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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
John Mills stars as the eponymous Professor in 1979's Quatermass, the fourth, final and best of the celebrated television science fiction serials. The Professor's early adventures were 1950's TV productions, all made into cult Hammer films, including the excellent Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Here Quatermass, now an elderly scientist searching for his missing grand-daughter, finds himself facing a new alien nightmare in a convincingly bleak near-future Britain of urban decay, social collapse and unchecked violence.
Written by Nigel Kneale, as were all the Quatermass stories, this was an intelligent extrapolation of 1970's industrial-strife-ridden Britain, a continuation of the apocalyptic British SF tradition of John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids was serialised by the BBC two years later). Thanks to a generous budget sufficient to allow for an international theatrical version, the production values are impressively large-scale, and the naturalistic performances from a cast including Simon MacCorkindale, Barbara Kellerman and Brenda Fricker add greatly to the sense of reality. Best of all, John Mills brings tremendous class to an adventure which remains a rare example of serious, ideas-based adult TV SF. Director Piers Haggard (Pennies from Heaven) packs considerable tension and not a few scares into Kneale's epic canvas.
On the DVD: Quatermass is presented on three DVDs with two 50-minute episodes and perfunctory production notes on each of the first two discs. The 4:3 picture is good for a 1970's TV series, though there is some minor print damage. Sound is adequate two-channel mono. Disc 3 offers the 101-minute international theatrical version, called The Quatermass Conclusion. This version contains some slightly stronger, 15-rated material, and different credits. The disc also features an oddly presented but interesting 18-minute interview with Nigel Kneale which is centred on the original three Quatermass BBC serials. A 16-page booklet is informative and the packaging is among the most attractive to grace a DVD set thus far. --Gary S Dalkin
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Quatermass (aka the Quatermass Conclusion aka Quatermass 4) always seems to be described as the weakest of the four Quatermass TV series according to the reference books. However, for the originality of its ideas it is almost up there with 'Quatermass & The Pit'.
Originally written in the late sixties but rejected by the BBC, many felt that the series was behind-the-times when showed on TV in the late seventies; after all, it was full of hippies, 'Planet People', young wasters who dreamt of mystical escape while society crumbled around them ...it was hardly Punk Rock. However, writer Nigel Kneale was of course ahead of the times (prediction is often part of Sf after all) and within a few years the hippie returned in the guise of the traveller/crusty, battling for access to stonehenge on the solstice...
The narrative sees Quatermass (played with gentle understatement by John Mills) struggling to understand what alien force is behind the blasts of white light that are eradicating the planet people as they converge on neolithic sites in their anti-intellectual escape from the increasingly dystopian cities of Britain...the answer is an astonishing one: but I'm not going to offer a spoiler here, you'll just have to watch the series.
The usual brilliant ideas Kneale offers are backed up by an excellent cast which includes an intense Simon McCorkindale (currently of Casualty fame), Toyah Wilcox and even (albiet briefly) a young Helen Baxendale (Cold Feet, Friends).
One of the last great TV SF series of the 70s, 'Quatermass' was produced by ITV...if only the television bosses of today realised that intelligent, adult SF is waiting to return to our screens if only the producers would read some old books and remember that it's not all zap guns and spaceships, but ideas that count too...
If you love intelligent SF, you simply must see 'Quatermass'.
Originally written in the late sixties but rejected by the BBC, many felt that the series was behind-the-times when showed on TV in the late seventies; after all, it was full of hippies, 'Planet People', young wasters who dreamt of mystical escape while society crumbled around them ...it was hardly Punk Rock. However, writer Nigel Kneale was of course ahead of the times (prediction is often part of Sf after all) and within a few years the hippie returned in the guise of the traveller/crusty, battling for access to stonehenge on the solstice...
The narrative sees Quatermass (played with gentle understatement by John Mills) struggling to understand what alien force is behind the blasts of white light that are eradicating the planet people as they converge on neolithic sites in their anti-intellectual escape from the increasingly dystopian cities of Britain...the answer is an astonishing one: but I'm not going to offer a spoiler here, you'll just have to watch the series.
The usual brilliant ideas Kneale offers are backed up by an excellent cast which includes an intense Simon McCorkindale (currently of Casualty fame), Toyah Wilcox and even (albiet briefly) a young Helen Baxendale (Cold Feet, Friends).
One of the last great TV SF series of the 70s, 'Quatermass' was produced by ITV...if only the television bosses of today realised that intelligent, adult SF is waiting to return to our screens if only the producers would read some old books and remember that it's not all zap guns and spaceships, but ideas that count too...
If you love intelligent SF, you simply must see 'Quatermass'.
