Weirdhouse Cinema: Quatermass and the Pit

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1967 sci-fi horror film “Quatermass and the Pit” starring James Donald, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley and Julian Glover.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
about the nineteen sixty seven British sci fi horror film
quator Mass and the Pit, starring Andrew Keer, Barbara Shelley,
James Donald, and Julian Glover. And I'm going to say
right at the top, as always, we will get into

(00:35):
some pretty granular detail about the plot. We always do
that in these episodes, and today's movie in particular is
one that has some great mysteries and surprises throughout. So
if you would like to watch it without any spoilers,
I think this is a good candidate for that, you
should pause here and check the movie out first. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Absolutely, this is one that I was fortunate enough to
go into cold back when I think it was in college.
I think I caught it on American Movie, which also
showed Hammer hors I five Films y American. Yeah. I
didn't know anything about it going into it and was just,
you know, thoroughly pleased with where the movie took me.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Just recently, we've had several listeners suggest that we cover
various quater Mass films. I think in the last Listener
Mail episode we had somebody saying that they wanted us
to do quater Mass too, and in true weird house fashion,
we were approaching them out of order. From what I
can tell, this is the third feature film in the
quater Mass series. It's a sequel to The quater Mass

(01:35):
Experiment from nineteen fifty five and quater Mass Two from
fifty seven. Is that also your understanding?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Rob? Correct? Though, it's though it's a little weird with
the quater Mass films because the quater Mass films were
all remakes of the original quater Mass TV program. So
you had fifty three's The quater Mass Experiment remade as
the film of the same name in fifty five, and
then TV's quater Mass two remade as a film in
fifty seven.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
And indeed, quator.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Mass in the Pit was also a tea and when
I say TV, it's not quite a TV show, more
of like a limited TV mini series, sort of a situation.
Quator Mass in the Pit ran on TV fifty eight
through fifty nine and then was remade as Today's nineteen
sixty seven film, and was.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
All of this originally written by Nigel Neil.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Correct, Yes, he was the creator of the character. He
wrote all the screenplays for the TV series and then
the films that were adapted from them.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Here.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
There was also a nineteen seventy nine quator Mass four
part TV series that was recut into the film, The
quator Mass Conclusion the same year. Much later on, in
two thousand and five, Jason Fleming starting a live TV
remake of the original series alongside David Tennant and Martin Gatis,
though I don't think Neil had anything to do with

(02:55):
that aside from just being credited as the creator, and
you know, they adapted it from his original screenplay.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
I've never seen that, but from the words you just said,
it sounds like a more serious version of Doctor Who. Energy.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, that's one way to sort of look at at
quator Mass here, and I'm to understand that the original
quater Mass TV shows had very much had Doctor Who
production values. The movie we're watching here today is definitely
a step up from that, though also not quite on
the same level as like You're some of your bigger
special effects pictures of the time period those we'll discuss.

(03:29):
I think it does quite well in many respects, and
in terms of comparing it to Doctor Who. I mean,
there's ultimately a lot of shared DNA. Whenever you look
at at any kind of like British film or TV project,
people are gonna have involvement with the Doctor Who franchise
over the many decades. Aside from that, I would say
there's not a lot to compare Doctor Who to quator

(03:50):
Mass because Doctor Who, of course, is a lot wilder
in its sci fi. It's more of like out there
in time and space. Quator Mass is seems to be
morecerned with the immediate situation here on Earth and various
cosmic threats that emerge.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Yes, that's right. I think Doctor Who is more fantastical
and more humorous. So of course Doctor Who does go
to some dark places, but it generally has a lot
more silliness and humor levined throughout. Whereas the impression I
get about quator Mass, certainly from this film and from
what I know of the other ones though I haven't
seen them yet, is that it's more grounded, more serious,

(04:28):
a little bit more hard science fiction, though it does
go to some quite silly places in terms of like
what they thought you could do with technology in this
movie and stuff. I love the machine that you put
a helmet on your head and it projects your thoughts
on a TV screen.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, yeah, definitely definitely strong sci fi here, and is
I believe Joe Dantek pointed out in a little extra
he did for the Screen Factory Blu Ray for this film.
This film has a lot in common with some of
It has a lot of the intellectual edge that that
you find in very bits of sci fi literature, for

(05:03):
example Arthur C. Clark's Childhood's End and so forth, and
these of course there are ideas that have been It
ended up being used multiple times over the decades in
sci fi film and sci fi storytelling, but earlier on
they were a lot more fresh.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
It really is that kind of science fiction that is
about ideas. Yes, I feel like you can really see
the influence of this movie on other horror films that
would come later now, And it's funny because, again with
the theme of seeing things out of order, I think
I saw more of the movies that were influenced by

(05:38):
this movie before I saw it itself. For example, I
can absolutely see a lot of quator Mass in the
Pit in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, that atmospheric feeling
of doom, something about the ancient past that is now
reaching out to us in threatening ways and sort of
suggesting that our understanding of what we are in our

(06:01):
place in the cosmos might be totally wrong. And also
this inventive braiding of scientific themes, like hard science themes
with themes of supernatural occultism. So like quator Mass in
the Pit is a movie that proposes alternative theories of
human origins. It has alien invasions, so that's the stuff

(06:21):
often of science fiction, but it's also got a common
explanation for the existence of telekinesis, haunted houses, and belief
in satan.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
That's right, yeah, yeah, And yet it does such a
fine job with all of this. It doesn't feel like
it's just grabbing things and throwing them at the wall
to see what sticks. It's a film that does an
absolutely fantastic job of laying out a believable procedural response
to an abnormal and increasingly otherworldly invent It's pretty straight laced,

(06:53):
cerebral sci fi horror film with I think fantastic shades
of cosmic horror, as you were alluding to, you know,
the ultimately the ideas that are discovered are you know,
they're tantalizing, but they completely turn the characters understanding of
humanity's place in the cosmosci its head.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Should we listen to a little bit of trailer audio?

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, let's listen. I think this is going to be
from the UK trailer. But the the US trailer was
released in the US as part of like a double
feature with the title five Million Years to Earth. That
one does have a fun beginning where it says, the
scenes you're about to see are more incredible than anything
today's science or fiction ever imagined. But let's let's let's

(07:34):
hear a little bit from the UK trailer.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Who were they running from? What have they seen? Whom
do they fear? There are five million answers to these questions,
and every one of them is a five million years
old spills into our time to make two worlds collide.

(08:09):
What is happening here and now can affect the next
five million years. They feel it, they see it. The
archaeologist who digs back into the past to on Earth
more horror than the human mind canparere quait a mess

(08:30):
A scientist who comes face to face with five million
years of terror y, it's forever. She's the wick. She
can see into the pit and knows that terrifying truth.
All he can see into the pit, but he will
not believe what he sees. May well call me what? Well?

Speaker 3 (08:55):
Them?

Speaker 4 (08:56):
These are the creatures, They were alive life. You descend
into the pit of hell as you share their horror. Listen,
I'm advising you all to leave. That made me great?

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Dat all right? Well, if you would like to watch
quator Mass in the Pit aka five million Years to
Earth yourself, This one is, as far as I can tell,
currently difficult or impossible to stream in the US, but

(09:28):
is available in the UK for streaming either way. The
physical Blu ray from Screen Factory is widely available and
is a terrific presentation of the film with loads of
insightful extras. Joe, I believe you own this disc and
this is the one that I rin in from Atlanta's
own video drum.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
I've got the disc, yeah, and it's packed with extra stuff.
I really wanted to get into a bunch of the
commentaries and docks and stuff before today but ended up
not having time this week. Sometimes it just works out
like that. But yeah, it looks like it's just just
packed with great stuff.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, I didn't have time to go through all of
it either. But there's a little bit with Joe Dante,
and there's a great interview view from several years back
with Julian Glover. He has a lot of cool little
insights about his experiences with the film and the various
people he worked with, including a story about how he
grew a mustache for this character. Yes, but the middle

(10:20):
part of his mustache was like too blonde, and so
they kept having to die it to make it as
dark as the rest of the mustache.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
And then and then when they were filming, he would
sweat and the dye would like drip down and dribble
into his mouth, and he didn't like that. So like,
over the course of a weekend, he was like, I'm
going to take care of this myself, and he got
like permanent dye and died the center part of his mustache.
But then it was way darker than the rest of
his mustache and made him look like he had a
Hitler mustache. Oh no, And so they like he had

(10:50):
to come in like on Monday or whenever when the
shoot was resuming and just had to apologize to the
hair and makeup people. He was like, sorry, mess it
all up, You're going to have to fix me again.
So then they had to lighten that part of the
mustache for the remainder of the shoot.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Wow, that's got to be one of the worst self
grooming mishap stories I've ever heard. Accidental Hitler mustache.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, yeah, I love little tidbuts like that from that
you get in these extras. All right, well, let's get
into the connections on this one. We'll start at the
top with the director. It's roy Ward Baker who lived
nineteen sixteen through twenty ten. British director who made a

(11:33):
number of films in his native UK as well as
in the US. These include nineteen fifty threes Inferno, that's
a three D film, nineteen fifty Eight's a Night to
Remember that's a Titanic movie. And then he did several
Hammer pictures and this is generally held to be the
best picture he did for Hammer.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Oh have we not mentioned already that this is a
Hammer film?

