***
Starts out rather like a British version of The Thing (From Another World) -- mysterious alien ship discovered buried not in ice, but deep in the earth causes friction between military and scientific investigators, while a living remnant of its crew wreaks havoc -- but unlike Hawks' film, the threat here is never very clearly defined and its haziness and inconsistency saps the suspense. Nice-try special effects don't greatly harm the movie, but don't help a lot, either. Still, a film with ideas (many psi-related) and a few nice scenes and touches, as, for instance, when a scholar, translating Latin on the fly, has to turn the page to find his verb. The third and last in Hammer's Quatermass films, preceded by The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. This standalone feature was titled Five Million Years to Earth for U.S. release in 1968. Starring Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, James Donald, and Julian Glover.
Starts out rather like a British version of The Thing (From Another World) -- mysterious alien ship discovered buried not in ice, but deep in the earth causes friction between military and scientific investigators, while a living remnant of its crew wreaks havoc -- but unlike Hawks' film, the threat here is never very clearly defined and its haziness and inconsistency saps the suspense. Nice-try special effects don't greatly harm the movie, but don't help a lot, either. Still, a film with ideas (many psi-related) and a few nice scenes and touches, as, for instance, when a scholar, translating Latin on the fly, has to turn the page to find his verb. The third and last in Hammer's Quatermass films, preceded by The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. This standalone feature was titled Five Million Years to Earth for U.S. release in 1968. Starring Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, James Donald, and Julian Glover.