When there is a second explosion, Dr. Royston says that it shouldn't have happened. I expected some twist, but then the movie simply ended. Was that supposed to indicate that there were more blobs under the earth that were also destroyed? Or did anyone else get another meaning out of it?
shareI too, was confused by that line and was expecting something to happen as Dr. Royston approached the crevasse. Your explanation works for me.
sharePerhaps, in true Hammer/Quatermass tradition, to creep us out? To leave us asking questions? To have us think, "Well that takes care of that ... for now..."
There's no good reason, as another poster here said, that there shouldn't be other blobs or colonies of blobs. The menace has gone for an unknown time, and we have one way of defeating it. Leaving the recurrance of such incidents ends the film with not so much a twist, as a sense of unresolved suspense. Pure Hammer in its grim and gritty horror.
At first I was surprised by this ending but it does work in that way: giving us a creepy feeling that things have only been temporarily resolved; that there may very well be other battles to fight in the future. It's a victory, but an uneasy one.
What do you think this is, a signature? It's a way of life!
I thought the ending was a possible set up for a Sequel.
actually the last line was "It has, Adam."
but I know what you mean. Must have been to set up a sequel.
We're just trying to be friendly,
Come watch us sing and play.
--RIP, Davey
I believe he said that he was trying to make matter like that break up, but he wanted to do so without creating a bomb - without an explosion. To me, he was disappointed that there was still an explosion - but I thought it still had done its purpose, killed the "monster" -
shareYes. It doesn't suggest further monsters. Either it/they explode when subjected to the 'de-radiation' process or it/they don't. One explosion means one monster. So Prof Jagger's process appears not to have worked as well as he hoped. Nothing suggests other monsters.
I found it quite weird. If they wanted an ambiguous ending it seems a bit vague what the ambiguity is. Same if they were after suspense, it doesn't really work because the audience don't know whether there is a threat or not, it's not clear what happened. Hitchcock would not approve! If it's about leaving the door open for a sequel it seems a bit clumsy and tacked on.
The film is in the tradition of petty-bourgeois paranoia so there can't be an end to the threat, only its alleviation. Notice the "respectable" status and occupations of the locals? The monster is symbolic.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
^ This.
shareThe film is in the tradition of petty-bourgeois paranoia so there can't be an end to the threat, only its alleviation. Notice the "respectable" status and occupations of the locals? The monster is symbolic.
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While symbolism might have been intended I'm not sure that there is a great deal of significance to the "respectableness" of the locals.
Not least because one, Old Tom, is a brewer of illegal alcohol who lives rough in a derelict tower belonging to someone else. The boys and their parents may be respectable but they are certainly intended to be respectable working class rather than petty-bourgeoisie.
The army privates are clearly from the working class - as would be expected.
The film could have easily included local worthies - the mayor etc. - but chose not to. Hammer films were never shy of expressly discomforting the self-important bourgeoisie when they felt like it - the Frankenstein and Dracula films are full of them. The fact that there are no especially broad figure-of-fun pompous types (the head of the research facility comes closest but is comparatively low-key) I think is significant.
To be honest, I don't think that the spread of characters is much different from the average in any other mainstream British film of the 1950s.
The second explosion was the egg hatching. Waiting for the sequel :-0
shareThe ending is not a set-up for a sequel, it's just a typical tag-line from the period. See also The Giant Behemoth which ends with a news story about thousands of dead fish washing up on the east coast of the USA. The washing up of dead fish on the Cornwall coast was the warning opening of the movie which signaled the initial appearances of the beast.