38 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I was only a kid when I saw this mini-series, way back in 1979, but it was one of those programmes that stayed with you, its images etched into your brain... The dystopian near-future setting, the street gangs, the armoured taxi with "no cash carried" painted on the door, the mysterious beam of light from the sky striking the gathered crowds at the stone circle, the giant radio telescope dish... All etched indelibly - from one single viewing, 25 years previously. Unforgettable.
I'd been trying to track down a copy of this memorable series ever since, only having the paperback novel from the time as evidence it had ever existed ... so it was with great pleasure that I noted this long-overdue release.
So, how does it stand up today? Although unavoidably dated in places, it's still amazing - maybe even more so, as we're nearer to the future it predicted than we were back then... Nigel Kneale's interest in the links between folklore and sci-fi creates a unique atmosphere, as in all his filmed works, and veteran director Piers Haggard maintains a sure hold over the unusual material, the fey tone of the work almost echoing that other great British nightmare-fairytale "The Wicker Man" in places. Other aspects are quite visionary, something I could only appreciate watching it again as an adult - the "pay-cops" (metropolitan contract police), the social decay due to no more oil, Britain described as a "third world country", the almost medieval pre-industrial populace eking out an existence amongst the rubble of society... And the scenes of armed riot police attempting to prevent the crowds of New Age Traveller-like "Planet People" from gathering at the stone circle are even more resonant now after the Tory era, and make you wonder if Nigel Kneale had a crystal ball next to his typewriter? I loved it then, and I love it even more now - if you're a fan of imaginative, thought-provoking, visionary British sci-fi then this unique work definitely deserves a place on your DVD shelf.
I'd been trying to track down a copy of this memorable series ever since, only having the paperback novel from the time as evidence it had ever existed ... so it was with great pleasure that I noted this long-overdue release.
So, how does it stand up today? Although unavoidably dated in places, it's still amazing - maybe even more so, as we're nearer to the future it predicted than we were back then... Nigel Kneale's interest in the links between folklore and sci-fi creates a unique atmosphere, as in all his filmed works, and veteran director Piers Haggard maintains a sure hold over the unusual material, the fey tone of the work almost echoing that other great British nightmare-fairytale "The Wicker Man" in places. Other aspects are quite visionary, something I could only appreciate watching it again as an adult - the "pay-cops" (metropolitan contract police), the social decay due to no more oil, Britain described as a "third world country", the almost medieval pre-industrial populace eking out an existence amongst the rubble of society... And the scenes of armed riot police attempting to prevent the crowds of New Age Traveller-like "Planet People" from gathering at the stone circle are even more resonant now after the Tory era, and make you wonder if Nigel Kneale had a crystal ball next to his typewriter? I loved it then, and I love it even more now - if you're a fan of imaginative, thought-provoking, visionary British sci-fi then this unique work definitely deserves a place on your DVD shelf.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
I remember watching this when it was shown on TV the first time around. Obviously better special effects than the original black and white shows but it didn't have the same spooky atmosphere. The strength of the story makes up for this though and, although cheesy in places, at least it's entertainingly cheesy. And some bits really stick in the mind.... Huffedy puffedy Ringstone Round, if you lose your hat it'll never be found... Priceless.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
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Published 3 months ago by Mr. Jonathon T. Beckett
not a fitting end
I had great difficulty in appreciating that this was written by Nigel Kneale as it seemed to lack the real impact of "Quatermass and the Pit" and I had to read the book to unravel... Read more
Published on 8 Feb 2010 by James Wells
If you lose your hat it will never be found
This series is very uneven, with some compelling sequences and fascinating concepts mixed in with one-dimensional characters and ludicrous situations. Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2008 by Xepha
Quatermass 70s Style.
This has a very clunky script and a VERY bleak view of what the end of the 20th Century was going to be like; Lord alive, perhaps we should thank our lucky stars for technical... Read more
Published on 14 Jun 2006 by Mrs. E. A. Marks
Absolutely shocking! One I'll never forget!
Unlike most of the other reviewers for this, I did not see this when it was originally transmitted, and when I received it for my seventeenth birthday, I expected it to be another... Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2004 by "gorillachops2000"
More interesting than entertaining.
A bit harsh maybe- after all I shelled out a few £££'s on this merely on remembering it from childhood.
Having said that I found it very compelling towards the end though. Read more
Published on 19 Feb 2004 by "marcusmuck"
Quatermass - a fitting end
For those who remember, Nigel Kneal's Quatermass was one of the TV greats of the 70's. The John Mills portrayal of an elderly Quatermass in a Britain consumed by anarchy is a... Read more
Published on 14 May 2003 by Michael R Startup
Only the cows are left standing
This one stuck in the memory from childhood, if only in flashes. Quatermass's previous adventures are mentioned only obliquely during the new sci-fi crisis, thus washing over the... Read more
Published on 10 May 2003 by Gary
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