sold in the UK and US, and reprinted in the UK in 1994. Such a brilliant theme for a collection, I'm surprised that there haven't been many more.

As a tribute to a great idea, here's an over-ambitiously long article that took months to put together - I've read all the stories again and watched as many of the movies they inspired as was possible. While I'd disagree that all the films are 'horror classics', I've been led to some great films that I'd not seen before.

Haining's introduction, as well as the foreword and afterword from genre giants, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee respectively, contain insightful notes on the genre.

So here's a look at the films and stories of Book One, a second article on Book Two will follow...

Foreword by Peter Haining

Haining makes a case for a place in the world for horror films and novels, at a time when gory or scary films were still widely being dismissed by critics and scholars alike. He originally chose these tales to illustrate how fiction has inspired horror films through the years, from the very first decade of cinema.

His introductions to each story reminded me of the state of the genre back then. For instance he remarks that Freaks "was the most horrific film ever made" and that The Magician was a "missing" film. Thankfully, far more horrific films have been made since 1974, and The Magician is no longer lost. In fact, it's just hit DVD.

 

THE DEVIL IN A CONVENT

(1896, France)

Based on The Devil In A Nunnery, a Medieval tale retold by Francis Oscar Mann.

This ancient story tells of the devil tricking his way into a convent by posing as a troubadour. As he sings to the nuns, they start behaving completely out of character. There's a sense that the author is hinting about a multitude of sins without getting into trouble for naming them explicitly.

This premise became one of the short (just three minutes long) frantic films created by French pioneer and genius Georges Méliès in the first few years of cinema. Well ahead of Hollywood tradition, Méliès completely rewrote the story by having the devil pose as an old priest - a far more wicked disguise.

While the story depends on wordplay, this short silent film visually riffs on the mayhem that a pantomime demon could wreak in a church - summoning little devils and monstrous animals. Mischievous fun rather than anything too blasphemous, the film has a single camera angle but a constantly evolving set powered by trap doors, puffs of smoke and his trademark in-camera editing. Hardly a horror classic, but a gracious nod to cinema's first studio of the fantastic.

Thanks to the wonderful DVD boxed set of practically all of Méliès' existing works, I was able to see this. It's also on YouTube. I'm not sure the next film still exists though...

THE LUNATICS

(1913, USA)

Based on The System Of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe.

Who else would early film-makers turn to for bizarre and scary ideas?

Two rambling holidaymakers are shown around a 'lunatic asylum' which is trying out a variety of unusual new treatments. On the tour, as they meet a variety of inmates, they're unaware of one of the most drastic cures on offer there...

This lesser-known tale from Poe is more of a comic twist than a descent into horror, though the premise has often been used in far more ghastly 'madhouse' movies, such as Ghost Story and Asylum. The slim short story would have been ideal as a short film, which lasted only 15 minutes. Incidentally, it was directed by Maurice Tourneur, father of Cat People and Night of the Demon director, Jacques.

The story was again officially adapted in Mexico as The Mansion of Madness (1973), directed by Juan López Moctezuma (Alucarda).

PURITAN PASSIONS

(1923, USA, also called The Scarecrow)

Based on Feathertop (1852) by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

From the author of The Scarlet Letter, is this dark fairy-tale of a New England witch who brings her scarecrow to life, looking like a human being. She then fixes on the idea that her scarecrow should find love, (a contrivance to set up this story of fateful romance).

While the premise of a living scarecrow is more usually horror nowadays, this tale (and The Wizard of Oz) present him as a friendly fantasy, despite the use of witchcraft.
 
I couldn't find any silent version of this, I'm not even sure if the early films (also 1912, 1916) still exist. A Broadway stage adaption, filmed for TV in 1972, had very poor reviews, despite having Gene Wilder as Feathertop himself.


 

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
(1925, 1929, USA)

Based on the 1909 novel by Gaston Leroux.

At this point Haining cheats a little, presenting a specially abridged version of Gaston Leroux' book. But this is a good way to enjoy the story and avoid the overlong sub-plots of opera house politics and romantic rivalry. This condensed version seems to have been trimmed to give us the passages that were translated to the screen for Lon Chaney's brilliant work. Conversely, this silent 1925 adaption (slightly reworked for sound in 1929) is a quite faithful adaption of events in the novel, apart from the completely revamped ending.

