‘THE
ENCHANTED’
Episode
four of the Nigel Kneale six-part serial QUATERMASS AND THE PIT was broadcast
on the twelfth of January 1959 and at first it seems as if it is something of a
procedural episode, full of exposition and explanation, as some kind of
semblance of sense starts to be made as the various plot strands developed in
the first half of the story start to weave together in an way that really
refuses to underestimate the intelligence of the regular viewers.
Those
regular viewers, however, have just spent an entire week wondering just what
the hell those THINGS were that Professor Quatermass and Colonel Breen
discovered behind that inner port as it was turned and opened.
Answers
will come thick and fast in what - initially at least - is a very “talky”
episode. The last ten minutes, however, will take the viewers on a very
different – and memorable – journey, that really would have caused an epic
quantity of “water cooler moments” if such things had happened in late 1950s
Britain.
Assuming
anyone had been able sleep that is, because this episode, entitled “THE
ENCHANTED” goes to some quite terrifying places before it is over, and might
even top the ending of the previous week’s episode for all out Primetime
horrors.
That’s
hard to measure, of course, because those things that were found in The Pit
have been lurking in the public consciousness for nearly a week now, and
despite the Professor’s assurances that they’re dead, and have been so for
quite some time, the nation saw one of the blighters MOVE, didn’t they, and
might not have been listening anyway with those cushions clamped firmly to
their ears.
Fear
is a peculiar thing, isn’t it? A sofa, or even a cushion, is never going to
save you, but if you can shut out the noise, and shut out the images, maybe you
can convince yourself that the horrible thing just isn’t happening over there,
on the flickering screen in the corner of your own living room.
The
titles fade, and the soothing, dispassionate voiceover tells us exactly where
we are up to in the story, and helps us with the pronunciation of both
Quatermass and Roney, in case any of us were still wondering, and uses trigger
words like “haunted” and “hideous” to help us get in the mood, whilst quietly
giving us the author’s preferred term for that inner hatch, a “port” as it is
turned and opened into a reprise of those creatures and that sudden drop one of
them makes again.
I
wonder… I still wonder, if the audience still jumped when they saw it again.
Swiftly
we find ourselves in a wide shot looking at our heroes framed by the circular
door hole of what we can probably now properly refer to as the Alien vessel –
unless you’re within earshot of Colonel Breen, of course.
Whatever
those things actually are, it appears that they are decomposing fast, and this
looks like a job for some archaeologists, if any might happen to be around…
Oh,
wait a minute, we’re at an archaeological dig, aren’t we? It’s almost as if
somebody was carefully plotting this story all along.
Anyway,
this looks like a job for Roney, who bundles Barbara off to get some help from
the institute. She exits the vessel and passes our chorus of sappers, who, like
the audience at home, are still bewildered and want to know what’s going on.
Shaken,
however, by what she has seen, she says nothing as she passes them by, and it
is Corporal Gibson once again who pipes up with “She’s got the wind up”, but it
seems that they all have.
Oddly,
it is the obviously shaken Breen who first uses the words “colossal insect” and
is visibly shaken by this challenge to his understanding of the world. Anthony
Bushell is once again superb in this episode playing Breen as a man teetering
on the brink of losing all self-control in the face of this absurdity that he
simply cannot process on his own terms.
There’s
talk of resemblance to crabs and locusts, to try and make earthly sense of these
three-legged arthropods, creatures so very different from humanity and anything
on earth, and a stench of rotting fish that even causes the reliable sergeant
to have to make his excuses and go outside to throw up, where his eager squad
are awaiting any kind of answers, to which “giant insects” probably isn’t what
they were expecting. Gibson seems to be getting “the horrors” himself when he
realises that they were the ones who dug the thing up.
Gibson
shows genuine fear here and, as our audience identification figure of an
“ordinary bloke” takes us along with him.
Meanwhile,
Captain Potter is looking decidedly woozy himself as he leaps into the fray to
help out Barbara as she returns with the preservation gear, and, as she is
handed the body of one of these colossal insects, she 0nce again passes by the
wide-eyed soldiers.
Quatermass
remains inside the spaceship and is looking thoughtful as he considers the
various strands of membrane that are the remains of whatever web was holding
the three insect creatures in place for all those millions of years.
His
imagination is running wild as he surmises that the membranes are the remains
of instruments, and one cluster might have possibly been – in human terms – a
bunk of some kind. Breen is of course dismissive, suggesting that he might be
the kind of human who doesn’t possess an imagination.
