Bernard Quatermass

Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional character, created by the writer Nigel Kneale originally for BBC Television, who appeared in three influential BBC science fiction serials of the 1950s, and made his swansong in a final serial for Thames Television in 1979. A re-make of the first serial appeared on BBC Four in 2005. The character has also appeared in films, on the radio and in print over a fifty-year period. Kneale picked the character's unusual surname from a London telephone directory when stuck for an interesting name for the leading character in the script he was writing. Quatermass is an intelligent and highly moral British scientist, who continually finds himself confronting sinister alien forces that threaten to destroy humanity. In the initial three serials, he is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group.

Film

Hammer Films adapted the first three serials as feature films for the cinema, buying the rights to The Quatermass Experiment soon after transmission. The first two films, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957), were directed by Val Guest and starred American actor Brian Donlevy, the only man to play the character twice on screen. Hammer had also intended to use the character in another film made between the two adaptations, X the Unknown, but Kneale refused them permission to use the character.

Related Topics:
Hammer Films - The Quatermass Xperiment - 1955 - Quatermass 2 - 1957 - Val Guest - American - Brian Donlevy - X the Unknown

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Kneale was not particularly happy with Donlevy's performance, nor with the screenplay for the first film, which he had not been able to work on as he was still a BBC staff writer. By the time of the second film, however, he had left the BBC and was able to write the screenplay himself, which he also did for the third and final film version, 1967's Quatermass and the Pit.

Related Topics:
1967 - Quatermass and the Pit

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Quatermass and the Pit was the only one of the films and the first Quatermass production of any kind to be made in colour. Starring Scottish actor Andrew Keir, it is generally regarded as being the most faithful of the film adaptations, with whole scenes from the original reproduced verbatim. However, it was not a particular success at the box office, and no further Quatermass films were made, although since the 1980s rumours have surfaced at various times of possible remakes exploiting the rights Hammer held in the films as they variously changed hands after the company's dissolution.

Related Topics:
Scottish - Andrew Keir - 1980s

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In the USA, the three films were retitled The Creeping Unknown, Enemy From Space and Five Million Years to Earth respectively.

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