Speaker 2 (11:55):
I can't remember if we said it on Mike or not.
But yes, this is definitely a Hammer picture. Though this
is I guess, a good place to remind everyone that
we have lots of different sorts of Hammer pictures. They're
not all horror, and they're not all Gothic carr they're
not all vampire pictures, even though even though those are
some of the most famous and the most beloved Hammer pictures.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
I love a lot of Hammer movies. We've covered some
Hammer movies on Weird House before Love Seeing. You know,
Peter Cushing is Van Helsing, Christopher Lee is Dracula, all
that sort of stuff. I love the sort of trashier
ones they started making in the seventies. That's good too.
I would say, I think this might be, just in
a straightforward way, the best Hammer film I have seen.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
I mean, it's generally held to be the best one
he directed, that's for sure, And yeah, it could be,
and I think it's very reasonable to put it at
least in consideration for best Hammer picture. It's just so solid.
The other ones that Baker did. Let's see, we have
nineteen sixty nine's Moon zero two, which MST three K
fans know this one. It is a fun mod space adventure,

(13:00):
so it is not serious at all, but I highly
recommend that one. There's nineteen seventies The Vampire Lovers, as
well as Scars of Dracula from the same year. Then
we have seventy one's Doctor Jekyl and Sister Hide, as
well as the seventy four Hammer Shaw Brothers co production
The Legend of the Golden Vampires was a co director
on that. I've never seen this one. It's blong, but

(13:23):
on my list because I love Hammer films, I love
Shaw Brothers pictures. I'm to understand. It's audacious, but also
a clear clash of styles, so it's still on the list.
I could be nudged in the direction of watching it, though.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
I think I have put that one on years ago
while I was cooking, and it didn't really pay a
lot of attention to it. But it looked wild.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
It's just a wild idea, and sometimes wild ideas don't
necessarily come together. I mean, it's audacious to think that
you would take these two distinct styles of filmmaking and
merge them together into something that fans of either would like.
But I don't know it has its following. He also
did some gothic horror films, for Amicus. He did Asylum
from seventy two and The Vault of Horror from seventy three,

(14:06):
and he was active as a director into the early nineties.
All right, coming back around to the writer here, Nigel
Neil has original story slash screenplay credit here. He lived
nineteen twenty two through two thousand and six, creator of
the Professor Bernard quator Mass franchise, with writing credits on
all of the original films and TV shows. The original

(14:26):
quator Mass series was his breakthrough and he made a
career writing mostly thrillers, horror and sci fi pictures and
TV projects. His other credits included nineteen sixties The Entertainer,
sixty four's First Men in the Moon and sixty six
as The Witches. He was an influence on such filmmakers
and authors as Stephen King, John Carpenter, and Dan O'Bannon.
In fact, Neil wrote an early draft of the Halloween

(14:47):
three season of the Witch script, so I think some
of his ideas remain there, but he ends up uncredited.
And he also wrote the novel versions of the quator
Mass adventures.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
You listed Some authors and filmmakers are known fans of Neil,
but from what I understand he is more generally kind
of a horror writers writer. A lot of like sci
fi and horror writers and people who worked in TV
in the movies really look up for him, look up
to him.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Yeah, yeah, especially folks who came up. I've seen a
lot of people that came up, like through the BBC
system back in the day, really admired his work. So
somehow the actor playing quator Mass here doesn't have top billing,
which I mean, there are always, you know, reasons for
that sort of thing. But I'm going to start with
the actor playing quator Mass because I feel like he's

(15:34):
your title care He's literally your title character.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
We got to start with him.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yes, So here, quator Mass is played by Andrew Ker,
who I believe you mentioned already. He lived nineteen twenty
six through nineteen ninety seven. So this is, yeah, our
chief protagonist, our problem solver. He is a UK aerospace scientist.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Though like a lot of scientist protagonists in movies of
this sort, he seems to have expertise outside of his dome.
Like he's not just he doesn't just know about rockets.
He seems to know a lot about I don't know,
paleontology and the paranormal and everything, like all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, but at the same time they don't portray him
as like a polymath who has you know, complete expertise
in everything. So he does seek out experts, that's true instance,
because he's like, oh, my Latin is terrible, so I
need somebody to translate this Latin. You know, I'm not
an anthropologist or a paleontologist, so I defer to you
that sort of thing. So Kire was an actor of stage,

(16:32):
screen and TV, with British film and TV credits going
back to around nineteen fifty. I believe his credits include
A Night to Remember, which we already mentioned, nineteen sixty
three's Cleopatra, and much later in his career nineteen ninety
five's Rob Roy, alongside numerous Hammer pictures. This is the
only time he played quator Mess but his other Hammer

(16:52):
credits are Pirates of Blood River from sixty two, Dracula
Prince of Darkness from sixty six, The Viking Queen sixty seven,
Zeppelin from seventy one, and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb
in seventy one.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
I think Kier is quite good in this role. We
mentioned that quator Mass is a more serious character than
say the doctor in Doctor Who. It's a he doesn't
really get a lot of room to play in the movie.
He's you know, I think he only cracks like one
or two jokes the entire film. It's a very serious, straightforward,

(17:27):
down the middle roll. And so I think that's the
kind of thing that's hard to do because he doesn't
get to be all that expressive except in certain expressions
of like outrage and indignance when he's faced with the fools,
you know, the militaristic fools and the government who are
trying to throttle his you know, peaceful advancement of science
for his career. So, like, I guess he does get

(17:50):
a bit there, but I don't know. It's it's not
a role where there's a lot of room to play,
and yet he does quite well with it.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, you're right, he doesn't get any moments real whimsier humor,
or when they do occur, they're very slight. They're not
the driving force of the character. Yeah, all right, Now,
the top build actor was actually James Donald playing the
character doctor Ronnie. Ronnie is our cutting edge paleontologist who
is you know, he's all about the fossils, but he's

(18:20):
also all about like strapping things to people's heads and
so they can read their brain waves and see their thoughts.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, yeah, I've got thoughts about that. James Donald as
Rony is he's a little bit Roddy McDowell and a
little bit Michael Palin.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, yeah. So he lived
nineteen seventeen through nineteen ninety three. I was a Scottish actor.
He was considered something of an actor's actor at the time.
According to the Julian Glover interview. Like Glick, Glover just
really really loved his word. He loved all of the
actors he was working with and this and had very

(18:54):
nice things to say about them, but James Donald in particular.
So His credit credits include Role and such films as
fifty seven's The Bridge over the River Kwai, fifty eight's
The Vikings, and nineteen sixty three's The Great Escape. His
other credits include sixty five's King Rat and nineteen seventy
eight's The Big Sleep. After The Big Sleep, he apparently

(19:14):
left acting due in large part to worsening asthma conditions
that he was dealing with and ended up devoting the
rest of his time to wine making, so you know,
kudos to him the Maynard Path, I guess.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
So.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Now, the next character we have is doctor Roney's assistant.
This is Barbara Judd, played by Barbara Shelley. She lived
nineteen thirty two through twenty twenty one, English model turned
actress who became something of a horror movie staple for
roles in such films as fifty eight's Blood of the Vampire,
nineteen sixties Village of the Damned, sixty four's The Gorgan

(19:51):
sixty six is Dracula, Prince of Darkness, as well as
rasputin The Mad Monk, and she was also a prolific
British TV actress.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
She's also quite good in this same thing I would
say about the other characters we've talked about so far.
It's a very straightforward, down the middle kind of performance.
So it's a serious role, but she does well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, it definitely gets to kick into high gear during
the third act.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Now, the film's human antagonist for the most part is
Colonel Breen, and he has played here by Julian Glover
born nineteen thirty five and as of this recording, still living,
perhaps the only surviving cast member and also still active
at age ninety.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
We were just talking off Mike before we started recording
about whether Julian Glover has ever played a good guy.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
I mean, I don't remember a role that he had
that we could classify as a good guy. But he's
been active for so long I know he did. I mean,
inevitably he played some good guys and some at least
good neutral to good supporting characters.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
He plays a lot of kind of friendly bad guys, amiable,
hospitable villains.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, even in this like he is, I don't know,
the D and D spectrum of alignment doesn't always certainly
doesn't always apply to real life, and not even always
always does it apply to fiction. Like this is a
character who kind of has a tunnel vision about things.
He sees the world in a particular light, and he
is completely unable and unwilling to budge when new evidence

(21:24):
would seem to alter his worldview.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Yeah, very lawful, neutral.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, but I mean he I think he believes he's
doing good. Yeah, but it'll be interesting to discuss his
art because I mean, he's he has some pretty logical
counter arguments for most of the picture.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, we might get into this more later, but I
was thinking about how when he has a competing theory
to explain the find in the tunnel, competing with quator Mass' explanation.
In reality, if we were to find something of this kind,
his theory would probably be the much better one. But yeah,
just we know quater Mass is right because you know
it's a But.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, we know we're watching the science fiction film, and
therefore quator Mass's sci fi explanation is the one we
realize is the correct one. But Breens argument would make
more sense in our real world. So Glover was only
thirty two years old at the time and according to Glover,
probably much too young to actually play this character, but

(22:21):
he didn't mind being cast. But English actor here of stage,
screen and TV, with credits going back into the fifties.
He acted opposite Christopher Lee the same year sixty seven
in Theater of Death, and he was a staple of
British TV and film for years, but many, at least internationally,
really took notice of him in nineteen eighty when he
played General Veers and the Empire Strikes Back, one of,

(22:43):
if not the only, high ranking imperial officer to ever
survive the events of the Star Wars films.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
He I believe, commands the assault on the rebel base
on Hawth and he does a good job.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, he does, like a good job. It seems successful.
And I didn't do a deep dive into the labyrinth
of Star Wars lore on this one. But it's my
understanding that he survived. He definitely survives the movie, does
not experience an on screen death in another film, and
may have just survived in general. So I don't know.