A ghost is said to haunt the Paris Opera House. A string of accidents force the directors to reconsider their choice of lead singer in their prestigious productions. Letters from 'The Phantom' threaten them to comply, or great tragedy will befall them...

I enjoy this movie version the most with its focus on The Phantom as the central character and the extensive use of gothic atmosphere in, well, everything - the cavernous sets and production design, the lighting, even the angry mob with torches. It's a horror epic.
 
Lon Chaney's Phantom is the most famous of his extreme make-ups and the movie is required viewing as America's first landmark horror film. The restorations available on DVD include the early two-strip Technicolor sequences that treat us to The Phantom in eerie colour.
 
Leroux' story is now well known, though most subsequent adaptions diminish the severity of the horror content compared to the first, silent adaption.


 

THE MAGICIAN
(1926, USA)

Based on the 1908 novel by Somerset Maugham.

Haining cheats again by offering just an extract from a novel. He chose the passage describing the hypnotised heroine's dream of Hell, which became the film's delirious highlight.

Maugham is a celebrated author in Britain and many of his stories have been adapted as movies through the years (most recently The Painted Veil with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton) but at their most popular in the 1940s. Most of his novels were dramas, but The Magician was a dark fantasy focussed on a caricature of occultist Aleister Crowley, reimagined as the bragging Oliver Haddo, who might actually have discovered the mastery of dark powers. The silent adaption is faithful to the story and characterisations of the novel, right down to the French locations, though it adds a dramatic subplot to open the film.
 
Warner Archive have just released this influential silent horror. I was excited to see Germany's horror star Paul Wegener (The Golem, Alraune, Svengali, The Student of Prague) in his only American film. This was easy casting to arrange because director Rex Ingram shot the film entirely in France, boasting many actual locations. It was obviously easy for a German actor to appear in a Hollywood film when they were silent.

At the time, any news of Crowley was usually scandalous (he was still alive), possibly enough to damage the film's chances - it didn't do well. But Ingram implies much more than he shows, and also adds tongue-in-cheek humour to the melodrama. There's a wonderful moment when Wegener exaggerates his character's exit with a superbly haughty throw of his cloak over the shoulder.
 
A hunchback dwarf in a mountain-top tower housing a huge laboratory is intended as a ridiculous egocentric overly-dramatic setting. It manages to satirise Frankenstein five years before it was made. All that's missing is the flashy flashing electrical equipment. The scene in Hell is more serious and more sexual, a visually different depiction to Hollywood's usual reliance on Dante.
 
As well as pre-dating Frankenstein, suffering censorship problems with the subject of satanism, the story also veers into the world of Svengali, who Wegener portrayed the following year. Much of Haddo's success is due to his powers of hypnotism.

It's a fascinating and influential silent movie, beautifully made. If only it had been more successful in America, Paul Wegener and his early achievements as an actor might be more widely known, rather than just as the big guy who played the hulking Golem...

FREAKS
(1933, USA)

Based on Spurs (1923) by Tod Robbins.

Director Tod Browning chose this story to continue his love affair with circus life and trump the horror of Dracula (1931) more thoroughly than the studio actually wanted.

The short story Spurs provided the premise of the plot. A beautiful horse rider in love with a strong man laughs off the affections of a dwarf until he inherits a fortune from his uncle. She decides to marry for money, then murder him. The outcome of the story is very different to the film - brutal, sadistic and involves a pair of spurs...


The little person of the story is far from the helpless and sympathetic character of the film. He's a suspicious dwarf who has the upper hand because of a huge, fierce dog under his command. Author Tod Robbins earlier wrote The Unholy Three (in 1917) which Tod Browning had adapted as a silent film (in 1925) starring Lon Chaney. It was remade as a talkie (in 1930) and proved to be Chaney's last film.

Despite the parade of real-life physical abnormality in TV documentaries, this 1933 film still has the power to unsettle and shock, mainly due to the extreme nature of the circus people's disabilities and the lack of medical and public understanding they must have endured. While Browning had a circus background to draw on for realism and inspiration, his portrayal of the 'freaks' is two-faced, inspiring much criticism and censorship through the decades. Though they are sympathetically portrayed through much of the film, Browning switches to using them to prey on our fears, as scary monsters in the nightmarish climax.