There
then follows an entire exchange on the nature of decomposition, and how Roney
believes that most of it occurred in the last hour, which, once again, makes no
sense to the flabbergasted and increasingly unsettled Breen.
And
so they – and we – now understand about the nature of vacuum sealing and the
corruption caused by the introduction to such an environment of the “filthy
London air” still less than three years after the introduction of the Clean Air
Act.
We
cut to a wider view of the Pit, presumably a short while later, as some sombre-looking
fellows in overcoats arrive carrying packing cases - which must have
deliberately resembled three small coffins to unsettle us further - down the
ramp and into the builders’ hut.
We
cut to a close-up of one of the aliens being sprayed with a preserving fluid by
Barbara who is wearing a surgical mask and suddenly looking quite sinister,
and, as the bespectacled Klein is introduced, the science talk is all about
horny shells and keeping the fluids separate, as it should be, and the viewers
subtly learn a great deal about the genuine nature of these peculiar specimens,
which is going to come in handy when certain things unfold at the ministry
later on.
Meanwhile,
Professor Bernard Quatermass, is still plucking at strands inside the ship as
the sinister music creeps in again. By now we’re fully aware that this always
suggests something unusual is about to happen, but, for once, it’s simply the
journalist Fullalove appearing in order to have something else explained to him
as the Professor considers a few more theories. These strands were put there,
not grown and they remind him of close-up photographs of nerve endings, subtly
suggesting that the creatures flew this thing by the power of thought and,
perhaps, that their mental capacity was far greater than we humans could
possibly imagine.
An
explanation for everything that’s about to happen in the rest of the story;
It’s all there, you know, in the dialogue, if you pay close attention.
There’s
a slight fluff here when the Professor misses out a word in his explanation
about the fibres terminating, but the consummate professional that is Andre
Morell corrects himself and carries on.
And,
do you know what, that’s exactly what people do in the real world when they’re
explaining stuff, so it somehow adds to the realism of the piece in a way that
the vocal perfection of modern retakes simply sometimes fails to convey.
Meanwhile,
Fullalove asks the direct question that we all want to know: Could these things
have originated on this earth, and the shake of the head that he gets as the
only reply from Quatermass is very telling.
However,
before they can pursue this, a visibly unsettled Breen turns up with Captain
Potter, demanding that proper measurements of the structure will be taken,
which does, at least, provide a logical reason for the one we see drawn on a
chalk board at the end of episode six if you’ve ever wondered.
On
meeting Fullalove, however, Breen becomes apoplectic, and whilst Quatermass
attempts to be reasonable – finally pointing out that there is no bomb – the
enraged Breen demands that Fullalove is forcibly removed, which might come back
to bite him later, but certainly his fear is beginning to reveal itself.
We
catch another moment of the sergeant waiting for his cue to actually start the
forcible removing, and then we get the argument which causes the schism between
Quatermass and Breen as Quatermass suggests that he may have made a mistake,
and Breen’s fuzzy logic about the Professor’s nonsenses kicks in.
He
knows the smell of death, and how long it takes, and has opinions about the
“gutter” press. He has his own theories which he plans to reveal in his own
good time, but further debate is stalled as the door of the hut opens and
procession of what looks like people carrying tiny coffins emerges, and
Quatermass quietly points out that he won’t be able to keep those a secret for
long.
We
cut, once again, to the slightly tiresome newspaper office, although it’s good
to remind ourselves that, as this scene plays out, actors and scene-setters are
flying around in a frenzy off-screen to sort out the next scene, so it does
serve some purpose other than the plot points it delivers.
We
are once again in the Gazette offices and James Fullalove is rightly furious at
being bundled out of the pit by this blundering blimp, and we are again treated
to that Kneale trope of seeing the cover of the late edition in as much as it
furthers the plot and lets us all know quite where we are, and in a whirlwind
of “Monster Insects” we are transported to a newspaper vendor outside the
Nicklin Institute where the porter informs the gathering mob that they are
closed, and, surprisingly, the crowd then simply turn around and go away.
Inside,
however, Quatermass is now visiting Roney in his laboratory, and is standing
next to what we might nowadays call a “hero” shot of the fine prop of remains
of the creature rescued from the compartment earlier, and what a magnificent
piece of work it is, especially as Roney maintains that this was the “worst
one” in terms of preservation.
Quick
and impressive workers these Nicklin Institute archaeologists…!