(23:15):
Super Star Wars fans can write in with additional insight,
but for the most part, like he came in, did
his job, and left.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Wonder what he does after the collapse of the Empire.
He just he's like, well enough of that, then goes home.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, maybe he retires, Maybe he takes up with the
New Republic. Maybe he's like, hey, you know, I'm just
doing my job and they're like, okay, fine, you know,
we have we'll we'll hire you on. I don't know
at any rate. Julian Glover, let's see, went on to
play a Bond villain and eighty one's for your Eyes Only.
This is not when I have strong memories of.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Oh yeah, that's right. I don't remember exactly what his
plot is, but For Your Eyes Only, I think was
an attempt to just sort of pull Bond back down
to Earth after the movies and the villain's plots had
all gotten really big, like every time the villain's plot
had become to you know, they're going to take over
the entire world or you know, or just like just

(24:10):
it got kind of oversized. And so For Your Eyes
Only was a very small, contained spy and crime thriller,
and so I think his aims were on those were
more on that level. I think maybe it's like he
got control of some kind of cryptographic device and was
going to sell it to the Soviets or something like that.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Hmm. Yeah, I don't remember this one all that well.
I may. I mainly remember that it had had Topol
in it, and it also had Michael Gothard, who we've
talked about on the show before. Yeah, but I kind
of forget Julian Glover's role in it, though he I
believe he is the main villain.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah, he's got a there's a final showdown at his hideout,
which is like up on top of this big mesa.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, yeah, I remember that I remember the mesa they
go up in a basket, right, yeah. Oh, and then
he played the villain Walter Donovan in nineteen eighty nine's
Indiana in the Last Crusade. And this is another major
role that a lot of people are going to recognize
Julian Glover from.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
Oh yeah, he has a fan. He's great as the
villain in that. But he also has a great turbo rot.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yes he does. So he's remained quite active for decades.
He voiced ara Og, who I believe is a spider
in two thousand and two is Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets. He appeared in two thousand and four
a'st Troy, and he played grand Master Piecel on Game
of Thrones. He also appeared on The Crown. All right,
So those are main actors. I'm not going to there's

(25:32):
an extended This is one of those films that, again
it gets very procedural, so a lot of government employees
are called in to rule on this, that or another
matter concerning the event. I'm not going to list all
of them. We may come back to a few as
we proceed, but I do want to mention the character
Slayden played by Duncan Lamont, who lived nineteen eighteen through

(25:56):
nineteen seventy eight. Quator Mass in the Pit again is
not a funny movie. It doesn't have a lot of
whimsy in it. This character is probably the closest we
get to a comic relief character. He's our working class
guy who's brought in to work a high power drill.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, he's got a funny little short monologue about how
he enjoys buying insurance. Yes, makes him feel good.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah. Yeah, So this is probably the most smart when
ducing character in the picture. He was a British film
and TV character actor who also appeared on TV's The
quator Mass Experiment. Different character though, obviously. Oh and then
we have a character who serves under Colonel Breen who's
a little more, a little less rigid in his thinking.

(26:41):
This is Captain Potter. He's played by Brian Marshall of
nineteen thirty eight through twenty nineteen, British actor who also
appeared in seventy seven's The Spy Who Loved Me, nineteen
eighty's The Long Good Friday and eighty nine.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
Is the Punisher.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
And then I do want to touch on the score
here because The score is by Tristram Carey, who lived
teen twenty five through two thousand and eight English Australian
composer and electronic pioneer, though much of the main score
here is not recognizably electronic. It's more traditional. But where
Carrie apparently really got to shine was the electronic underground

(27:17):
vibration noises and some of the other sci fi sounds
in the picture. He created these with his electronic expertise,
and they're I think they're quite impressive.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
There are many scenes of a sound being generated which
is symbolic of a kind of field of that is
created by an object in the movie that affects character's minds,
and when we hear the sound, we know something horrible
is happening. And yeah, it's good sound work.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, and I think it was kind of advanced for
the time I was reading that. Like one of the
one of the individuals who critiqued it when it came out,
they complained about the electronic noises. They're like, these noises
are too disturbing. But so I love the sound design here,
and we'll get into the visual effects as we go.

(28:04):
But I think if the visual effects do fall short
at all, the sound design is also there to help
sort of elevate what's going on. And I don't want
to undercut the traditional score of the picture either, because
it is effective moody and I think particularly poignant during
the end credits.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, And we'll.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Come back to that, of course when we get into
the plot. But anyway, Carrie's other scores include nineteen fifty
five's The Lady Killers, seventy one's Blood from the Mummy's Tomb,
and some episodes of TV's Doctor Who.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Are you ready to talk about the plot?

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Let's do it, Rob.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
I've got a picture of the title screen for you
to look at here, and I got to say, this
does not look like a science fiction film based on
the title screen has a much more either Gothic horror
or maybe even kind of grow ros Italian horror look
to it. This could this could have Paul Nashy in it.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, yeah, just a big old red skull there. And yeah,
you can, of course say the more skulls are science, right,
but no, it definitely reads more horror here.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
That's true if you think about physics and chemistry, any
object you show could be science.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah, So we open on an empty, dreary, rain soaked
city street in London in what appears to be the
early morning hours. Now I couldn't tell immediately if this
was a real location in London or if it was
just an extremely good set. It has very similitude, but

(29:39):
it also has that claustrophobic, boxed in feeling of a
street built on a sound stage. But maybe some streets
in London are just like that, you know, some streets
in reality are. Last year I was in Chicago and
I remember noticing there were some streets I was on
in Chicago that had that street on a sound stage feeling.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, Anyway, A bobby and a police helmet is out
wandering the road, and he's the only human being in sight,
so it's very lonely out. He crosses the street, passes
a storefront and there's a white cat pacing at the threshold.
He stops for a moment next to the cat, and
then he moves on along the sidewalk to the illuminated

(30:21):
entrance to an underground station, and the awning over the
gate tells us that this is the stop for hobbs End.
Intense music builds here, so we cut inside to see
a sign explaining that the Hobbs End station is currently
closed because of construction work in the tunnel. I think
they're trying to connect two existing lines it with an extension,

(30:43):
and deep below we hear jackhammers rattling and machines echoing
through the tunnels and the halls, and then we cut
down to join the construction crew. They're busy digging to
extend the shaft. I must say, something looks seriously wrong
with the earth they are digging through. It is not
dry soil, but it's like a wet, pale, chocolate goop

(31:04):
kind of mud slime.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Oh you're just saying this because we just watched Willy
Wank on the Chocolate Factor. It just looks That's the
only reason it looks like chocolate here.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
But didn't it look a little too goofy?

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, I mean it looks a little. They describe it
as being mostly clay later on, and I guess it
does have that feel. But yeah, I never I know.
This is one of those situations where, yeah, put to
the test, I never completely believed this was like actual
raw mud from underneath London. But I was very easily
able to suspend disbelief here, So.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
The workers are shoveling the mud and clay onto a
conveyor belt, which takes it away to be removed in
little mining carts. But suddenly one of them notices something
in one of the clods on the belt. It is
what appears to be a human skull music sting, or
at least it looks like a human skull, but the
cranium is shaped a little bit odd. It's it's kind

(32:01):
of big, except it's not the whole skull, it's just
the front half of the skull, like just the face.
And we get some great, you know British character you
know performances here, like hey, look at these dead eyes.
Get a load of the nashers, and then he tosses
the muddy skull straight into this other guy's arms. The
guy gets mud all of his all over his sweater.

(32:22):
So the workers keep digging, and then they uncover a
full skeleton, again with a weird skull. So the discovery
is immediately a sensation, and we cut to the next
day where there are local newspapers running with the headline
underground ape men. By the time we arrived back at
the dig site, it has been taken over by scientists
who are continuing to excavate in an attempt to understand

(32:44):
what the find means. These scientists include the paleontologist doctor
Matthew Ronie again that's James Donald and his assistant Barbara
Judd played by Barbara Shelley. Ronnie is talking to a
group of reporters about how they've uncovered six skeletons already
and about how the authorities will soon want to resume
excavation to complete the underground line, but his team has

(33:08):
to be given more time to do a proper scientific survey.
This could be one of the most significant finds in
the history of paleontology, and he believes it is evidence
that humans like us walk to the planet as early
as five million years ago, much earlier than the consensus
idea on the emergence of anatomically modern humans. So I
guess these would be somewhat different because they got the

(33:29):
giant skulls. And even this conversation kind of begins a
theme that will continue throughout the film, which is scientists
struggling against authorities and other governmental demands. Like he's saying,
like this is really important. We have to preserve this
site so that we can excavate it properly, make sure
everything is documented well. But he knows the authorities are

(33:52):
just going to want to get the jackhammers back in
there and keep extending the line as fast as they can.
So he's trying to enlist the help of the press
to make the public sympathize with how important of a
discovery this is, so that they can have the time
they need. Ronnie also here unveils a reconstruction he has
put together of the so called ape man. It looks

(34:13):
like an old man with a sad face. He's got
kind of a protruding chin and an underbite and a
huge cranium. I'm not sure why these ape men had
a brain the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, but they
did well.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Maybe we'll find out.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Ronney does caution this is speculative.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
But he put a lot of work into it. Like this,
this guy is really an overachiever.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
It's like you have the like, how long have they
been working down here, like a few days? Yeah, and
he already has this complete model there to show to
the press. It's yeah, I mean, but it fits the character,
like this guy is on.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
It, but he's dedicated to his work. Yeah. While Roney
is in the middle of showing off his chin geezer,
one of the other researchers working on the dig here
uncovers what appears to be a pipe. So she's digging
in the wall and hits something that looks like metal,
but the pipe is not marked on any of their
maps from the city. By the way. This other researcher,

(35:10):
the one who finds the pipe, is Missus Dobson played
by b Duffel, whom I knew I recognized from something
the moment we saw her here, couldn't figure out what
it was. Eventually I realized it was from Maddy Python
in The Holy Grail, where she is the old woman
that Arthur and Betevir try to ask for directions on
where to buy a shrubbery and she says like, no,

(35:32):
I won't tell you no shrubberies, and they torture her
by saying nie to.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Her, yes, I remember this good connection here, nice, nice,
nice connection.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Anyway, the paleontologists are all quite puzzled this, so they've
got the schem addicts of all the infrastructure it's supposed
to be buried around them. There's nothing marked in the
wall aheads supposed to be just earth, nothing there, and
yet they seem to have hit metal, So what could
it be. The next thought is, uh, oh, it's a bomb.
And I liked this development because this felt real. This

(36:03):
is postwar London and it would not at all have
been unreasonable to think that this could be unexploded ordnance
dropped during the Blitz. In fact, even in the twenty
first century in more recent years, like diggers and builders
in the UK still sometimes find unexploded bombs left over
from World War Two. So the bombs drop, they're huge.

