While the mysterious hull found in the pit at Knightsbridge is being investigated by
Professor Quatermass and his colleagues, a black magic pentacle is discovered inside
it and a terrified sapper sees a dwarf-like figure pass through the wall.
When an attempt is made to pierce a sealed compartment with a borison drill, frightful
sounds break out, demoralising and shocking the drilling party and sending Quatermass
with Dr Roney on a search for early records of the place.
As far as these go back, Hobbs Lane has been periodically haunted by sounds and hideous
small shapes.
Meanwhile Colonel Breen finds a hole has appeared, as if melted in the closed bulkhead, and through
it an eye can be seen.
With the hole to provide a purchase, the inner port is turned, opened.
The demons.
It's alright, they're dead.
They've been dead for a long time.
What are they?
Whatever they are, they're decomposing fast.
Roney, I think this is a job for you.
Yes.
Barbara, phone the museum, tell Klein to bring supports and sprays, quickly.
Give me a hand here.
What's in there, miss?
She's got the window.
I think I can... it's got it.
What in heaven's name?
Like a colossal insect.
In some ways, more like a crab.
Yes, well that's the smell, like rotting fish.
Or locusts.
Quatermass, do you mind here?
I can't guarantee my stomach.
You can always see it decomposing.
I'm sorry, sir.
I think I'd better go and get the door.
Oh, alright, go on, get up.
There seem to be legs.
Three of them.
It's a tripod.
That's a strange formation.
Antenna like a beetle's.
Where's that girl?
Look out for her, will you?
What do you mean, insect?
What sort of insect?
I don't know.
What sort of insect?
I don't know.
They were big.
They're dead.
You say they were dead.
Sarge, you mean they've been dead a long time?
I don't know.
But, where'd you dug that thing up?
I don't know, Gibson.
Sir, what's in there?
What are they?
Here, let me help.
He's yelling for that stuff.
Take these.
Matthew, Drake, quickly.
Here, Barbara, keep it level.
It's leaking.
Yeah, I'll do it.
I'll do it.
Here, Barbara, keep it level, it's leaking.
Yeah.
Use number four spray influence.
Is that safe?
We've got to take a chance.
Cameron.
I want to use that in there before I get the others out.
Going in there?
Any objections?
There's no time to lose.
Be careful of those membranes.
They may be some sort of instrument.
Instruments?
Your imagination is running wild.
Yes, isn't yours?
This one's lying in some kind of a frame.
If they were human, I'd call that a bunk.
Dr. Roney, how long have these things been dead?
I don't know.
I'm asking him.
Pass me another tray.
If they'd been dead more than a few years, they'd have decomposed completely.
All the decomposition's taken place in the last hour or so.
Well, that makes no sense.
Look, don't bother me now, please.
That compartment was sealed.
If the things inside were completely sterile, without bacteria of any kind, then they'd
be free from corruption.
Even if they were dead?
Yes, they could stay in there for a year or a million years, remain as they are, unchanged.
Until our atmosphere got in, filthy London air.
Then they'd rot, as they have done.
Wait a minute.
Yes?
Dr. Clyde?
Yes?
Oh, this way, sir, please.
You see, when something is dead, so long as it stays here, and is never broken or killed,
All right, but they should have been here now.
Look, these things are disintegrating. Don't you realize that?
Oh, they're here now. Fine.
Cline, I'm glad to see you. Look here.
What are they? How did you get hold of them?
No questions now. Get those boxes ready.
How is that one?
Not good.
Well, if you can just try to save the horny shell.
Look, try to keep the body fluids separate and correctly described.
Now, Cline, come here.
There's a few things here, but we've only got two of them.
We cannot get any information on them.
Find the complete information yourself
and don't tell anyone else about it.
Good luck.
Professor?
Hmm?
Sorry to disturb you.
Oh, pull it up.
What's in there now?
Those...
Those membranes and...
These.
It's a blister powder.
Yes, it's...
Seems to be some sort of mineral substance.
Do you, uh...
Do you think it grew there like stalactites?
No, no, I think it was put, uh...
These remind me of something, something I've seen, photographs.
Of course, nerve ending.
What?
Nerve?
Yes, yes, if you see them enormously magnified,
then they... they terminate, the fibers terminate in this way.
Those...
Those creatures, could they...
Could they belong to this earth?
Hmm.
Take external measurements.
Then compare them with the internal over the whole structure.
