Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
I tend to like movies from Hammer Studios in its heyday. Sure, they’re not all great, but there’s an earnestness to them that I appreciate. Quatermass and the Pit is later in their run, but it’s a fine example of what Hammer could do on a very small budget. This is actually the third Quatermass film, based on a character created for the BBC. Despite it being the third film, the character name didn’t have the same recognition in the States, so it was released here under the awesome title Five Million Years to Earth.
In London in the mid-1960s, construction is going on at a tube station in Hobb’s End when a set of skeletal remains are unearthed. Dr. Matthew Roney (James Donald), a paleontologist, is called in to examine them. He determines that the remains are of a pre-human ancestor and he estimates them at five million years old—far older than any other previous finds of definably human ancestry. Around the same time that Roney reaches this conclusion, evidence of something metallic is located. It is decided that this metallic object is likely an unexploded bomb from World War II, and a bomb disposal squad is called in.