Being
the worst one, they have chosen to display it this way, and not because it
simply shows it off at its very best for the cameras, and there’s a lot of
science chat about preserved fluids and liquids, and how they’ve handed the
other two over to the “Insect Department” which is how he has chosen to
classify them for all those experts mocking from their “Ask the Family” sofas
at home.
So
we’re now in the territory of arthropods, all of the insects, the spiders and
the crabs, except for that pesky tripod leg formation so beloved of Martians
(if you remember your H G Wells), although I’m never quite sure why we’ve
decided that the inhabitants of Mars would have been three-legged.
And
then there are those antennae, those… Pause for effect… Horns…!
Quatermass
once again makes the connections and joins the dots for those of us paying
attention at home, and reminds us of those prints and manuscripts that we were
looking at during the previous episodes, and points out the resemblance that
can’t have escaped the viewers to stone gargoyles that can be seen in the old
churches across the planet.
Art
imitating life, imitating art, given that those very gargoyles will have
influenced the designers of those creatures that are so troubling us.
Roney
is impressed, and draws his attention to the décor of the lab, which are
reproductions of the cave paintings of thirty-thousand years ago, and pointedly
points out the image of an ancient figure wearing a ritual mask that looks not
unlike the specimen now standing on his bench and he now wonders just where
they might have got the idea from…
Nod
to the audience, twinkle, twinkle.
…as
these creatures might be old friends that we haven’t seen for a very long time.
This
scene is terrific as all the strands start to come together, and considers a
world now dead that was once teeming with life, and all that talk of canals and
boyhood disappointments, and the first use of that word “Martians” which was
worn out long before something finally came along to claim it.
Because
claim it QUATERMASS AND THE PIT certainly does, and with both hands.
We
are no longer in any doubt.
At
least as far as the Professor is concerned, these creatures are from Mars.
Think
on that, dear viewer, as we fade to the scene of the barrier back at Hob’s
slash Hobb’s Lane, where an irritated crowd of reporters and civilians is
getting restless, and the long-suffering police officers are trying to keep
them out of the pit as they are joined by Michael Ripper’s army sergeant.
Professional
jealousies are much on the mind of the reporters, given that the banner
headlines of the Gazette are from a story they are still being denied, and the
sergeant is given a copy of the paper, which he takes back with him.
Meanwhile,
in the pit, Potter is finally able to confirm that there are no further sealed
compartments to be found, and he starts to wonder about whether the strands
that are now turning to dust were some kind of apparatus - as Quatermass
suggested – and starts wondering about quite how it might have worked, and
whether the hull did a lot of the thinking for them.
This
kind of lateral thinking is immediately stamped upon by the concrete-headed
Breen, who is getting sick and tired of such stark idiocy, and suggests that
such “nonsense” ought to be left to civilians, and not be the kind of thing
that troubles military minds.
And
talking of civilians… Remember that drill operator Sladden, from episode three?
Well, he pops up again, and all he wants to do is gather up his equipment and
go home.
His
day, however, is about to get far worse.
However,
so does Potter’s, a Breen has now been presented with that newspaper, and his
bubbling rage becomes stratospheric, with the word “panic” particularly vexing
him, until he has to take a telephone call from The War Office.
We
cut back to the Nicklin Institute via a close up of a skull designed to once
again underscore the “spookiness” of the entire serial, in case you’d forgotten
its roots.
And
whilst this skull fits in to the pattern of known evolution, this particular
one is comparatively huge and, as Quatermass suggests, the seven or six sets of
remains they have found might have BEEN developed by outside influences, which
is seeding much of the events that are yet to come.
There
is much supposition about the will to survive and how some ancient doomed
species might have gone about achieving this, compared with a dry acceptance of
just how rubbish human beings might be when faced with a similar fate, which,
of course, with its dry observation of us all simply carrying on fighting with
each other, which, of course, might actually be due to the Martian Inheritance
he has yet to properly formulate his theories upon.
I
told you this was an episode chock full of exposition.
If
anyone asked - once it was all over – what the hell THAT was all about, they
probably didn’t pay much attention to the first twenty minutes of episode four.
Either
that, or they forgot all about it, given what happens during the rest of the
episode.
Meanwhile,
as Barbara points out via a hubbub and an open window, outside the institute, a
crowd is gathering, convinced that something “sinister” (another good
mood-making word) is going on. Crowds do a lot of that in QUATERMASS AND THE
PIT, but maybe, we might find out eventually, it’s not their fault.
Barbara
is concerned that she might not get through them if they continue to gather
and, once again underestimating her, Roney tells her not to worry, she’ll be
able to get home.