I want every single cubic inch of space accounted for.
Who's this?
Quatermass, who's this man?
James Fuller Love, Evening Gazette.
How did he get in here?
Did you bring...
Well, not exactly, but he...
He's got no business here.
On the contrary, I think I have.
Stop talking past me.
This place is under military jurisdiction.
Surely not. There's no bomb.
It's not a question of protecting the public,
but of informing them.
Thanks.
Colonel Breen, I'd be glad of your expert opinion, too, on this.
Get out.
Potter, get him out of here.
Sir, uh, Sergeant.
Sir?
Now, look here, Breen.
I am in charge here,
and I want that man off this site immediately.
Sergeant, take him and escort him to the barrier.
Take him!
Come along, sir.
That was a mistake.
Bad one, Breen.
Don't tell me what to do.
I'm not gonna stand by while you feed wild theories to the gutter press.
There's been enough nonsense talked about this thing already.
Dead millions of years.
I know the smell of death and how long it lasts.
You've answered them?
Yes, I have.
Have you been assured?
In my own time.
You won't be able to keep those a secret for long.
Gacko, be tough about it.
Middle pages, too.
You've got to get these pictures in, all of them.
Take it easy, James.
Yes, sir.
Which headline?
Sam.
Oh, look, I'm sorry.
Which headline?
Sam.
Oh, look, I'll go talk to him again.
Oh, sure, sure.
It's that small head.
War office brushes it off.
What's the matter with it?
I still got the marks of being bounced with that barrier.
Is he scared?
Scared?
He thinks it's not strong enough.
Oh.
Well, what about, uh, Terror Stalks Whitehall?
These creatures are dead, aren't they?
He was scared, I know that.
Who?
This Colonel Breen.
Blimp blunders.
Too personal.
I feel personal.
Now, listen.
Full of love.
Beats.
Army.
Bam.
How's that?
Set it, Sam.
Oh, nice laser edition.
Japeman found.
Monster insects.
Get your gazette.
Thank you.
Monster insects found.
Get your gazette.
Read all about it.
They got them in there, now in the museum.
You can't get in, but you can read all about it.
Gazette.
I'm sorry.
The museum is closed.
There's no taking the bait.
This was the bad one?
Yes.
That's why we set it up that way.
Seemed less danger of damaging the legs.
Very dry and brittle.
All soft parts and fluids were extracted.
These are ready for analysis.
Seconded, Dr. Klein.
The insect department is working on our two good specimens.
Insect?
Is that how you classified them?
Call it an arthropod.
Arthropod?
Includes all insects, crabs, spiders.
Except that none of them have three legs.
These are interesting, too.
Antennas shaped like horns.
Yes.
The horned demons in those old prints and manuscripts.
You remember?
As if that image was somehow projected into men's minds.
That face.
Rather pretty.
It's like a gargoyle.
Randy, that's not just a simile.
Haven't you seen it before?
Carved on walls in a dozen countries?
Is it somewhere in the subconscious?
A race memory?
How do you like our decor?
Goddamn your decor.
I agree it is a bit she-she for a lab.
It confuses the eye when you're trying to read a measure.
There are copies of paleolithic cave paintings
about 30,000 years old.
Look at that one.
A caveman in a ritual mask.
I wonder where the idea of it came from.
I don't know.
Where the idea of it came from.
I think these are old friends
that we haven't seen for a long time.
Mass and structure point to a low-gravity environment.
A thin atmosphere.
Correct, sir.
Perhaps the world that's dead now,
but a few million years ago,
could have been teeming with life.
I wonder.
You know, Ronnie, when I was a boy,
it was the great burning topic
whether there were canals there and who made them.
I remember my disappointment
when somebody proved that Martians couldn't exist.
It's a funny word.
Worn out before anything turned up to claim it.
Martians.
Sorry, sir, I've got my orders.
Oh, don't keep on saying that.
My editor's worse than your inspector.
Have they found any more of these insects?
I don't know.
You must be the only man around here that doesn't.
Wait a minute. Here's one of them.
What's going on here?
Reporters.
Sergeant, is there still any danger?
Why can't we go down there?
You see any of these insects?
It's secret, sir.
Secret? Except from the Gazette.
Is that it?
They've got the whole story.
Have they bought the exclusive rights or what?
Go on, let us through.
I'll have to see about this, sir.
You get your officer up here right away.
I said, did you see any of these insects?
