FIVE MILLION YEARS TO BLOG
Of all the films I routinely refer to as my Top Ten favorite science fiction films, the marvelously intelligent British thriller known as "Five Million Years to Earth" (and or "Quatermass and the Pit" depending on where you happed to have been a kid) is probably the most purely “science fictional”; it’s a film of SF ideas from beginning to end, with horror and suspense elements that, although strong, are decidedly subordinate to those ideas. Third installment of author Nigel Kneale's famed Professor Quatermass series (following in the footsteps of "The Quatermass Xperiment" aka "The Creeping Unknown" and "Quatermass II" aka "The Enemy From Space") "Quatermass and the Pit" posits that a strange craft and skeletons discovered during a subway-tunnel dig are not “merely” extraterrestrials, but the fathers of the human race, as well. And here’s the bad news: the Martian race memory, once released, is irresistibly strong, and threatens London and the entire world.
"You realise what you're implying? That we owe our human condition here to the intervention of insects?"
Bearded, middle-aged Andrew Keir makes for an aggressively take-charge Quatermass; “English rose” Barbara Shelley is appealing as the professor’s assistant, who has a particularly strong link to the malevolent alien mentality. Solidly directed by talented journeyman and "A Night to Remember" alum Roy Ward Baker. Take my word, you'll enjoy it.