(36:24):
When they hit, they bury themselves deeply, and then something
like ten percent of bombs don't explode when they're supposed to,
so occasionally you will just find like, oh, a bomb
hit here and ended up buried and nobody ever figured
out it was there and it never blew up.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah, so this is another nice procedural plot beat in
the picture. You know it just this makes total sense
that they would they would find whatever this is and think, well, okay,
the most likely scenario is this is an unexploded bomb.
Let's call the right people to deal with this.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Yeah, so a bomb disposal squad is called in Ronny
again is extremely irritated. His goal is the preservation of
the dig site so it can be of maximal value
to science. And he watches all the men coming in
with their equipment, the bomb disposal squad, and he mutters bitterly,
and that's right, tear it all up. And you can sympathize,

(37:16):
like when the first guy gets to the wall with
the so with you know, with the piece of metal
in it, he just kind of yanks a bone out
of the mud and tosses it aside.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yeah, but I mean, but at the same time, these
guys are here to make sure that the whole block
doesn't blow up.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Yeah, So the bomb disposal texts speculate that it might.
They look at it, they think what could it be,
and they say it might be a Satan? And I
was like, what, that's weird. I had to look it up.
But that is real. There was a type of German
bomb that was nicknamed a Satan. It's like the SC
eighteen hundred bomb.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yep, yep. I looked this up as well, so it's
and yeah, they really did nickname it the Satan, which
ties in nicely with some some places that this story
is going to eventually.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
But Eventually the bomb squad realizes something is not right.
They've got a little magnetic microphone that they use to
put it on the capsule and listen inside, and it
doesn't even stick to it. It's like the object is
not even made of metal, So what is it? Well,
they decide to dig it out some more and get
a better idea of what they're dealing with. The phrase

(38:21):
they say is let the dog see the rabbit.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
In the next scene, we will meet a couple of
other major characters, Professor Bernard quater Mass played by Andrew
Keir and Colonel Breen played by Julian Glover. Quator Mass
here is a serious, thoughtful, scholarly man in a tweed
suit and bow tie, wearing a dark beard accented with gray.
When we first meet him, he's seated in a red

(38:47):
armchair and having a tense discussion with his superiors in
the government. Colonel Breen again, this Julian Glover is a trim,
well groomed, I would say, super silliest man in a
military uniform. Again, he's got that great brown mustache that
apparently I didn't know when I watched, but apparently Julian
Glover really had to manage the color on and Breen

(39:10):
has a tendency to roll his eyes and turn his
nose up. It's like he is above all this.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yeah, and as we're quickly going to see there is
there's a real clash of visions here between these two.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yes. So we enter the scene in the middle of
a conflict. Essentially, what I gather is that Professor quator
Mass has long been in command of a government project
for developing rockets. Essentially, I think he's supposed to be
in charge of the British space program, and the rockets
he's developing are for the purpose of the peaceful colonization

(39:45):
of the Moon. But the government official in the scene
tells him that, due to a change of policy, his
project is now being taken out of civilian control and
handed over to the military, so that instead of building
peaceful moon basis for the purpose of scientific research, the
plan will now be to build launch pads on the Moon,

(40:06):
so that the UK and its allies will be able to,
in Breen's words, quote, police the Earth with ballistic missiles.
And he says, if we don't if we don't do
it first, the other side will. Quator Mass hates this,
he expresses open outrage and disgust. He feels this is
a betrayal, it's turning his peaceful work into a weapon.

(40:28):
It's a perversion. And you know, he's of the opinion
that the desire to possess the ultimate weapon is sort
of the inevitable desire of weak and fearful minds. Meanwhile,
Breen regards quater Mass with this detached, humorous pity. He's
just kind of scoffing at his idealism. When quator Mass

(40:50):
at one point says, you mean the installations on the
moon will be military? Breen seems a little surprised by
the question. He says, of course, and he kind of
laughs a bit. It's someone with quator Mass's views seems
so quaint to him that it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, And at this point in the film, it is
like really clear that they are both very much in
their own worlds and they just, i mean, they really
can't even conceive of the mindset in worldview of the
other individual. Like to bring of course, all of this
is military concern, Like ultimately everything is. We can't just ignore,
you know, the military balance of the world around us.

(41:28):
And then quator Mass is just like pure like future
and idealism. You know, let's move out, humanity is moving
beyond Earth and colonizing other worlds, and and he thinks
that like that any kind of like military objective is
just blasphemous, you know. And so ultimately, like you, you
kind of get the idea, or at least idea that
there's a balance in between these two characters, but they're

(41:51):
they're they really neither one has room for the other's viewpoint.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
My read on it is that the the author's intention
is to depict that there is a somewhat legitimate balance
of concerns here, but it definitely comes down more on
the side of quater Mass's point of view.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Oh yes, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess maybe it'll
vary a little bit at this point depending on what
sort of view or you are, But I feel like
the intended viewer for the most part is going to
be siding with quater Mass.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
Yeah. So, quator Mass says to Brien, We're on the
edge of a new dimension of discovery. It's a great
chance to leave our vices behind war first of all,
not to go out there dragging our hatreds and our
frontiers along with us. Well, put, I think, but Breen
says he is shocked and disturbed to hear such naive

(42:41):
views coming from someone in quator Mass's important position of leadership.
Quater Mass says Breen has lost his humanity. It has
withered away while he's been locked up in his ivory fortress.
But then it gets worse from here. Cop movie fans
are about to recognize that the familiar archetypal seen the
chief says, meet your new partner, you know, because the

(43:04):
government official here tells quator Mass that Breen will be
joining him in command of the rocket group, and then
he leaves the two of them alone.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
Uh oh, yeah, but I will, said Brien does. He's like,
I'm sure if we have we'll go have lunch at
my club. You know, we'll smooth all of this over. So,
you know, it's at least Brain is like seems to
be leaving the door open that they can come to
some sort of understanding, which makes him seem like less
of a pure antagonist at this point in the picture.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
Yeah, that's right. Quator Mass is fuming, but Breen tries
to sort of extend his hand and he's like, yeah,
come have dinner. At my club and we'll talk it through.
We'll figure out what we can do. Yeah, But suddenly
they're interrupted. Instead of going to dinner at the club,
a subordinate delivers a note to Breen. It seems they
cannot go to supper because something requires his attention in

(43:52):
the underground first, and it seems quator Mass will be
along for the ride. So here our antagonistic duo arrive
at the digs site at Hobb's End, and they start
to examine the buried object, which is slowly being uncovered
by the military men. It no longer looks like a pipe.
It is some kind of large, smooth, trailer sized capsule

(44:14):
of an unfamiliar material. And though Brain and quator Mass
dislike each other, we can quickly see their complementary sets
of expertise. When they're trying to identify what sort of
rocket it could be, they're just sort of bouncing ideas
off each other, like these men both know rockets and
they're talking shop. One of the workers suddenly announces they
have struck another skull in the mud, and doctor Roney

(44:36):
is here. He's called over to investigate, and he pulls
it out of the earth. Ecstatic. It's the best one yet,
and it seems the skull confirms all of his suspicions
about the huge brained prehistoric commonids. But quator Mass is
the only one who seems to notice something curious about
this find. The skull was buried essentially inside the cavity

(44:57):
of the capsule. If the object were a bomb, how
did the fossil skull get inside it without breaking Hmmm,
maybe this object is not a bomb worth considering. Some
more clues start coming in. Breen receives a report from
Civil Defense. There is apparently no record of high explosive

(45:19):
falling on this part of the city, only incendiary bombs
which burned some unoccupied houses above during the war. Why
were the houses unoccupied, well, Breen says, at first they
were evacuated naturally. But there's an old police officer from
the neighborhood who tells quator Mass, actually that's not right.
Those houses were not evacuated. They were all abandoned long

(45:42):
before the war. He says, people just wouldn't live there.
Quote some kind of scare, superstition, A lot of nonsense,
I dare say. At this point, I was already like ooh,
I like the different flavors that are being combined here.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yeah, yeah, because we have min of science and military
vot work, and then we have obvious sci fi elements,
but then this kind of ghostly element as well that's
presenting itself.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
So while the others stay below, quator maass and the
old policeman walk up to the surface, accompanied by the
paleontology assistant Barbara Judd. Again, that's Barbara Shelley. They say,
she's been cooped up in the tunnel for a long
time and she's got to go up to get some
fresh air. Though if it's London in the sixties, I'm
not sure how good the air at the surface would
be either. In fact, I think characters comment on this

(46:36):
a couple of times in the movie, like the bad
air quality in the city. Anyway, the policeman takes the
two of them across the street to have a look
at the abandoned houses that were fire bombed in the war.
They are apparently still abandoned and they're in disrepair, so
he opens the door and lets them inside. The policeman says,
nobody has lived in these houses for probably forty years now.

