Quatermass, as I’ve noted before, is a name I knew from boyhood, but with no frame of reference.  Having watched The Quatermass Xperiment, and still seeking Quatermass and the Pit, I found a freebee of Quatermass 2 on a commercial streaming service.  Hammer films are notoriously difficult to find in the United States, unless you’re willing to pay serious money for them.  In any case, Quatermass 2 is a passible bad movie in the sci-fi-horror genre.  Quatermass is supposed to be a likable character, but for the film versions American “tough guy” Brian Donlevy played Quatermass in the first two movies.  But I need to take a step back.  Quatermass was a BBC television serial.  There were four series, each eventually made into movies.  The first three were reshot and the final one (The Quatermass Conclusion) was cobbled together from the serial rather than being refilmed.

Of this set of movies, The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass and the Pit are considered proper horror.  Brian Donlevy doesn’t garner a ton of sympathy in Quatermass 2.  This is mainly because of poor acting and a small budget.  Reputedly suffering from alcoholism, Donlevy has trouble with his lines and often appears curt and short-tempered (he was replaced in Quatermass and the Pit).  Even so, Quatermass 2 has monsters and some reasonably scary moments.  Here’s the story: alien invaders are taking over a secret government plant preparing for moon colonization.  Quatermass discovers the base and finds that everyone acts odd.  Interestingly, they’ve stolen his plans for the base.  The aliens take over people, body-snatcher style.  Quatermass and an angry mob manage to get into the base where the alien-infected fight them.  Eventually the huge monsters break loose and Quatermass has his own rocket converted to a bomb to destroy the mothership in geosynchronous orbit.  The infected people return to normal.

It’s fairly easy to see why few people comment on Quatermass 2.  I wouldn’t have watched it had I not stumbled across a clip showing some of its horror chops.  I’m glad, in a strange way, that I saw it.  I knew Quatermass was a telinema [link to Fire Walking]  product, but I wasn’t quite sure how the television serial fit together with the movies.  Quatermass 2 was bad enough to make me look it up.  From all my reading about horror movies, Quatermass and the Pit is the scariest of the four.  At least at this historical moment it’s not available on streaming services.  And that, I submit, is why we still need DVDs.  Digital rights management is rather like an alien invader…