Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44690 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-04-07
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 3
• Formats: Box set, PAL, Colour
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 327 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
John Mills stars as the eponymous Professor in 1979's Quatermass, the fourth, final and best of the celebrated television science fiction serials. The Professor's early adventures were 1950's TV productions, all made into cult Hammer films, including the excellent Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Here Quatermass, now an elderly scientist searching for his missing grand-daughter, finds himself facing a new alien nightmare in a convincingly bleak near-future Britain of urban decay, social collapse and unchecked violence.

Written by Nigel Kneale, as were all the Quatermass stories, this was an intelligent extrapolation of 1970's industrial-strife-ridden Britain, a continuation of the apocalyptic British SF tradition of John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids was serialised by the BBC two years later). Thanks to a generous budget sufficient to allow for an international theatrical version, the production values are impressively large-scale, and the naturalistic performances from a cast including Simon MacCorkindale, Barbara Kellerman and Brenda Fricker add greatly to the sense of reality. Best of all, John Mills brings tremendous class to an adventure which remains a rare example of serious, ideas-based adult TV SF. Director Piers Haggard (Pennies from Heaven) packs considerable tension and not a few scares into Kneale's epic canvas.

On the DVD: Quatermass is presented on three DVDs with two 50-minute episodes and perfunctory production notes on each of the first two discs. The 4:3 picture is good for a 1970's TV series, though there is some minor print damage. Sound is adequate two-channel mono. Disc 3 offers the 101-minute international theatrical version, called The Quatermass Conclusion. This version contains some slightly stronger, 15-rated material, and different credits. The disc also features an oddly presented but interesting 18-minute interview with Nigel Kneale which is centred on the original three Quatermass BBC serials. A 16-page booklet is informative and the packaging is among the most attractive to grace a DVD set thus far. --Gary S Dalkin

Special Features
"History of Quatermass" Booklet
The Quatermass Serials, the making of the 1979 version, biographies of creator Nigel Kneale and Sir John Mills, plus other actors playing Quatermass
Exclusive Nigel Kneale interview
Production Notes
Episode Information

Synopsis
The four part television series and the feature film version of Quatermass which finds Britain trying to survive the collapse of civilization. A strange force in space destroys any crowd that gathers. Quatermass attempts to rescue the situation. Written by Nigel Kneale.

Customer Reviews

Huffity Puffity Ringstone Round
I was only a kid when I saw this mini-series, way back in 1979, but it was one of those programmes that stayed with you, its images etched into your brain... The dystopian near-future setting, the street gangs, the armoured taxi with "no cash carried" painted on the door, the mysterious beam of light from the sky striking the gathered crowds at the stone circle, the giant radio telescope dish... All etched indelibly - from one single viewing, 25 years previously. Unforgettable.
I'd been trying to track down a copy of this memorable series ever since, only having the paperback novel from the time as evidence it had ever existed ... so it was with great pleasure that I noted this long-overdue release.
So, how does it stand up today? Although unavoidably dated in places, it's still amazing - maybe even more so, as we're nearer to the future it predicted than we were back then... Nigel Kneale's interest in the links between folklore and sci-fi creates a unique atmosphere, as in all his filmed works, and veteran director Piers Haggard maintains a sure hold over the unusual material, the fey tone of the work almost echoing that other great British nightmare-fairytale "The Wicker Man" in places. Other aspects are quite visionary, something I could only appreciate watching it again as an adult - the "pay-cops" (metropolitan contract police), the social decay due to no more oil, Britain described as a "third world country", the almost medieval pre-industrial populace eking out an existence amongst the rubble of society... And the scenes of armed riot police attempting to prevent the crowds of New Age Traveller-like "Planet People" from gathering at the stone circle are even more resonant now after the Tory era, and make you wonder if Nigel Kneale had a crystal ball next to his typewriter? I loved it then, and I love it even more now - if you're a fan of imaginative, thought-provoking, visionary British sci-fi then this unique work definitely deserves a place on your DVD shelf.

The Coming of the Crusties
Quatermass (aka the Quatermass Conclusion aka Quatermass 4) always seems to be described as the weakest of the four Quatermass TV series according to the reference books. However, for the originality of its ideas it is almost up there with 'Quatermass & The Pit'.
Originally written in the late sixties but rejected by the BBC, many felt that the series was behind-the-times when showed on TV in the late seventies; after all, it was full of hippies, 'Planet People', young wasters who dreamt of mystical escape while society crumbled around them ...it was hardly Punk Rock. However, writer Nigel Kneale was of course ahead of the times (prediction is often part of Sf after all) and within a few years the hippie returned in the guise of the traveller/crusty, battling for access to stonehenge on the solstice...
The narrative sees Quatermass (played with gentle understatement by John Mills) struggling to understand what alien force is behind the blasts of white light that are eradicating the planet people as they converge on neolithic sites in their anti-intellectual escape from the increasingly dystopian cities of Britain...the answer is an astonishing one: but I'm not going to offer a spoiler here, you'll just have to watch the series.
The usual brilliant ideas Kneale offers are backed up by an excellent cast which includes an intense Simon McCorkindale (currently of Casualty fame), Toyah Wilcox and even (albiet briefly) a young Helen Baxendale (Cold Feet, Friends).
One of the last great TV SF series of the 70s, 'Quatermass' was produced by ITV...if only the television bosses of today realised that intelligent, adult SF is waiting to return to our screens if only the producers would read some old books and remember that it's not all zap guns and spaceships, but ideas that count too...
If you love intelligent SF, you simply must see 'Quatermass'.

More interesting than entertaining.
A bit harsh maybe- after all I shelled out a few £££'s on this merely on remembering it from childhood.

Having said that I found it very compelling towards the end though. Maybe that's Nigel Kneales writing- I've liked all his Quatermass films........

Not to everyone's taste (my wife couldn't watch more than 10 minutes!).

I felt even the makers (actors, director & Kneale) had difficulty with this. Reading the background explains a lot of things- it was dogged with problems in production.

Definitely one for enthusiasts though good value overall.