Barbara,
however, has other plans, because she’s forgotten her notes and, ominously, has
to return to Hob’s slash Hobb’s Lane…
This
plot point is left dangling because Quatermass receives a phone call from the
War Office because, as he puts it, they’re in trouble.
And
so we dissolve back to the War Office as last seen in episode one, where Robert
Perceval’s Minister, alongside his secretary, Richard Dare, is, quite frankly
is angry enough to be refusing to take any of the several telephone calls that
are coming through to him.
The
Martians have well and truly hit the fan, and it’s all about him, and he’s
kicking downwards in the way that all government bullies have always done, and
continue to do, even now.
There’s
a significant moment which harks right back to Episode One when the Minister
“mis-speaks” about Breen “taking over” at the Rocket Group which doesn’t go
unnoticed, and yet still Quatermass tries to take full responsibility and gets
castigated for his trouble for acting as if he’d been caught scrumping apples.
However,
Quatermass then tries to explain his educated guesswork, and asks the Minister
to suppose a great deal of information that might be considered preposterous by
anyone not in full possession of all the facts that he has learned, and
theories that he has developed.
Theories,
basically, about little green men, and spaceships, and things not of this
earth, and connections with the bones of ape-men found in Knightsbridge.
Granted,
it’s a lot for anyone to take in, especially one who knows for certain that
Mars is a dead world, and isn’t really listening to something he considered to
be utter nonsense.
“You
realise what you’re saying. That we owe our human condition to the intervention
of… Insects…!”
You
can almost smell the sense of indignation.
It’s
much the same as the anti-evolutionists thought back in the Victorian Age when
Darwin suggested they might be related to monkeys.
He
is dumbstruck, at least until he hears another point of view which he much
prefers - Breen’s theory when it is finally, smugly revealed; The Germans, back
in 1944, during the last days of the war, launching a propaganda weapon
designed to create exactly the sort of panic and speculation that the vessel
currently is.
The
Minister LIKES this, it has the Wagnerian Black imagination that could be
believed of the painstaking people he calls “The Hun”, and feels confident and
delighted that he can announce to the Cabinet and the press and that the entire
thing has been an enormous hoax, and put the entire thing to bed in a nice,
comfortable, convenient package, that he can see the “common sense” of, and he
obsequiously starts looking to place the blame at the feet of those he holds
responsible for this ridiculous tale.
And
so, as he gets on the phone to explain the nature of this “false alarm” to his
masters, we see the looks on the faces of both Quatermass and Breen and they
are both, in their own way, priceless.
This
has so much still to say about the manipulation of fake news and what people
choose to believe, even when faced with a whole mountain of facts that don’t
quite fit in with their view of how the world works, and if you don’t think
that Nigel Kneale really was very understanding about the way the world worked
– and continues to work – then you really haven’t been paying attention.
And
so, back at Hob’s slash Hobb’s Lane, near to the barrier, and that big sign
warning of an unexploded bomb, things can begin to return to normal. Much to
the upset of the gathered masses hoping to see some excitement in another of
those “ordinary people” vox pop
vignettes that Kneale observes so well. There’s going to be a short statement
in the morning, and the disillusioned masses disperse so, quite frankly, the
Minister, boorish though he is, might have done them all a favour, given what’s
about to happen.
Yes,
I know I keep promising exciting things, but I have to keep you on tenterhooks,
don’t I? Otherwise you’ll think this is just the dull episode where everything
is explained before the big finale happens.
Anyway,
we’re here now. Sladden is hanging about, still waiting to retrieve his
equipment, and muttering about the delicate work that he’s been told to wait
for them to finish actually involving the slinging of sandbags.
As
Gibson explains, however, Sladden is only a civilian and therefore he’s
irrelevant in the pecking order, and our army chorus again fill us in on the
frostbite the team have been suffering from as the energy is absorbed into the
device, the fact that the “Sarge” isn’t all that bad, and whether or not this
missile really was a “Jerry Job” as they are being told, although one of the
sappers does point out rather shrewdly that they’d had all those stories about
this place long before they had Jerries…
Give
that soldier a promotion.
There’s
also a little nod back to little sapper Westie – the “figure through the wall”
guy from last week, remember, and the “Sarge” suddenly seems rather terrifying
to them again.
Anyway,
Sladden finally gets permission to retrieve his gear, and to knock off the
generator, and gets handed a pair of gloves to wear, and the bomb disposal team
bid him a fond farewell.
