Five Million Years to Earth (or Quatermass and the Pit)

Five Million Years to Earth
And it finally ends...long, long ago, TCM had a marathon to celebrate Hammer Films, the studio that dominated the horror genre in the late 1950s and 1960s.  I used my DVR to pretty much record every single film in the marathon and planned on reviewing all of them.  Embarrassingly, it took two years to get through them all (in my defense, I had lots of movies I wanted to review in between!!).  And now I am finished, at last!  I am not saying I won't review more Hammer movies.  I would love to!  But Five Million Years to Earth is the final film in that initial marathon.  And I am happy to say that I saved a winner for the end! 

While doing construction in London's Hobb' End Tube Station, workers find something metallic and huge.  They think it is a Nazi bomb leftover from World War II and immediately call in the military.  But something is a bit weird about this metallic structure and the army brings in brilliant scientist Bernard Quatermass (Bernard Lee, Dracula: Prince of Darkness) to investigate.  Alongside fellow researchers Dr. Roney (James Donald, The Great Escape) and Barbara Judd (Barbara Shelley, also from Dracula: Prince of Darkness), Quatermass tries to get to the bottom of the mystery.  Pretty quickly they learn that the structure is a space ship...and that is seems to carry some sort of demonic power that could endanger the entire country.  Oh, crap! 

Let's just get the bad out of the way first.  Five Million Years to Earth is pretty good, but there are a few problems.  I know I shouldn't dock points for special effects in a film made in 1967, but the aliens just look too silly.  Look at the picture above.  The aliens look like plastic!  I just couldn't get past that!  I also had a problem with the way the military was handled in the film, as represented by the stubborn Colonel Breen (Julian Glover, For Your Eyes Only).  Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Breen keeps insisting that the ship is a German bomb.  After the 43rd time he tells Quatermass to shut his trap and go away, you just start to get annoyed. 

Okay, that's the bad.  What about the good?  Well, that is actually the rest of the film.  This is smart science fiction, with some good ideas and with something to say.  In fact, some of the messages seem to be remarkably similar to Prometheus except they seem to be better thought out and...well, make sense.  Much of the film is spent following Quatermass and Barbara as they investigate the strange happenings around Hobb's End, and some of it is pretty creepy.  Some people might find all this talking and thinking to be dull, but I found it all very interesting.  I really wasn't sure where this movie was going to go.  And eventually there is a big, exciting climax.  You just have to be patient and wait for it!

The acting is also quite good.  James Donald, Andrew Keir and Barbara Shelley have a sophisticated, adult chemistry, and genuinely seem to enjoy each other's company.  Julian Glover is quite good, even if I didn't like his character.  And I have to say that Glover looks almost exactly the same here, in 1967, as he did in 2004's Troy, which is pretty damn impressive. 

Anyways, Five Millions Years to Earth isn't perfect, but it is smart and clever science fiction, and probably the best of Hammer's non-horror films.  I would definitely recommend it!

MVP:
I'm going to have to go with Barbara Shelley, who also won my MVP for Dracula: Prince of Darkness.  Known as the First Lady of British Horror, she really was more than just your average scream queen.  No matter what is happening on screen, she is just completely believable.  And she really telegraphs fear incredibly well, better than most actors, I think.  Her fear just seems real.  I think it is because she doesn't overdo it, and does most of the acting with her eyes.  But to be honest, the real reason she wins the MVP is because she makes such an impact despite that fact that her hair is the most dated thing in the film and does its best to distract the audience!


BEST LINE:
Sladden is a worker with a super powerful drill.  Along with Breen, he prepares to drill into the interior of the ship. 

Sladden: I reckon this little beauty will cut through anything.  Cut steel armor plate six inches thick, just like that.  Oh, it was legal!  Some bloke got stuck in a storeroom.  But I got him out.  It was a secret job, like this one.

Colonel Breen: Then I'm glad you don't talk about it.

TRIVIA:

At the Hobb's End Underground Station, there are numerous posters of other Hammer Films on the walls, including Dracula: Prince of Darkness and The Reptile.

Dracula: Prince of Darkness

Dracula: Prince of Darkness

The third movie in Hammer's Dracula franchise, Dracula: Prince of Darkness differed from the previous film in one major way - it actually had Dracula in it!   After Dracula's death in Horror of Dracula, the studio followed vampire hunter Van Helsing's further adventures in the sequel, Brides of Dracula.  But in 1966, they managed to convince Christopher Lee to reprise his role as the evil count and the result was one of the more popular installments in the franchise.

Two English couples are vacationing in the Carpathian Mountains.  Though they are warned by a burly, gun-toting priest named Father Sandor to avoid the creepy castle in the mountains, the couple eventually find themselves at that very spot.  To the characters' credit, they aren't like the stupid victims in other horror movies that impulsively go where we all know they shouldn't.  There are dark forces at work that push them towards the castle.  Their only crime is that they are a bit too trusting of the castle's butler, Klove, once they've arrived.

Before you know it, one of the men is dead, and his fresh blood is used to bring Dracula back to life - in a creative resurrection scene that sees the fearsome count literally rising from the ashes.  The man's wife then becomes the vampire's first victim.  Now the pressure is on the other couple.  Can they escape Castle Dracula?  Can they get to Father Sandor, who also happens to be an experienced vampire killer?

The movie is fun, though not much happens in the first half.  There is a slow build up in suspense.  The creepiness of the first half is enhanced greatly by actress Barbara Shelley, who plays Helen, one of the wives.  Helen wants to leave immediately, but because she's known as the complainer of the group, she's ignored.  But her fear is real and Shelley makes the terror believable.  You really believe that this woman is terrified.  

The second half is when events heat up and spiral to an exciting climax on the castle moat.  Dracula wakes up and begins a short reign of terror.  Christopher Lee owns the part.  He's actually better in this than in the first film, and he achieves this with no dialogue.   That is pretty impressive.  The rest of the cast is solid, except for Suzan Farmer's thankless role as the other wife.  She spends most of the movie saying, "I agree" to everyone.  They literally have nothing for her to do.  Andrew Keir as Father Sandor puts in a good, gruff, tough performance.  While I did miss Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, Father Sandor is an acceptable replacement.  

If there is a problem with the movie, its that the story is kind of slight.  Not much happens, and Dracula's antics get nipped in the bud before he gets a chance to really do anything (it's not ruining anything to say that the good guys win, is it?).  I definitely think its nowhere near as good as Horror nor as inventive as Brides.  But it is still a solid horror film, and a worthy entry to the franchise.

MVP: Christopher Lee, hands down.  He owns the movie.   While he has no dialogue, his imposing stature and attitude just intimidates everyone and dominates the movie.  He really is a terrific prince of darkness.

TRIVIA: So why did Lee have no dialogue?  This was not an artistic choice.  According to Lee, the script was so bad that he refused to speak the lines.  Better to have no dialogue than crappy dialogue.  

BEST LINE: Sandor: "Killed?  No, Dracula cannot be killed.  He's already dead.  Undead.  He can only be destroyed."  I'm not quite sure what that means, but it sure sounds cool.