(47:00):
Inside they are skeletal, they're stripped of wire and piping,
with weird scratches and marks on many of the walls.
There's this eerie energy in here. And the policeman explains
that when he was a child in the neighborhood, he
knew a kid who lived in one of these houses,
but things got so bad the family had to clear out,

(47:20):
and equator Masses like, what what do you mean things
got so bad? And already the cop is acting kind
of sheepish. He's like, uh, noises, bumps, even things being seen.
Quator Mass says, you mean ghosts, and the policeman is embarrassed,
like it seems he does not want to say anything more. Again,
it's like, oh, you know, just the usual nonsense. He

(47:42):
seems to be under a kind of stress, like his
expression is tight, and they're sweat dripping down his temple.
And as they're talking, the door through which they entered
begins to creak shut under its own weight, and then
behind the door are revealed more of these scratch marks
on the walls, almost like like the raking of huge
cat claws, and so quator Mass asks, what are those marks?

(48:05):
What could have made them? And the policeman is increasingly
under stress. His breathing is short. He says, kids playing
playing around probably, and then he bolts outside, followed by
quator Mass and Misjudd. So something's happening to him. The policeman,
he kind of wipes sweat from his face with a
handkerchief and he chokes out an embarrassed apology to the

(48:26):
other two. He's like, sorry about that, Sirma, must have
been a bit warm in there, and then just hurries away.
Very strange.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Yeah, it's a nice little sequence and a nice character.
I didn't clock who this character actor was, but you
get this great feeling of, you know, the overall plot
here concerned something buried that is being unearthed and the
ramifications of that, and then we get kind of the
small version of that here encapsulated with this with the

(48:54):
unearthing of the past, the more recent past, and some
of these some of the traumas and memories associated with it.

Speaker 4 (49:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
Yeah, But also I thought it's interesting in this scene
that it's like the police officer both wants to tell
them about it and doesn't want to tell them. It's
like it's like he wants to share this somehow, but
he's also embarrassed and almost like maybe there's some kind
of like his you know, his control bolt like the
Droids and Star Wars, is like preventing him.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, or like you know, he's doing the good thing,
you know, the lawful thing, and sharing what he knew
with these these other investigators, but maybe wasn't prepared for
how traumatic it was to actually let some of those
memories back out again and in a space like this.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
So quator Mass and Breen reunite, and it turns out
they have both independently decided they would like to stay
here and investigate this buried missile a bit more before
returning to their work with the Rocket Group. So Breen
says his men should have the entire object excavated by
the following day. After Breen leaves, there is this great
little moment between quator Mass and Barbara Judd. They stand

(50:05):
on the street looking at the sign for Hobbs Lane.
There's a new sign right next to the old sign.
The old sign is etched into the stone facade of
a building. The current name for the street is Hobbes
with two bees. Quator Mass says, like the cricketer, I
guess that's Jack Hobbs. And the old name was Hobb's
lane with one bee. Miss Judd points out that this

(50:27):
version of the word hobb was an old word that
meant devil.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Oh like hob goblin.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Gotcha hmm. Then we get a very hammer music sting there.
All right. So the next scene is one of I
would say, one of the most unintentionally funny things in
the movie, because we get some brain scanning machinery. Quator
Mass goes to visit Roney at his lab in the
Natural History Museum and Ronney is doing these weird experiments,

(50:54):
I would say, especially weird experiments for a palaeontologist to
be doing. Yeah, he's got to go. I hooked up
to a helmet with a bajillion little wires coming out
of it, and that's hooked up, they say, to a
computer and a big machine that is hooting softly, and
Rony explains that they are sensing the brain waves of
this volunteer named mister Johnson, because this is what they say,

(51:18):
because his skull shape just happens to be very similar
to the skull of a fossil hominid from the quote
second ice age.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Yeah, I think he has tenure at this point. That's
why I was able to do these added consciousness experiments.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Yeah, so they say that somehow by scanning mister Johnson's
brain with this machine while he's like solving a puzzle,
because his skull is shaped like the skull of this
ancient human or human ancestor, they will be able to
know what this ice age hominid was quote able to

(51:57):
think and do. I don't know about that, but quator
Mass is like, ah, yes, the Roney analysis. I think
it's like he's already familiar with this technique from the literature.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
This guy definitely publishes, Like you get the sense that
he's already submitted a paper about the hobs End excavation.
You know, that's just how on the ball this guy is.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Rony hopes next to be able to apply this test
to the giant skulls he found in the tube. But
then I was thinking, that's what he says, but I
was wondering, wait, does that mean he's going to have
to find a living person with a head shaped like
that to scan.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Yeah, this part of this is a little shaky. It's
going to be important later on, but like some of
the science here is a little shaky.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
So quator Mass has a sensitive question for Ronnie about
the creatures to whom the skeletons belonged. He kind of
pulls him aside and he says, were they of this earth?
Roney says, sorry to disappoint, but yes they were. They're
clearly part of the pattern of human evolution, except for
the giant skulls. Otherwise they fit perfectly in with the

(52:59):
human human ancestor fossil record. These are humans of Earth,
but just with big skulls. So the questions are really
piling up. Before heading back to the excavation, quator Mass
bumps into Miss Judd and she has been doing some
library research. She found some old newspapers about Hobbs Lane
from the nineteen twenties and it's all stories of hauntings.

(53:23):
There's something called the hobbs Lane Spook, which is a
specter that walks through bedroom walls, described by some people
as a small humanoid creature with hideous features, and Quator
mass It first tries to wave this off. He's like, wow,
you know, we're scientists. We can't waste our time with
stuff like this. Meanwhile, back at the station, Colonel Breen
and his men have uncovered the whole object, which does

(53:47):
not resemble a rocket or bomb at all. Instead, I
would say it looks like a huge, shiny, metallic orc boot.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
Yeah. Yeah, And I have to say I think he
did a great job with the I mean, I'm gonna
go ahead call it what we are all. I think
aware that it's going to be the spaceship here the artifact,
because it does convincingly look like some sort of a
metallic object that's maybe not made of any kind of
conventional earth metal. Its shape, you know, defies our expectations

(54:18):
of human technology. So I think it looks really good.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
Yeah, I like the design. We were also talking about
this off mic before we started. But I would say
in general, well, I think quator Mass in the Pit
is quite ambitious in terms of sci fi storytelling. I
would not say it's generally very ambitious in terms of
visual spectacle, but most of the stuff in it looks

(54:42):
pretty good. I would say, with a few exceptions that
you know that we're about to get to some alien
bodies that I think are not the most spectacular thing
I've ever seen. But the alien ship looks pretty good.
And we'll see a cool projection kind of energy projection
object at the end of the movie. That looks pretty
cool to that.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
It looks really good as well. It's just the alien bodies,
which we're about to get to. These are the less
convincing elements. But this is one of those pictures when
everything else is working, you know, you can easily suspend
disbelief and you know it ultimately elevates the effect.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
Yeah. Anyway, so they say that the object to the ship,
as we've revealed now, displays bizarre properties. Of course they
don't know it's a ship yet, but whatever this object is,
the material it's made of, they say, is harder than diamond.
The soldiers try to cut it with a blow torch,
and not only does the torch not cut through after
having the flame on it for five minutes, it doesn't

(55:39):
even get warm. The soldiers also find that they have
to wear gloves because those of them that have touched
the object with bare hands end up with some kind
of tissue damage. They say it resembles mild frostbite. This,
of course, is even though the object does not feel
cold to the touch. They say most of the interior
cavity is in empty, except for one spot that seems

(56:02):
to taper off into a sealed compartment and Colonel Breen
has turned his attention to the sealed compartment because he
thinks it may still contain a warhead. Now here's a
weird development. Quator Mass goes inside to look at this
compartment wall and he finds a pattern of markings that
after he wipes away the clay, he says, are, well,

(56:25):
we see them. They're like an etching of these interlocked circles,
and he says they form quote a pentacle, one of
the cabalistic signs of ancient magic. Huh again, weird clashing
of themes. That's not usually what you find on a spaceship.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Yeah. Yeah, So we have this like this weird triangle
we keep reinforcing, connecting paleontology to occultism to science fiction.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
Shortly after this, one of the soldiers, a guy named West,
is inside the cavities. I think. They say he's hosing
out mud or something, and out of nowhere he just
starts to scream in terror. The others go inside to
check on him, and he's like collapsed in the corner.
He says he saw someone says there was a frightening
little figure coming toward him and it walked straight through

(57:14):
the wall. They get him out of the ship and
they're you know, they're medicinally giving him whiskey. It's another
one of those movies. What was the other one like
that we watched recently where everybody seemed to believe that
liquor had medicinal value?

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Oh goodness, I feel like there have been several like
that over the years.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
Crawling Eye.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Crawling Eye was definitely one. Yes.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
So he's sucking on the flask and Miss Judd comes
up to him and says, was it like a small,
hideous dwarf? And he says, well, you know, by god,
that's exactly what it was like. How did you know?