Back
at the barrier, Barbara is struggling to persuade the police officer to let her
through, but she is rescued by Potter who distracts the police officer for long
enough for Barbara to go through. Potter tells the officer that it’s all right,
before adding a quiet, but significant “I think…” which are actually pretty
much the final words spoken in this episode, as the tension starts to creep up
again, and we slip into a lengthy sequence that is played almost entirely
without dialogue as the diabolical forces start to build and build and build.
We
see a view of Sladden taken along the axis of the interior of the spaceship,
framed by the octagonal shape with all those depressed roundels in them, as the
sound starts again, and that close-ups of Richard Shaw’s highly expressive face
show a genuine sense of fear inside the now darkened hull.
And
as the tapping and scratching increases, he panics and falls over, only to see
his spanner moving towards him along the floor all by itself, and the various
wires still attached to the hull and his drilling rig start to writhe and
thrash about as if possessed by something, and the horrific noises build and
build.
And
suddenly Sladden is running, making a break for freedom, in some dreadful
fearful parody of a human run, half alien, half primate, as almost all the
previously inanimate objects – the planks, the cables, the rocks and the lamps
- within the building site that is the pit seem to spring into life and seem
suddenly determined to kill him.
As
Barbara chooses precisely the worst moment to enter the pit, she too is caught
up in this terrible whirlwind of objects and unearthly noise and, as the almost
unrecognisably changed figure of Sladden – looking not unlike our mental
picture of that figure that westie saw go through the wall - passes by her
without being aware of her, she is struck by a flying object and falls to the
ground.
Up
at street level, the soldiers are frozen in fear as, in a clever piece of
framing, the bizarre broken shape of the shadow of Sladden approaches them, and
they react in horror as they (and we) finally see him as he passes them, and
dashes through the frightened remnants of the dispersing crowds.
Potter
heads off to rescue the injured Barbara, but all is quiet in the pit now, as
the sound and the fury seem to have left along with Sladden.
Sladden
pauses exhausted in a pool of light, clinging on for dear life to the
streetlamp that provides it; for a moment, despite the fear in his eyes, it all
seems to have stopped. But then the knocking noises start up again and he
fearfully runs off into the night.
In
a quiet street nearby, the proprietor of a mobile café is serving up late night
teas to a couple, as a frankly exhausted looking Sladden staggers towards them
all, and leans pitifully against the counter, his hand reaching out desperate
for someone, anyone to help him.
But
salvation can’t be found here and, in an astonishingly effective use of a
simple physical effect, the piles of cups and saucers and plates start flinging
themselves at him and he has to flee again, pursued by fragments of shattering
crockery and that dreadful, almost unbearable howling sound.
What
the viewers must have made of these diabolical manifestations of poltergeistery
is anyone’s guess, but there is still more to come in this tour de force of an
astonishingly terrifying series of event.
Sladden
arrives at some heavy iron gates and we hear the voices of a church choir
singing as he makes his way along a pathway bordered with gravestones.
As
Sladden finalliy collapses on the gravel path of the churchyard he looks up
pleadingly into the face of a vicar who we just saw leaving the church.
This
is Noel Howlett. Later on he would be best known for his generally respectable
roles in various sitcoms, but, for the moment, he says nothing. All of his
dialogue will come in the next episode, but for now he simply stares down at
the pitiful face of the poor wretch whose face is achingly pleading for some
help and then the earth beneath his arm starts to move all by itself and, as we
cut back to Sladden from the face of this astonished vicar, the gravel beneath
him is rippling and rippling as the credits start to roll, eventually,
mercifully, fading to black.
What
on earth the nine point five million people who saw it made of that sequence
when they first saw it is anybody’s guess, but I imagine the word of mouth and
the “did you see?” brigade had rather a lot to say over the course of the
following week, as a further one point one million viewers would be added for
the next episode THE WILD HUNT the following week.
And
even now, I still find myself getting utterly exhausted whenever I watch that
sequence as it builds and it builds with nothing in the way of dialogue. It’s
all in the astounding monochrome visuals – don’t let anyone tell you that
horror always works so much better in full colour - and the sound effects and,
just when you think it might be over, another terrifying image arrives to
supplant it, and you do almost find yourself forgetting about all that
exposition earlier on, and the fact that none of the main cast even feature in
it as it unfolds to terrify a nation and remain firmly burned in the memories of
those who first saw it live.
Astonishing
stuff.
Martin A W Holmes, December 2019