But this would prove to be the only portrayal of many extreme physical disabilities for several decades and the largely positive portrayal was contrary to the regular movie rules that disfigurement equated with evil - scars or eyes/limbs missing visually meant that they were bad guys. Speaking of scars, Count Zaroff has a corker...

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME
(1933, USA)

Based on The Most Dangerous Game (1924) by Richard Connell.

A classic and often reused story - a hunter who likes to hunt... humans. A simple short story that quickly unfolds as a shipwreck survivor learns that his ship was wrecked deliberately. Anyone left alive provides quarry for a mad huntsman living in an island fortress, from which there's no escape.

The story features a single (first-person) protagonist in a prolonged battle with Zaroff. The film would add a gradual realisation of the survivors' plight, a love interest and a nasty trophy room...


The first and best movie adaption also re-used the sets of King Kong (1933), with many of the same cast and crew (while the extensive animation was being finished). It's fun to see Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong together again, with Fay running across Skull Island's famous log bridge, but being chased by Count Zaroff and his pack of hell hounds. It's my favourite of the many versions because it's the purest telling of the tale - there are no subplots or mucking about - we're on the island the whole time. The film is almost too short, barely over an hour.

I also like this as a flipside of Kong's world. As if they got rid of the giant gorilla and made a prototype Battle Royale instead. For its age, it's still exciting and even brutal, though most of the explicit violence was toned down (cracking of bones removed from the soundtrack, torture and mutilation cut completely out).


This is the greatest character that Leslie Banks (Went The Day Well?) played -the insane Zaroff, with Joel McCrea (the star of Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent) and Fay Wray looking bedraggled, but gorgeous, even after dragging themselves through a swamp.

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER

(1936, USA)

Based on Dracula’s Guest (1897) by Bram Stoker.

This was first published in 1914, but was written in 1897 as the opening chapter of Stoker's most famous novel Dracula. It describes how Jonathan Harker encounters the weird and uncanny before he even reaches Castle Dracula.

It's hard to see exactly how this became the inspiration for Dracula's Daughter, only one late scene in the film bears any relation to the story. Presumably publicity was trying to hype up as many links as possible between the first ever Dracula sequel and the literary prequel.

Dracula's Daughter is an early good example of a horror sequel. The story continues directly on from the end of Dracula (1931) with Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan again) being arrested for murdering the Count! Meanwhile a mysterious hooded woman spirits away the corpse (a rather obvious dummy substituting for Lugosi) but continuing his work in obtaining involuntary blood donations. Like her father, she is also very interested in female victims...



This is a very good Universal horror, but would've been even better if it hadn't been restricted by new censorship rules for horror films. The gothic mood is constantly interrupted by bursts of comic relief, mostly provided by an unlucky policeman (silent comedy star Billy Bevan). But Gloria Holden is extraordinary and ethereal and her duel of wits with the living is more effectively dramatic than the staginess of Dracula.

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER
(1944, USA, also called All That Money Can Buy)

Based on The Devil And Daniel Webster (1937) by Steven Vincent Benet.

This story is in itself an adaption of a tale as old as the hills. A variation of the Faust legend given an American mid-19th century setting. Whenever you get a wish, there's always a catch. The film was famously referenced in The Simpsons' very first Treehouse of Horror, which is a good taster for the finale - a courtroom drama staged by the Devil himself.

A young farmer, Jabez Stone, struggling to raise a family, curses his luck and swears that he'd do anything to improve his life. Out of nowhere, a stranger helps change his fortunes for the next seven years, in return for a small consideration, his soul.

It helps if you know a little early American history (gulp), in particular Daniel Webster. Here he's a popular politician dedicated to helping the farmers. Luckily for Jabez Stone, he's also a great lawyer. In reality, Webster also ran for President no less than three times.

The story decribes many of Webster's achievements without detailing them. So all the dialogue for the famous legal scene had to be written from scratch.


The lighting in this film is extraordinary. It noticeably and literally adds shades to the performances, and transforms simple sets into frightening tableaux. The Devil, though he's never actually named, arrives through a barn door - doesn't sound like much - but the lighting makes it startling. It reminded me of the appearance of a demon, the highlight of the bonkers Esperanto Incubus (1966).