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Well.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
At this point, quator Mass is starting to become convinced
that Miss Judd was onto something with her library research,
so they head back to the archives and sure enough,
the history of hauntings at Hobbs Lane goes back much
further than the nineteen twenty. They find pamphlets from the
eighteenth century about ghosts and bizarre sightings in the locale

(58:07):
and some like there's a story that somebody is digging
a well and they hear such grievous sounds that the
man loses his mind with fear. There's another story that
a local resident espied a strange goblin. And from here
they move back in time. They go on to the
archives of Westminster Abbey, where there's like a curator there

(58:30):
who tells them, who's like reading from this giant Latin manuscript,
who says, quote, in the winter of the year thirteen
forty one, the religious of that region did strive against
an outbreak of evil at Hobbs Lane, imps and demons
did appear. Foul noises sent by the devil did sorely
affect the charcoal burners that had lately come there. So

(58:53):
we've got a collection now of these times when hauntings
are reported in this place charcoal burners, and the fourteenth century,
when they were felling great trees, in the eighteenth century,
when people were digging a well, in the nineteen twenties,
when the underground station was being built, and now, and
in all cases quator Mass notes it's when the ground

(59:15):
was being disturbed. So the next big development is that
Breen hires a mechanic with a Borazon drill to cut
through the sealed compartment so they can see what's inside.
This is the guy Slatin I think we mentioned earlier.
Who's got some he's got some comedic dialogue. At one point,
when he's setting his drill up, he's telling a story
about how he once like drilled through six inches of

(59:37):
solid steel armor plating just like that, and then he says, oh,
it was legal. A bloke got shut in a strong room,
but I got him out. It was a secret job
like this one. And then Colonel Breen says, then I'm
glad you don't talk about it, and they oh, he's
also like the guy who talks about being insured. You know,
it's good to be insured. It cheers you up, he says.

(59:58):
So he tries to drill, but the borizon drill fails.
And more than that, Quator Mass and Breen are in
the ship when he's trying to drill, and it seems
to rattle the whole place, like some weird possession comes
over them, and it's like Claxon's going off inside their heads.
And afterwards, Colonel Breen goes outside the ship and vomits,

(01:00:20):
and he's trying to play it off. He's just like,
just some sort of freak vibration must have been, but
I don't know, it seems like it was more than that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Yeah, yeah, and this is of course where we get
the excellent sound effects and sound design here these electronic
vibration noises, so the film, yeah, the film does a
great job with this.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Weirdly, after this, they check back and a hole has
formed in the wall, in the wall of the sealed compartment,
though it was not drilled by the drill. Instead, it
looks almost melted from the inside. Then as Rony Breen
and Quator Mass stare at the compartment wall, there is
a great moment of almost kind of psychedelic animated image

(01:01:02):
that forms. I didn't know what was going on for
a second here, like there's a crystalline pink dot on
a black background, with these thin borders of fire creeping
over the surface of the black and then pink cracks
appear all over the blackness, like shattering glass that they
sort of spread out into a spider web shape. And
then finally, finally the black wall crumbles, revealing what's within,

(01:01:26):
which is a pink and purple wall of prismatic material
with several recesses, and inside the recesses there are giant bugs,
weird insectoid creatures kind of like huge demonic grasshoppers with
green compound eyes, gaping toothy mouths, and devil horns.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yeah. Wow, this sequence is quite a ride because already
the spaceship set is really cool, and then yeah, we
get this psychedelic animation sequence of that wall breaking open,
and then and then the interior set is also really neat.
But the bugs, which they're going to shortly, very shortly
be hauling out, these are less convincing. I mean, they're

(01:02:11):
very neat in their details. I like the design, I
like the ideas bound up in these creatures. You know
that they're horned tripod insect or you know, at least
Arthur pod creatures, but they just look a little bit
to paper mache here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Yeah, yeah, you mentioned tripod. They do have three legs each,
and that will time. That ties in interestingly, I think
to War of the World's pre existing alien invasion literature.
But that also the characters point out to some classic
imagery of the devil, like you would find in medieval
manuscripts that show Satan with three legs.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Yeah, and I don't want to harp too much on
the design here because again I was able to I
thought easily suspendous belief here and overlook the appearance and
they don't look near as bad as they could have.
It's not so distracting that it throws you out of
the picture. They don't look actively goofy oh.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Yeah. I mean when I was saying earlier about the
movie not being super ambitious in terms of visual spectacle,
I didn't mean, like, what's in it looks bad. I
just meant that it has other concerns. It's not trying
to show you a lot of amazing looking things.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Yeah, Like all the ideas bound up in these aliens
are amazing. It's just that visually they're just a few
steps below other visual elements in the picture.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Yeah. Anyway, when they find these bodies, Breen expresses alarm,
but quator Mass assures him that the creatures are dead,
long dead. Roney immediately starts making arrangements to study these
things scientifically. It has to be done fast, because they've
been sealed away for millions of years, and now that
they have come into contact with the Earth's atmosphere, they

(01:03:52):
are rapidly decomposing, and we almost get to see that
happening in real time. Ronney and quator Mass are very
keen to study and understand these creatures. They start to
bring the bodies out of the ship themselves, like they're
reaching in themselves and just pulling them out, trying to
put them down. Notably, while they're doing that, Breen shows
just evident disgust.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Yeah, and the disgust is great here because obviously these
things are gross. They're talking about how they smell like
dead fish and so forth. But also like, very clearly
this is a sudden roadblock to the logical militaristic expressway
that that brain has been traveling on this whole time.
Like this, these are like clearly aliens. Dude, it's gonna

(01:04:38):
be much harder to really advance this whole unexploded bomb theory.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
Now, yeah, they both invalidate his theory, like they disagree
with his interpretation of what this site was. But also
I think it's supposed to comment again on one of
the themes of this movie, which is the clash between
the scientific temperament and the militaristic temperament, you know, where
the scientist sees something that is new and wants to

(01:05:05):
understand it, and the you know, the military temperament, at
least is presented in this film, sees something new and
doesn't want to take the time to understand it just
wants to destroy it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Yeah, yeah, or at the very least figure out where
it fits into the pre existing military dynamics.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
Yeah, there's a funny part where when they're bringing these
alien bodies out there already like dripping as if it's
like melting ice cream, and one of the soldiers gets
this alien goop dripping on him while he's laying out
a sandbag underneath it. There was almost a little bit
of it reminded me of earlier this week in our
Core episodes where we were talking about Alfred Russell Wallace
in his room covered in ants, where it's like he

(01:05:43):
would find a specimen and he's like where to put it?
Where will it go?

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Yeah, because this thing's dripping everywhere. And I do like
the urgency they end up showing because they're like, this thing,
these things are rotting, We've got to preserve it quickly,
and so they're working really quickly to get things preserved
in liquids and in bottles and stuff. For get some
specimen jars go in and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
Yeah, So the paleontology team, they're trying to preserve the specimens,
but the specimens are really breaking down. Quickly, we see
a lot of them leaking green juice and thoracic sludge,
legs just crumbling off in people's hands. Ronny and quator

(01:06:26):
Mass discuss where these creatures come from, but also they
talk about this is an interesting little moment, kind of
understated even, but they talk about why these creatures look
so familiar. Quator Mass says, isn't it odd how similar
they look to gargoyles and devils that have appeared in
human art for millennia. So it's almost as if we

(01:06:48):
knew these creatures before the discovery, as if from our dreams.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Yeah, and this is where we begin to creep into
some of those cosmic horror ideas, where this thing that
we found is not only it's not just something entirely new,
it's something that perhaps explains other things about our entire existence.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Yeah. Yeah. The thing that's more frightening than the unknown
is the thing that you didn't know that you did know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
Yeah, like, what if we have been dreaming of these
things throughout human history? How and why?

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Yeah, So they do some scientific analysis, and the scientists
figure out that these insectoid bodies were built for a
world with low gravity and a thin atmosphere. Immediately, quator
Mass is like, sounds like Mars. Yeah, he's got Mars
on the brain, And they start to sort of turn
this over in their minds. Mars is dead now, but

(01:07:45):
perhaps millions of years ago, could it have been full
of life. There's a little exchange between quator Mass and
Ronnie where quator Mass says, the will to survive it's
an odd phenomenon, Ronie. If we found out Earth was doomed,
say by climbat changes, what would we do about it?
Ronie says nothing, just go on squabbling as usual, And

(01:08:07):
then quator Mass says, yes, but if we weren't men.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Yeah, this is pretty great because it is darkly humorous,
but it also gets to the point like, yeah, what
would non human entities that had an entirely different worldview
and entirely different social structure, how might they have responded
to some sort of coming apocalypse?

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Yeah, And quator Mass here builds in the assumption that
maybe other aliens wouldn't have been as fractious and emotional
and unable to focus on the common task at hand
as we are.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Yeah, especially if we're dealing with something that you know,
forra all intents and purposes might be some sort of
use social insect.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
Yeah. Anyway, So quator Mass, Judd, and Roney decide that
they should communicate directly to the press, so they release
photos and details to journalists, and the papers go wild
with reports about the find. And we learn in the
following scene about quat Maas's interpretation of what's going on here.

(01:09:10):
This is what Quatermass thinks five million years ago there
was life on Mars. Quote suppose that at that time
there were living beings on Mars with techniques that let
them visit the Earth at a time when the most
highly evolved creatures here, our own ancestors, were only a
type of Pleiocene ape. His theory goes on, but at

(01:09:32):
the same time, Mars was dying, so its natural environment
had been degraded to the point where Mars would soon
no longer be able to support life. So Quatermass says
that the Martians quote may have wanted to found another
colony when their own world was doomed, but couldn't endure

(01:09:53):
our atmosphere, so they experimented. And the idea here is
that the Martians took hominids from prehistoric Earth back to
Mars and changed them, altered them, quator Mass says, quote
altered by selective breeding, atomic surgery methods, we can't guess,

(01:10:14):
and with new faculties instilled in them high intelligence, perhaps
something else. So quator Mass is saying that in this way,
the Martians could in effect colonize Earth by proxy. They
could not physically themselves survive the conditions on Earth, couldn't
survive our atmosphere, our gravity and all that, but they

(01:10:36):
could take naturally Earth adapted life forms, remake those life
forms in their own image mentally at least, and then
seed them back on Earth. Fascinating idea, quator Mass says,
if I'm right, we've come on a single instance, probably
an accident, a landing that went wrong and they all died.

