The Quatermass Xperiment is a 1955 British science fiction horror film from Hammer Film Productions, based on the 1953 BBC Television serial The Quatermass Experiment written by Nigel Kneale. The film was produced by Anthony Hinds, directed by Val Guest, and stars Brian Donlevy as the titular Professor Bernard Quatermass and Richard Wordsworth as the tormented Carroon. Jack Warner, David King-Wood, and Margia Dean appear in co-starring roles.
UK quad crown theatrical release poster
Bray Studios, where many of the interior scenes in The Quatermass Xperiment were filmed.
Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) (centre) and Briscoe (David King-Wood) (left) examine Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) (seated) in a scene from The Quatermass Xperiment. Makeup artist Phil Leakey worked with cinematographer Walter J. Harvey to accentuate the shadows around Wordsworth's face to give him a skeletal appearance.
The Quatermass Xperiment had its première at the London Pavilion on 26 August 1955.
Hammer Film Productions Ltd. is a British film production company based in London. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic horror and fantasy films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involve classic horror characters such as Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy, which Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies, as well as, in later years, television series.
John Van Eyssen as Jonathan Harker
Christopher Lee as the Creature in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Christopher Lee in Dracula, a.k.a. Horror of Dracula (1958)