With Bernard Herrmann composing the music, sharp black and white cinematography, and ironic dialogue unafraid to highlight inhumanity and injustice, the film looks like a pilot movie for The Twilight Zone, but fourteen years early. As Jabez Stone gets closer to his fate, the denizens of Hell come up and meet him. These shadowy glimpses of half-seen apparitions are still scary.

Until I'd re-read The Ghouls for this article, I'd barely heard of this film, though I now realise its credentials are close to legendary, being produced at RKO Studios the same year as Citizen Kane, sharing some of the same production crew, like the composer (Herrmann) and editor (Robert Wise).

Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, And Then There Were None) plays 'Mr Scratch', constantly reminding me of his son, John (actor - Myra Breckinridge, director - The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon) who I've enjoyed in many films. John handled cigars just like his dad. Walter's performance is outstanding though subtle - I don't think he raises his voice throughout the film. This lack of threat enables him to gain friends and allies and then betray their trust...


I was delighted to see Simone Simon co-star as a mysterious temptress. The following year she'd of course take the lead in the first of two RKO horror films as Irena, one of The Cat People. Val Lewton's films had to be low-budget because of RKO's losses from Citizen Kane. Their loss, our gain. Simon plays Belle, a French nanny who casually appears out of nowhere...

The production design is ambitious and successful, portraying very similar situations to Days of Heaven but entirely on a soundstage. Director William Dieterle later directed the great version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1939.

A supernatural fantasy hinting at the horrors of damnation, this is a superb movie.

The Ghouls was first published as a single hardcover by W. H. Allen in 1971, then as two paperbacks from Orbit in 1974. I've always thought that the cover needed a stronger hint that these stories were connected to films - perhaps using photographs. I've changed my mind after seeing the US paperback edition (above).

The superior cover art for both paperbacks, painted by John Holmes, is the stuff of nightmares. More of his gruesome and surreal cover art can be viewed here on British pulp horror fiction site The Vault of Evil. (A big thank you to Johnny Mains, of Noose and Gibbet Publishing for the info.)

Wait till you see the cover of Book Two...

JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS' harpy temple location

On location: JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963) The Temple of the Harpies!

Why build a set when you can use the real thing?

In 2006 we visited Sorrento, near Naples in Southern Italy. We stared into the mouth of Vesuvius and visited the well-preserved city of Pompeii. In 79 A.D. volcanic ash buried the city in a cataclysmic eruption. Walking around the streets and buildings, the preserved shells of fallen bodies brought home the scale of the ancient tragedy as if it were yesterday.

While visiting the ruined city of Paestum on another excursion, I got the feeling it had been used as a filming location in Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts. In the scene where Phileas (Patrick Troughton) is tormented by two harpies sent by Zeus. Jason and his Argonauts arrive to talk to Phileas, who will only help if they stop the harpies from stealing his food.



I'd not expected to run into this movie location and hadn't prepared at all - normally I'd watch the film beforehand for clues. Because the scene was vague in my memory and I was only working on a hunch, I only got the details right after the visit. On the day, I decided on completely the wrong temple! The information at the site didn't mention anything about it.


Paestum used to be a Greek settlement, named after the god of the sea, Poseidon. Incredibly the layout of the city is still easy to seen, as well as many remaining structures (like a small colliseum) and three well-preserved temples that are still standing. Some of the best examples anywhere, even in Greece. The original architects had even built in various earthquake-defying features, enabling a film crew to run around on top of it 2,500 years later!



Out of the three temples at Paestum, the one on a slight hill - the solitary Temple of Athena (or Ceres) - looked possible, but I'd guessed wrong. Note that it only has six end columns.

At the other end of this World Heritage Site, furthest from the site entrance, are two temples standing side by side - the Temple of Poseidon (or Neptune) and the Temple of Hera (also called The Basilica).

The Temple of Poseidon (on the right) is the more impressive, as it's more complete than the older temple behind it. But it's the Temple of Hera (on the left) that was used in the film. The above two photos are taken from the backs of the temples, from the east. But the filming was either done inside or from front...

These two shots (above) show the front of the temple from the west, before and after they erected a fence that keeps the visitors out.

The Temple of Hera has nine end columns, seen here in the film. But I didn't pay it much attention on the day we visited, because it stands so close to the Temple of Poseidon - I always thought of it being isolated in the film - but in several scenes you can see the neighbouring temple in the background (below)...

