Quatermass II 1957 Based on the 1955 TV serial Quatermass II by Nigel Kneale, screenplay by Nigel Kneale and Val Guest, directed by Val Guest. I've seen this several times over the years as well as multiple viewings of the TV serial. I posted about it back in 2015 and included a link to the TV serials for both movies on the Internet Archive. The Quatermass series was produced and released by Hammer Productions.
Aliens are invading Britain, Quatermass finds out about it when he stops to help a couple in a car who have had an accident. The aliens are arriving in small stone meteors, then they burst open near a human they take over that human and turn it into an unwilling slave. The aliens have built a giant facility in Winnerden Flats. Quatermass arranges a trip there and finds out things don't add up. The scene the burnt man made an impression on me when I saw it
The nearby townies get riled up when the guards for the project invade the local pub and kill a newspaper reporter who was calling a story into the paper. The reporter was played by one of my favorite actors, Sid James. The locals rise and attack the plant. There's a ferocious battle as the townies take over a control room. Quatermass figures how to sabotage the system. One of the townies fires a rocket at the big dome and it blows up. Giant creatures are revealed and eventually burnt to a crisp. Quatermass's rocket is launched to destroy the alien's secret base in space.
It's my favorite of the Quatermass films, there's a nice mix of science, investigating and action. I upgraded to the Blu-ray to get all the extras. Now to find time to watch all those too. Also mentioned on that post is a Edward Everett Horton film called The Body Disappears. A comedy invisible man movie that can be found on the Internet Archive. Worth a look. I'm downloading a upgrade to the copy I taped off of TCM.
Quatermass And The Pit 1967 Based on the BBC TV serial by Nigel Kneale, screenplay by Nigel Kneale, directed by Roy Ward Baker. A Hammer film that I've seen several times. I blogged about this film and the first two adaptations in 2010. Here's a blog post about the TV versions of Quatermass II and Quatermass And The Pit from 2010.
Quatermass winds up helping determine what the strange object found while rebuilding the underground station at Hobb's End is all about. Turns out to be another alien invasion. The artifact is from 5,000,000 years ago but it's still active. Over the millions of years it's affected the locals and it was the same at Hobb's End, people have been driven mad by the psychic energy.
They open the artifact and find desiccated bug people, dead for 5 million years. The artifact is their ship and it's what's active. Eventually Quatermass destroys the active bit of the ship and the world is saved once again. Yay.
I also bought the Blu-ray of this film for the extras. Time, yada, yada.