(01:10:57):
The Thames Valley was a swamp then, and so that's
his explanation. But in the scene where he explains this,
we learned the fact that quater Mass and Rony went
public with this idea before briefing quator Mass's superiors in
the government proves mighty displeasing to those superiors. There's like
a scene where he's being grilled by the Minister of

(01:11:19):
Defense and the Minister of Defense says, you realize what
you were implying that we owe our human condition here
to the intervention of insects and quator mass says I
suppose I am yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
I mean you can understand that the government would be
a little concerned with how the public might react to this.
Like again, this is like a cosmic horror revelation that
there's nothing really anything noble about humanity. Is only because
we were kind of like a plan B for a
dying race on Mars. They could realize they couldn't just

(01:11:52):
move to Mars, but they could create something that was
maybe a distant echo of themselves here.

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):
Yes, exactly, it's an intelligent designed theory of human origins,
but not with a supernatural creator, with a Martian creator
that was trying to essentially to make an alien animal
into something like a copy of themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Yeah. Yeah, which, and it's such an interesting concept explored
here because it's not I mean, we can not everything
is completely explained, I want to be clear, And there
are various interpretations you could get in it, maybe lean
more in this direction, but it's not like they were
creating these epe things as far as we know right
to then, like transfer their own minds into them it was,

(01:12:36):
I mean maybe, but it's not clear. It's not clear.
So so it's possible that that's what they were doing.
But on the other hand, it's entirely possible that it
was like, well, life is ending, we're doomed. Let's create
some sort of life and that will be our legacy
on another world. And maybe not even in the most
benevolent way. I mean, if it is benevolent, it's a

(01:12:56):
very distant benevolence. Like life is pretty cool. Let's make
sure there's still life somewhere in the Solar system. It
might be just like, well, you know, this is this
is going to be like our living tombstone for our
own civilization.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
Yeah. The kind of the exact form that sort of
mental memorial stone takes in us will get more complicated
as the film goes on. So the government officials are
especially annoyed with quator Mass because Colonel Breen has actually
a quite different interpretation of this find, one that the

(01:13:30):
government at this point favors. Breen says, no, no, no, no, no,
this is all a lot of nonsense. This craft is
quite indeed a Nazi rocket left over from the war.
His idea is after Germany started to lose, they switched
tactics and they attempted a propaganda operation to sow confusion

(01:13:53):
and fear among the British public and to take their
focus off of winning the war. So they sent an
experience mental rocket packed with weird, fake alien bodies and
altered human skeletons. Except the only thing that went wrong
is instead of discovering it when they were supposed to
right after it landed, the British did not discover it

(01:14:15):
until now they were supposed to stumble on it immediately.
The purpose was to cause exactly the kind of public
fervor and media feeding frenzy that quater Mass has in
fact caused with his statements to the press. And I
gotta say, I mean, I love this narrative, but quator Mass,
you are here doing the thing that so many scientists

(01:14:36):
in reality hate when one of them has a wildly
speculative interpretation of something and instead of taking it to
their peers and colleagues for discussion and criticism, you know,
considering questions like does this really fit the evidence? Is
it plausible? Are there more likely explanations? Instead of that,
they just run straight to the popular media essentially trying

(01:14:59):
to buy I pass the comment from people who have
the relevant background knowledge to explore the questions I just mentioned.
But okay, you know it's a movie. Quator Mass is
obviously right. I did just want to flag example number
one million that what the heroic scientists protagonist does in
a sci fi movie is very often revolting crank behavior

(01:15:20):
in real life.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Plus, I want to highlight here that you know, Breen
is clearly you know again, as a character with tunnel vision,
and is is in this point you manipulating things, and
it's essentially trying to begin a cover up. But at
the same time, his counter hypothesis, this is what we
alluded to earlier in the episode, is the one that
would be more likely in real life, Like this is

(01:15:43):
the one that if you were presented with these two possibilities,
Breen's on the surface would make more sense because it
requires fewer speculative leaps.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
Yeah, that's right. It requires many fewer assumptions of things
not currently in evidence. So the main one being that
there Nazi rocket program that had some kind of technology
that has since not become known to the British right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
And I think it is worth noting though that clearly
if this idea is pushed forward eventually, if they're allowed to,
there would be voices that would say, well, there's no
record of this type of ship ever, this type of
rocket ever being built by the Germans. All likewise, you
might have some lab results come in and say, well,

(01:16:27):
there's no way that these creatures were essentially Fiji mermaids,
like their tissue doesn't match anything that we have here
on Earth and so forth. So I'm not sure that
the Nazi propaganda attack explanation would hold water in the
long term, but you can easily see how if it's
pushed and other voices are suppressed, this could be the

(01:16:49):
cover up.

Speaker 3 (01:16:50):
Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you assume this situation
were to actually happen as pretty much as soon as
you got to go, you know, like a full biological
work up of these alien remains, figure out this is
real biological materials, you know, Yeah, this is not like
paper mache or something, even though it looks like paper mache. Yeah,
But in the meantime, let's see to prove Breen's Nazi

(01:17:13):
propaganda theory is correct. The Defense Minister plans to hold
a public press conference where the ship is going to
be revealed in full to the public. I forget why
they think this will vindicate Breen. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
Well, when we see bits of it later, they're even
like saying, well, we're in touch with like the West
German government, and they're about to provide us with some
evidence to back up what we're telling you. So they
seem to have some they have some steps planned here.
And it's interesting too to think about this film and
the way it utilizes the press, you know, like the
scientists here of course the heroes. The press seems a

(01:17:50):
little more neutral and is there to potentially be manipulated
by either side.

Speaker 3 (01:17:54):
Yes, I mean throughout the movie you see different actors. Essentially,
the two main camps in the movie, the scientists and
the military people both trying to use the press to
their advantage.

Speaker 4 (01:18:07):
Yea.

Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
They are trying to one up the other camp on
their appeals to the press, so they can get the
press on their side, so they can get the public
on their side.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
Yeah, and the press is just hungry. Yeah, they just
got to put out papers.

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):
So there are some developments after this, During some additional
work in the tunnel, the ship once again begins to
vibrate like the time it did when it you know,
made Colonel breenpuke and the drill operator Sladdin seems to
become possessed. He like something comes over him, his eyes

(01:18:40):
go glassy, and he runs out into the street, seeming
along the way to randomly blast and levitate objects with
his mind. He turns into sort of carry like he's
a zombie carry on the loose, until he finally collapses
in a churchyard and is taken in by a priest.
Quator Mass and Judd follow him after this, they come

(01:19:01):
to collect him, and Sladin explains how while he was
in his possessed state, he had visions he saw insect
like creatures with devil horns against a brown sky, leaping
in the air, up and up and up, and he
had a feeling that damnation was upon him and he
had to escape this place, whatever it was. Of course,

(01:19:23):
you know, in describing his environment, quator Mass is clearly
like he's talking about Mars. He had visions of Mars.
So it's like it's almost like visions from this alien
planet have been they're being transmitted now through the ship
somehow into us, and these visions are of a dying
planet and a panicking race of creatures that are at

(01:19:45):
their end and trying to get out anyway. After this incident,
quater Mass has an idea. He thinks he can prove
what the ship really is by using coming back to it,
the Roney analysis the helmet, the machine that the paleontologists
used to read minds with a helmet connected to a
bunch of wires. So what they're going to do looks

(01:20:09):
like this. They're going to put quator Mass himself inside
the alien ship and they're going to try to get
it to transmit images of the Martian apocalypse to him
while he's wearing the helmet, so that his thoughts will
be sent to a TV screen where they will be
recorded for later playback. Huh yeah, yeah, just stick with us.

(01:20:30):
They try this, but the ship, for whatever reason, decides
to transmit to Barber Judd instead of quater Mass, and
the images it sends into her mind's eye are horrifying.
She is shaken, and quator Mass records them and then
takes these images to playback for this group of government
high command. They show horrible violence on the surface of Mars.

(01:20:53):
This is one element where when we actually see the footage.
You can't really see all that much, and it doesn't
look all that great. I kind of wish it could
have been more visually appealing here, but yeah, it is
implied at least that what they see does look horrifying.
It's Martians killing Martians, and Q interprets what is being

(01:21:13):
shown here as a ritualistic mass murder where Martians believed
that they had to purge their society of mutations. The
government dudes are just like, nah, whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
Yeah, they don't see the threat yet.

