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The direct reflections are by Hooper (Lifeforce) and Carpenter (Prince of Darkness), the oblique one is by Fellini (Roma). The elongated skull pieced together in the opening credits is found in the primordial clay of the London Underground, the camera takes note of the sign at the gate ("Apologies to passengers for any inconvenience"). The paleontologist (James Donald) sees an ancient fossil, the colonel (Julian Glover) leans toward a WWII memento, Prof. Quatermass (Andrew Keir) theorizes an aborted interplanetary colonization. "Astounding implications." Locusts from Mars and their brush with hominids, hive memories waiting to be reactivated in the subconscious of descendants. (The alien vision gets unlocked in one of the excavation workers, who screams in unmistakable allusion to Douglas' Them!) "We owe our human condition here to the intervention of insects?" The culmination of Hammer's Nigel Kneale visualizations, an Armageddon rigorously balanced by Roy Ward Baker between the prolix and the unutterable. From atavistic apes to military ramrods, the limits of scientific reason and the continuum of the genetics of fear. Impervious to blowtorches, adorned with hieroglyphs and glowing with veins, the vessel with an oozy green center. "I think these are old friends we haven't seen for a time." The demonic intimations of the tube station's name are first noticed by the assistant (Barbara Shelley), the residue from the extraterrestrial experiment is extracted from her cerebellum as a spectral swarm flickering on a monitor. The portal beneath the boards, "as anciently diabolical as anything on record," the vortex above the city. The link to 2001: A Space Odyssey has been observed, though the striking resemblance of the horned figure at the climax to a certain Paul Dessau painting posits it as a remembrance of the Blitz after all. With Edwin Richfield, Bryan Marshall, Peter Copley, Maurice Good, Robert Morris, Sheila Steafel, Hugh Futcher, Hugh Morton, Thomas Heathcote, and Bee Duffell.
--- Fernando F. Croce |