Also visible in the background of some shots are mountains, which indicates that the west end of the temple was used for filming. While it's not actually on the coast (the scene of Jason's arrival was faked with a trick of editing), in terms of realism, Jason and his men still arrive at the temple from the direction of the coast.

This overhead shot shows the Temple of Hera (on the left) with the sea in the distance. In 550 BC, the coast would have been closer. 

This location is also used earlier in Jason and the Argonauts. Harryhausen recreated the interior of Poseidon's temple for the opening scene where Jason's mother is murdered. In the film it’s a set, but the original building where those events took place were in that temple next door!

This view looking north shows the ground in front of the Temple of Hera where the film first shows Phileas at a table when the harpies attack. The Temple of Poseidon is behind it. The stone dining table and the fallen columns outside must all have been props. All three temples at Paestum are missing their roofs. The Temple of Hera is the only one also missing the arched decorative roof supports at the front and back, leaving a completely flat surface for Argonauts to run all around the top - making this temple the best of the three for catching harpies...

The columns were all about thirty feet high, making it very dangerous for the stuntmen running around with the Harpie nets. 

The wide flat tops of the columns match the close-ups in the film. 

Some of the filming took place inside the temple. Note the remaining columns inside the structure - they're also visible in this modern view (below) looking inside the temple from the front, towards the mountains.

It’s hard for me to precisely explain the fun of visiting old movie locations. But they're the only physic remnants that remain of many movies. We'd visited Paestum to see ancient temples, which was exciting enough. But it turned out we'd also seen an actual ‘set’ from Jason and the Argonauts, which is very exciting. Especially since it looks much the same as it did in 1963. In contrast, some of the locations for the legendary skeleton fight, like the cliff where Jason jumps, are now underneath multi-storey hotels. 

A good site for more views of Paestum here, at Sacred Destinations). 

(Sorry about the poor layout of this article - Blogger really doesn't like me updating old articles...)

(This is an expanded article, now including my own photos, originally posted November 27th 2006)

THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (2008) - Clive Barker done well

THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN

(2008, USA)

Impressive and bloody tale of a terror train...

I've been hoping for years for a really good horror film set in an underground rail system. This is the best so far. While The Uninvited (2003) and Ghost Train had some creepy subterranean scares, nothing matched the terrifying vibe of Clive Barker's short story (from the Books of Blood), which I first read on the London Underground (big mistake).

This recent adaption is already my favourite subway horror film. It's not perfect (the characters occasionally do some stupid things that horror victims always do), but it's shocking, scary, looks good, has a good cast given plenty to do, with energetically insane direction, and it's a lot of fun. That's 'fun' if you like blood, meathooks and other shiny tools usually used on livestock...

While Leon (Bradley Cooper) is struggling to take gritty photographs for his portfolio, he might have snapped a clue to a string of disappearances on the New York subway. While he's piecing together the clues, we already know what's going on. A smart-dressed man with a small leather bag is murdering passengers in a bizarrely ritualistic manner, very late at night when there's no one around. Each murder reveals a little more of his obsessive habits and motives...

I had high hopes that director Ryuhei Kitamura would have a hit with this. After enjoying the over-the-top action in Azumi and Godzilla: Final Wars, I assumed Hollywood would be grateful for his talents. When the film disappeared quickly, I mistakenly assumed that it was no good. But it really is impressive. Looking fantastic, using a stylised palette that make the subway a surreal, luminous steely blue. The inventive camerawork includes some nightmarish point-of-view shots of some of the victims and some physically impossible moves in and out of moving subway trains.

The occasionally frantic visuals mirror the madness of the situation and reflects the ebbing sanity of the characters. While computer effects are used throughout, even on some of the gore, there's enough physical reality in there. Gushing blood, prosthetic effects... an intelligent mixture of effects achieving in showing us something new. While some of the (many) dead bodies look a little rubbery, I didn't really want them to look any more real - it's grim enough.

Bradley Cooper is really good in this, (also impressive in J.J. Abrams' TV series Alias), though you might be more used to him in comedy, or sick that he's now everywhere. He's convincing here, demonstrating a wide range.

Playing a murderous maniac you wouldn't want to get trapped on a train with, Vinnie Jones is more famous as an ex-footballer, or a wise-cracking thug in gangster movies - two personas that I usually have a problem getting past. While he doesn't add much subtlety to the role, that more accomplished actors would have attempted, he completely looks and acts the part of a large, powerful murder machine.