It's all accounted for, sir.
There are no more sealed compartments.
Good.
What's all this?
I must have rubbed against it in there.
All this stuff's coming loose and dropping off.
The professor seemed to think it must be...
Well, it might have been some sort of apparatus.
Does it look like that?
Oh, no, sir.
Besides, it doesn't connect with anything, but...
You know, even if there had been external propulsion units,
I still don't see how...
Well, unless the hull itself did the thinking.
Are you out of your mind?
I've heard enough stark idiocy here today.
You leave that to civilians.
Sir, have you finished with my gear?
Oh, later.
Some of my gear's inside there. Can I take it now?
Look, it'll be all right.
I can't go without it, sir. It belongs to my boss.
Look at this.
The work of Quatermash's friend, I suppose.
Army-imposed panic censorship.
Just because I chased that paid hack out of where he had no business to be.
Panic censorship!
What are they implying?
What are they trying to...
Are you all right, sir?
Yes, of course.
I'll show them what can happen when they start flinging implications.
Fool, sir, for you at the hut.
Who is it?
Somebody at the war office, sir.
The war office?
The war office.
It's that skull formation that's out of line.
Otherwise, the creatures fit in with non-evolution.
An ape with an overdeveloped cranium.
Oh, huge.
For its place in the family tree.
Over a thousand cc's capacity.
Intelligent?
Hard to say. Mere size doesn't mean that.
But something had developed. Some faculties.
Or had been developed.
Hmm?
How many of these ape creatures were there in the pit?
Seven? Six, at least.
Six or seven.
In the rear compartment.
We don't know that for a fact.
Let's suppose it.
And in the front compartment, there were these.
What's in your mind?
The will to survive.
It's an odd phenomenon.
Rony, if we found out, new for certain,
that our earth was doomed a thousand years from now,
or a hundred,
what would we do about it?
Nothing.
Just go on fighting each other as usual.
But...
if we weren't just men...
Just men.
Oh, good, you're still here.
Is it possible to give out a statement of some kind?
That crowd out there is getting huge.
And a bit ugly.
Apparently, they're convinced there's something sinister going on.
Laboratory.
Yes, he's here.
Professor, it's for you.
Hmm?
Oh.
Equipment.
Look at you.
You'll get through if this goes on.
Don't worry, you'll get home.
I've got to go back to Hobbs Lane first.
Why on earth?
To get some notes.
It's my own stupid fault.
I forgot them.
Yes.
All right, I'll come with one.
Well...
back to the War Office.
We're in trouble.
I've already told Breen what I think, pretty forcibly.
Perhaps he's taken more of the brunt of it than he should have done.
I don't know which shook me the most,
this wild news story or the fact that you two were at the bottom of it.
Hello?
Oh, hello, Haynes.
I'm afraid he's still not...
Oh, just a moment.
Yes, Private Secretary?
Sorry, the Minister's still not available.
Will you try again in about 20 minutes?
You see?
And the Home Office badgering me about cordons and emergency police action.
Now, before they call a special Cabinet meeting on me,
I want to get a few facts straight.
Oh, hell, kill it!
As far as I was aware, you weren't still in London.
I thought you were going back to the Rocky Group for Breen to take over,
well, to take up his new position.
Why didn't you?
It was my fault.
I involved Breen in this...
Oh, don't talk as if you've been scrumping apples.
This is serious.
You don't know how serious.
You'd better tell me.
I take it that you have an idea of the facts?
Well, only these press reports and more from Breen before you came.
But I'm still at a loss to make any sense of it.
When I was last in this room,
it was to discuss planting military bases on the moon...
Let's keep to the subject.
...and on the planet Mars.
What are you suggesting?
You're demanding explanations that I can't give or prove.
All I can give you are guesses.
Better than nothing.
No more calls.
Go on.
Dr. Roney and I are convinced
that those arthropods are not of this Earth.
Where, then?
One possibility is Mars.
Mars is dead.
There's nothing there but a few scraps of lichen.
Five million years ago, it may have been very different.
Suppose at that time
there were living beings there with advanced techniques.
No harm in supposing.
Techniques that enabled them to visit this Earth
at a time when the most advanced creatures on it,
our own ancestors, were still only a type of Pliocene ape.
Suppose
that they had other techniques,
biological ones.
Biological?
Those Pliocene man-apes found at Knightsbridge are freaks.
