The Quatermass Conclusion

I have since watched The Quatermass Conclusion, and I agree with your assessment. It has a good story idea, I think, but it never quite reaches the level of quality that the others do. Did you watch the longer series, or did you watch the truncated movie version? I have watched both, and I must say that the series version is padded. In reading behind the scenes information, I have discovered that Kneale was given the mandate of creating a story that could work in a longer version, but be edited down to a movie length and still work. This worked against the overall plot, in my opinion, as Kneale had his hands tied in where he could take the story. I would advise viewers to watch the truncated movie version, and there really is nothing pertinent added to the longer series version. Also, keep in mind that this is the fourth TV series, made to fit with the past Quatermass TV series. It really has NOTHING to do with the movie versions which were remakes of the TV shows.

May contain some SPOILERS:



johnthornley, Glad you liked Quatermass, but "Q4 Conclusion" is not a masterpiece:

Its effects are unworthy of a film produced in the late Seventies:
The Q films of the Fifties all had very believable, state of the art sfx - Q4 has cheap, "made in a mad rush for TV" sfx. All the shots taking place in space are embarrassingly inept. The alien beam attack on a huge stadium takes the cheap way out by showing its affect on Quatermass alone, as he cowers in a parking garage; a more spendy and savvy production would have at least attempted to show the alien mass abuduction's direct affect on the stadium itself in a "widescreen", sweeping outdoor shot.

Q4 has bumbling, extraneous material - over-reference to Joe Kapp's Jewishness, Quatermass's over-long involvement in an old folks' commune, too much lackadaisical meandering with the Planet People's nomadic life; Quatermass's search for his missing granddaughter, which turns out to merely be a ploy to get the aged Prof connected to Joe Kapp, while the granddaughter theme is neglected until the film's final scene (during which, for no discernable reason, she awakes from her Planet People trance, and then assists Grandpa Q in detonating the hopefully alien-biting nuclear device). Not to mention odd casting choices, such as the muscle-bound Planet People leader, Kickalong (how does he maintain a hulking physique while scavenging food from a barren countryside?); or Quatermass's old friend from the American space program, who is all too obviously a Brit trying to choke down his native accent in favor of an American speech pattern, with the results making him sound like an impedimental cross between a New Jerseyite and Dracula.

Q4 exhibits a confusion of purpose. The Fifties screenplays usually featured one Big Issue (political or otherwise) and one Big Enemy/Alien. Q4, otoh, has multiple Big Issues: the undisciplined, superstitious young; the bold and clever old; the Wandering Jew as guardian of science; the pigheaded, selfish USA and Russia; the breakdown of European society; the Planet People. Q4 does have one Big Alien, but that creature is bifurcated, and we never see the originating Alien(s) in its actual, native state; instead all we see is one of of its harvesting energy beams. Quatermass is reduced to fighting an artifact rather than a flesh and blood opponent. This diffusion of themes considerably weakens Q4.

The Planet People are an embarrassment, and their pendulum-induced hippie trance is laughable to behold ("ley...ley...ley ... leh...leh...leh" they moan in unison as they follow their dangling pendants across the fields). This kind of social "satire" would have been embarrassing even at the height of Flower Power. But coming as it does in 1977, it is both cringingly anachronistic and infuriating - as if an embittered and unhappily aging Nigel Kneale is trying to take one last potshot at a generation he neither likes nor understands.

Q4's direction is as diffuse as its Big Issues. Previous Quatermass dramas were spare, lean, and they followed a straightforward, uncompromising plotline to reach a horrific, mindblowing conclusion. Not so Q4's "Conclusion", which wanders through its story as if it has all the time in the world. Perhaps the lengthy mini-series format is to blame for this, but regardless of that consideration, Q4 is much too long and loose. It has none of the gut-wrenching, heart-thumping suspense, dread, terror, horror, and awe-inspiring concepts of its superior predecessors.