10 Hammer Horror Movies You NEED To See
4. Quatermass And The Pit (1967)
Hammer were not limited to tales of the supernatural, Quatermass And The Pit falls very much into the realms of science fiction. 'Quatermass' refers to Professor Quatermass, the eponymous hero of the hugely ambitious films and serials of the fifties and sixties. The Pit is the third feature Hammer produced under this title and is arguably the most successful.
When the British Army is brought into a London tube station, Hobbs End, to investigate the discovery of a strange object thought to be a WW2 German missile, Quatermass has another theory. The discovery is in fact a ship from Mars, buried for possibly millions of years by alien colonists, sent to merge human and alien DNA. If that sounds a little familiar, it's practically the plot of The X Files 'mythology' story arc.
Starring Andrew Keir (the vampire hunting priest who warms his arse in the fire from Dracula Prince of Darkness), Julian Glover (Nazi stooge Donovan, from The Last Crusade) and of course, the recently deceased Hammer queen herself, Barbara Shelley, Quatermass And The Pit is the kind of film that a young Spielberg, Abrams or even Shayalaman would've begged to direct. It presents the intriguing concept that aliens were responsible for all supernatural phenomenon (ghosts, the devil, vampires) in the area and possibly the world, dating back thousands of years.
Fibreglass space ships, papier-mâché Martians, stuffy bureaucrats and a rousing fiery climax make this film Hammer's most accomplished contribution to science fiction.