Given that I’m a big fan of both Hammer Films and eccentric, black & white British sci-fi movies more generally, the awkwardly titled ‘X… The Unknown’, Hammer’s immediate follow up to the success of ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’ a year previously, and the very first scripting credit from Jimmy Sangster, certainly fits the bill.
Essentially dealing with the travails of a giant, sentient oil slick from the centre of the earth as it rampages around some less picturesque areas of Scottish highlands eating radioactivity (and people), Sangster’s story is an admirably straight-down-the-line, bullshit-free exemplar of a ‘50s radioactive monster movie, but one which still, somehow, remains curiously compelling, touching at least in passing on the kind of Big Ideas and weird thematic resonances which Nigel Kneale reliably brought to his Quatermass stories.
By and large though, the feel of the movie is… dour in the extreme, reminding me somewhat of other military-focussed British films like Cliff Owen’s ‘A Prize of Arms’ (1962), whilst also pre-figuring the ‘Doomwatch’ franchise of the early ‘70s via its emphasis on lengthy scenes featuring blokes in great-coats stomping about in the frozen mud, poking patches of oil, taking Geiger counter reading and talking about science, whilst bored squaddies hang around in the cold awaiting orders. Grim weather, military manners, very few smiles, and no female characters whatsoever.*
A bit less of this kind of thing and a bit more excitement might have livened things up during the first half of the picture, but nonetheless, it’s all very well made (much as you’d expect of a Hammer production of this vintage) and moves at a fair old clip, with a varied and interesting cast (including such notables as Leo McKern, Anthony Newley and - of course - Michael Ripper) all doing good work re: keeping the audience engaged. It’s also worth mentioning meanwhile that, as the token American ‘star’, the bumbling, softly spoken Dean Jagger proves a vastly more likeable and convincing presence than Brian Donlevy did in the Quatermass movies.
The shock / horror scenes, when they eventually arrive meanwhile, are pretty great too. There are some really cool effects, and the black, amorphous crawling creature is genuinely quite unnerving - a totally alien presence, not so far removed from the kind of thing which might have slurped its way up from the depths of some ancient, pre-human vault at the end of a Lovecraft tale.
In fact, it is the few brief moments in ‘X… The Unknown’ which veer into gothic horror territory, splitting the difference between a scientific and occult threat, which prove to be by far the most memorable.
For all the nuts n’ bolts SF logic of Sangster’s writing, it’s difficult not to feel that some weird, atavistic race memory has been unleashed, as we see the residents of a remote Scottish village cowering for protection in a cold, stone church as an evil, nameless menace which has literally crawled up from the depths of Hades slimes its way through the misty graveyard outside, demolishing the pretty dry stone walls, and narrowly missing an errant toddler who is pulled to safety at the last moment by the heroic vicar.
Great stuff, needless to say, and hey, check out this amazing Japanese poster I found (featuring a far cuter monster, apparently sourced from a different movie altogether, but never mind).
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* Ok, precisely speaking, I realise there’s a nurse who turns up at one point and has about five lines, and there’s the mother of a boy who’s killed by the monster, and some old dears being hustled into the church by the vicar… but we’re pretty much looking at an all-male affair here, perhaps reflective of the same awkwardness / inability to find things for women to do which later became a hallmark of Sangster’s gothic horror scripts?
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