Speaker 3 (01:21:30):
Anyway, we're starting to collect even more strange pieces that
there's something more sinister going on with the Martian society,
with what its culture means, with what it's trying to
sort of deliver down to us as its ancestors. It
seems to include not just sort of you know, uplifting us,

(01:21:51):
like giving us higher intelligence, but also maybe implanting kind
of little sleeper cell agents in our brain that can
be awaken by the beacon of this ship in which
we have visions of Mars, we are possessed by images
of these kind of you know, purge like activities, and

(01:22:11):
that it also awakens latent powers beyond just regular human intelligence.
Stuff that is apparently there in human beings but is
not normally accessible unless we're being activated by the signal
from the ship. And those powers include things like telekinesis.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
Yeah, anyway, so we get to the climax and there
is a crowd gathered for the unveiling of the ship.
But uh oh, there's a problem. While they're getting things
ready and the crowd is assembled, they've got this big
electrical generator that they're running a wire through the ship
for some reason, and it I think a wire makes
contact and it starts inadvertently feeding power into the ship,

(01:22:55):
and something changes. The ship has had little blips now
and then, but now that it's getting a strong power source,
the ship comes fully online and it is activated now
and it's doing something way more than it was before.
The ship powers up, and the assembled crowd panics and
seemingly starts to go mad, running out of the tunnel

(01:23:17):
into the streets above.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
Yeah, and this is where it really becomes really becomes essential.
Something that again we've already begun to learn is that
some people are affected and some people are not, And
some people are turned into psychic space zombies, others are not.

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):
Most people are affected, it seems there are a few exceptions,
so most people are affected, and they turn into this
panicking crowd that's running around with you know, glazed eyes,
just staring wildly ahead. We don't know exactly what the
intentions of the possessed crowd members are yet, we'll learn
in a moment. First of all, we see that when
the ship activates, Breen is seemingly hypnotized. He's lured to

(01:23:55):
it as if by a magnet. He like walks up
to it and then just sort of kneels down in
front of it, where he will be cooked alive by
the energy radiating off of the ship.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
Yeah. Yeah, Like we just we cut to another scene
and eventually we cut back to him and he's just
been microwave there, and then he just tumbles on into
the pit.

Speaker 3 (01:24:22):
So what happens to the crowds. The crowds, we witness
them seemingly turn into these groups of psychic manic hunters
prowling the streets, finding random other humans and unleashing telekinetic
bombardments of broken concrete and rubble against their former neighbors

(01:24:47):
and friends. And they're standing there just kind of stock still,
staring at them and launching with their minds, all of
these bombardments on them. What why is that happening? And
then then there's also a direct confrontation between water Mass
and Ronnie. Quator Mass has been seized up in the crowds.
He's one of them. He's running around. Ronnie grabs hold

(01:25:08):
of quator Mass and pulls him into like into a
cafe off of the street. And at first quator Mass
tries to kill Ronie. He's like, you know, he's reaching
as if to strangle him, but somehow he is able
to fight off the mind control and he snaps out
of it. He gets him a whiskey, he gets oh, yeah,
that's right. Yeah, they do have some medicinal whiskey. Uh. Strangely,

(01:25:30):
Roney seems completely unaffected. This is what you were alluding to.
He doesn't understand why everyone else seems to have gone mad,
and they discuss things. Rob let me know if you
had the same understanding that I did. It seems that
what they land on is that while we are all
all humans are descended from the Martian altered apes of Earth,

(01:25:54):
perhaps some of us have since then mutated so that
we the you that have mutated no longer possessed the
Martian mind control gene, leaving those few mutants outside the
psychic influence of the Beacon ship, and Rony just happens
to be one of those mutants. Those mutants are the

(01:26:15):
people who the crowds of psychic thralls in the streets
are now hunting to destroy with these telekinetic bombardments. And
that would be consistent with quator Mass's earlier interpretation of
the visions of Mars as like the Martians hunting each other,
hunting mutants within their own hives.

Speaker 2 (01:26:34):
Mm. Yeah, So the idea here would be this is
something that was an important value to the Martians that
was instilled into their operation here on Earth again and
seemingly with perhaps not nefarious intentions, because the idea, I
guess is, Hey, we're going to establish this population that

(01:26:54):
we have created to some degree in our image, and
we don't want it to get too corrupted over time.
It's going to need we need to have this bush
sort of self prune over the ensuing millennia.

Speaker 3 (01:27:07):
Right, so when the ship gets enough power applied to it,
it can turn into this beacon and activate the crowds
to attack their mutant cohort Now, one thing I think
is worth noting is that quator Mass is our protagonist here.
But quat Mass, while he does have some mental fortitude
and is able in moments to kind of fight off

(01:27:28):
the influence of the ship, he is overall still susceptible
to it. Like he's not one of the mutants who's
immune to it. He's like he's potentially part of the
attacking crowd. Yeah. Yeah. But after this, there's another development,
which is that an image rises over the skyline of
the city. There appears a gigantic, monstrous projection, a white,

(01:27:53):
glowing tower of energy in the shape of one of
these insectoid martian devils. And together quator Mass and Ronnie
they behold this projection and they figure out what it means,
and they come up with a plan. I love this is.
I think this is like such a weird out of nowhere,

(01:28:13):
almost beautiful weaving of science themes and demon lore. I
can't remember which one of them suggested. I think maybe
it's quator Mass who says that the demonic forces of
the world were always said to be vulnerable to cold iron.
What if that's because the devil was a projection of
electrical energy? And it could be discharged to the ground

(01:28:36):
by contact with iron.

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
Yeah. I love this as well because it just it
fits nicely. It's wild, but it fits nicely, snugly between
sci fi and demonic lore.

Speaker 3 (01:28:49):
Yeah, amazing. So that's what they come up with, and
they put a plan in place where Ronny is going
to climb up on a crane, it's big iron crane
and knock it in to the towering devil figure. And
the plan works. It does indeed discharge. After the energy
is dissipated, the madness suddenly subsides and like the crowd,

(01:29:12):
seemingly revert to normal, and we get to see our
remaining two protagonists, Quator Mass and Barbara Judd. They're just
left reeling in the street, catching their breath and trying
to make sense of all that has happened it to them,
and I think we can infer trying to make sense
of what they are. They're like, what what kind of creature? Am? I? Actually?

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
Yeah, this is such a great and admittedly downbeat way
to close out the picture. I mean, the threat has
been defeated, but the knowledge is still there and they're
having and not only like I think for these two
characters like two different levels. Like they were they were
just at each other's throats, you know, and and having
to fight, and now they're out there shaken out of that,

(01:29:56):
and then they're also having to you know, just roll
with all of these relations that are in play now.
But yeah, they're they're they're next they're near each other,
and the credits are rolling, but it's still like live footage,
you know, it's not a freeze frame. But they can't
quite look at each other either, you know, they're just
kind of both staring off to the side, staring at

(01:30:18):
the ground, staring into the middle distance. And the music
is quite quite haunting and downbeat here.

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):
It's an ending that actually very much reminds me of
the tone once again of John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness,
because it's like the immediate incursion of evil has been defeated,
but you just don't know where that leaves us, Like
how vulnerable are we still presumably given all the all

(01:30:45):
that's been established in the story, Like there could be
another ship somewhere that maybe that activates us and we
turn into these raging telekinetic assassin mobs again.

Speaker 2 (01:30:55):
Yeah, yeah, there's so many unanswered questions so it's yeah,
it's quite a haunting ending and indeed just a tremendous picture,
especially especially the early goings of it as the mystery
is beginning to build. But just the pacing and the
energy of the entire picture is great, Like it's just
a fun ride and you never find yourself bored because

(01:31:18):
it keeps this a picture that keeps transforming itself as well.
Each revelation brings an additional complications and brings us to
this amazing climax that you really couldn't predict if you
didn't know anything about the picture when we first venture
into the scenario.

Speaker 3 (01:31:34):
I was just trying to think, wait a minute, between
quator Mass and Breen, whose vision is vindicated in the
end by what they discover, I guess I would say
neither one, because quator Mass has what you know Breen
describes as this naive view of just like peaceful cooperation.

(01:31:55):
He Breen thinks that quator Mass is not cognizant enough
of threats. So I think you could argue in the
end that that was true initially, Like there was indeed
a real threat here, but the threat was not an
external enemy like this, The threat is something in ourselves

(01:32:18):
that can be activated to turn us into something we
don't want to be.

Speaker 2 (01:32:23):
Yeah. Yeah, it's rather thought provoking really, so, yeah, you
can really see why this picture was so influential. You know,
it really really turned people's heads, presented some ideas that
you know, we're present in science fiction literature, but maybe
had not been explored really on this level that much
in an actual cinema. So it's in to do so

(01:32:46):
too in a way that also has plenty of horror
colors to the palette as well. You know you're mentioning
the John Carpenter influence. We should also have mentioned that, like,
there are a couple of other overt references to this
in the Mouth of Madness features hobbs End as a location,
the hobbs End Horror and so forth as a direct

(01:33:08):
nod to this film. And you could make a case
too for John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, because that's essentially
what we're dealing with here, Ghosts of Mars.

Speaker 3 (01:33:16):
Brilliant. Well, I can't say anything after that, all right, Yeah,
that does it for me.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
Yeah, this is a fun one. This was really this
was really nice to re explore this picture, which again,
you know, had a strong effect on me when I
first saw it many many years ago, and still absolutely
holds up this is This is great science fiction, so
I encourage everyone to seek it out if it all
interests you, although hopefully if you've made it this far
through our our discussion of the plot, I hope you've

(01:33:46):
already seen it. So as always right in concerning your
thoughts about quator Mass in the Pit, as well as
you know, suggestions for episodes you'd like to see in
the future, because one of the reasons we finally got
around to doing this particular thing is because listeners kept
writing in about it. So it doesn't always make it happen,
but it can certainly prod us in the right direction.

(01:34:08):
Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
two season Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here
on Weird House Cinema. If you would like to follow
us on social well, we're on all the normal social
media accounts, but we're also on Letterbox as weird House,
and that's a great place to check out. A list

(01:34:29):
of all the movies we've covered over the years, and
sometimes a peek ahead of what's coming up next Huge Things.

Speaker 3 (01:34:33):
As always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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