Leslie Bibb as the girlfriend and Roger Bart as her friend are also excellent in difficult roles, but there are no weak links in the cast at all. Even Brooke Shields adds weight as a prospective client egging Bradley into danger to get ever more edgy (and saleable) photographs. I'm glad it's fairly faithful to Clive Barker's original story, though it's been expanded to make a longer and more logical story. But many of the smallest details from the story are up on the screen. A real shame that this wasn't more successful, because it stands out among many recent gory horrors. The Midnight Meat Train is widely available on DVD and blu-ray, in anamorphic 2.35 widescreen.

THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION (1979) - a grim finale

THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION
(1979, UK TV series, 4 x 50 mins)
also called QUATERMASS

Death from above

Creator Nigel Kneale's last series for his most famous character, Bernard Quatermass, presented the visionary rocket scientist as an old man simply obsessed with tracking down his lost granddaughter. There are two major obstacles: in near-future Britain, society has decayed into anarchy, and there's an alien force lurking in the sky that spirits away the young.

Watching this again I was shocked at just how cynically Kneale presented the future. Neither capitalism or communism has worked and society has descended into chaos, wreckage blocks the street, the elderly are hiding underground, goods and food can no longer be bought, only bartered or stolen. The streets aren't safe, unless you pay for protection from the 'cash cops'.

It struck more of a chord with me now than it did at the time. At the moment, it almost feels likely that this is how everything could go. With a little more more financial chaos, a few more ecological disasters, an escalation of tension between nuclear powers...

In retrospect, every earlier Quatermass story was also downbeat - The Quatermass Experiment was about the failure of his first space mission. Quatermass II presented an alien intelligence that could enslave humanity, infiltrating every level of society. In Quatermass and the Pit, an ancient intelligence reactivates mob rule and almost destroys London. Projects fail, things fall apart, the system is fallible, ordinary people die.

The Quatermass Conclusion shows humanity helpless in the cosmic scheme, by being regarded as little more than food by a new species from space. No chance of a friendly close encounter, we're nothing more than cattle.

Kneale ironically mixes in a quasi-hippy movement of 'Planet People', who think that the huge crowds of people disappearing have in fact been taken away to a better place. This echoes the real-life cults that were hoping to jump into visiting UFOs and tour the galaxies.

The downbeat story reflected the punk nihilism of the time, though the story had been written years earlier. By 1979, regular strikes by electricity workers and dustmen meant power blackouts and huge piles of rubbish in central London were reminders of how quickly chaos could hit life at home and on the streets.

While the BBC had decided not to make this story, an early independent TV production company, Euston Films, rose to the occasion. They'd had success with the similarly cynical and violent cop show The Sweeney. While the three 1950s Quatermass series were shot in BBC studios, The Quatermass Conclusion was all shot on film, mostly on location, giving this series a completely different look from both the BBC productions and the Hammer films.

The crowd scenes and locations (including the old Wembley Stadium) were impressive for TV. But the modelwork used for the space scenes were pretty primitive, especially compared to the earlier Space: 1999. But the practical effects are still good, make-up and melted remains looking uncomfortably realistic.


The cast is strong for TV, but some of the minor characters are more 'mixed ability'. Andrew Keir is my favourite of all the Professor Quatermass actors, but here John Mills is really very good, and the best thing in it.

The late Simon MacCorkindale (Sword and the Sorceror, Manimal, Jaws 3D) plays a young radio astronomer. His wife is played by Barbara Kellerman (The Monster Club). One of their assistants is a fresh-faced Brenda Fricker (an Oscar winner for My Left Foot, followed up with, gulp, Home Alone 2).

Keep your eyes peeled for a pre-pop star Toyah Willcox, then courting a film career in similar counter-culture roles in Derek Jarman's Jubilee (1978) and The Tempest (1979). She was also in the excellent Quadrophenia the same year.

The UK DVD release is currently out of print and going for high prices, so at present the US set (pictured at top) is more affordable, also offering a second disc with the theatrical version designed for a cinema release. Kneale had to write the series to work as two different narratives, so the film could work at half the running time. The US DVDs have minor conversion errors (PAL to NTSC) but still look as I remember it. The boxset is simply called Quatermass. The quote on the cover is misleading and stupid.