Are you trying to make out there can be any connection
between those apes and your insects?
Your insects? I think you saw them first.
I suppose that
they were unable to endure our atmosphere,
the strong oxygen, the bacteria,
so when they came,
they stayed sealed in that compartment
while in the other section were the ape mutations,
the result of their own experiments,
brought back to be released on Earth
to take possession of it for them.
You believe that happened?
I said it, I guess.
The apes were taken from this planet and...
And altered, yes, yes,
by selective breeding, by surgical methods,
perhaps both.
I suppose the aim would be to increase the intelligence.
I suppose.
But it would have to be carried out on a huge scale.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Yes, if I'm right,
we've come across just one single instance,
an accident, a landing that went wrong and they all died.
The Thames Valley was swamped then.
You realize what you're implying?
That we owe our human condition to the intervention of...
of insects?
Yes.
I suppose I am.
Breen, do you accept any of this?
No. No, I don't.
Not a single word.
Quatermass, you asked me a while ago,
if I had a theory of my own,
well, I have, and here it is.
And it does not involve Martians or obscene experiments.
Go on, Breen.
Only Germans.
And it goes back to 1944,
and not millions of years.
You can't still be hanging on to that...
I suggest that once the Germans realized they were losing the war,
they put out a propaganda scare.
They sent over an experimental V-weapon
that would produce exactly the effect it has produced
thanks to you.
Except that it was a little late for their purpose.
But what about those creatures?
Fakes.
Put there as a circumstantial touch,
like mermaids at a fair made up of odds and ends of flesh and bone.
The oldest trick in the business.
Ingenious.
Except that it didn't happen.
I say it did. Yes. Yes.
It has that black Wagnerian imagination.
Methodical people, the Hun.
Wait, you must hear the expert testimony.
No experts.
I'm sure I'm right, sir.
I like the common sense of it. It feels right.
We'll let the Home Secretary off his beat.
Get him now? Yes.
That mysterious missile, is it quite safe?
Had it thoroughly checked, sir.
No possible danger to the public?
None, I'm certain.
Good. Well, we'll get things back to normal.
Have that barrier down, people back in their homes.
Let the press see whatever they want.
We'll prepare a short statement now.
Here he is, sir.
Think what you're doing. At least wait until you've had time to...
Hello, John.
Sorry you've been led such a dance this evening.
It's all over now.
It's a gigantic false alarm.
That's official. There's no further danger.
What about that thing down there?
There'll be a full statement in the morning.
You mean it was a hoax?
I don't know, sir.
Open the barrier.
A hoax.
A hoax?
We come here specially.
Inspector, the bomb disposal people.
They're still there.
I can see that truck.
They're just packing up.
Oh, come on. Let's get a whiff.
It's too late to go to the flicks now.
Come on.
Oh, cripes. Stuck here to the last.
You're only a civvy, son.
Leave the lamps till I'm through, he says.
All right, Sergeant.
I thought he had some delicate task on.
Look at it. Swinging our bloody sacks.
I wonder he didn't make us do it.
I wouldn't do that.
He's touched that thing since this morning.
That's right. Why?
Hands.
Got me a bit.
Yeah. That cream fixed it, though.
It didn't fix him, nor Captain Potter.
I saw him when he took the bandages off.
Still, he's not a bad sergeant.
Gibson! Jones!
Till he starts bawling.
Come in, Sarge.
It's over.
Do you reckon this was a jerry job?
That's what the man said.
Funny, though. All them stories about this place.
That was before they ever had jerrys.
Come on, shut up.
Do you reckon Little Westy really seen anything?
Little Westy what?
He lost his nerve, son.
Spent too long clearing beaches.
Get ready, Sergeant. We'll pull out.
Very good, Sarge.
Come on, jump to it.
Knock off the generator, will you?
Right.
Have you got any gloves?
I'll take mine.
All right, sir.
Are you cold?
Well, pick up that stuff and move.
Come on, let the double.
We'll keep you warm.
Come on, boys.
All right.
Sorry, miss, if I was to let you go down there,
they'd all want to go.
But I'm master. I told you who I am.
What's the trouble?
I've got to get some notes. They're valuable.
Where from?
Oh, damn, we were just leaving. It'll all be shut down now.
Oh, Sergeant, is there anybody still below?
Yes, Sir Sladden, sir.
There you are. I'll be quick.
But, hi, miss.
I think.
Oh!