Text and images provided by Jeremy Lunt ragheb@mailexcite.com

Quatermass and the Pit opens on a foggy day on Hobb's Lane, in a run-down district of London. A construction crew is building a new subway tunnel when suddenly the workers uncover human-like skeletons in the soft underground clay. Upon this discovery, a team of anthropologists led by Dr. Matthew Roney  and his assistant Barbara Judd  is called in to investigate. Dr. Roney examines the bones and believes that they will prove a personal theory of his, that man-like creatures were roaming the earth as long ago as five-million years. However, upon further excavation, one of Roney's workers uncovers a strange cylinder - what appears to be an unexploded bomb! Immediately, an army bomb squad is called in to investigate the device.

Meanwhile on the other side of London, Professor Bernard Quatermass  is discussing his rocket project, and a new member that is being assigned to it, an army officer named Colonel Breen. Quatermass is upset because he, a pacifist who believes in peaceful scientific research, is going to have to work with the Colonel, who is going to help convert the Professor's rockets to military use, and who gleefully describes setting up ballistic missile bases on the moon and Mars within ten years. During this conversation, Colonel Breen is delivered a message. Apparently he's wanted to provide a second opinion on the Hobbs' Lane bomb.

Breen and Quatermass arrive at the Hobb's Lane site just as the army and Dr. Roney uncover another primitive skull - preserved, despite being inside a crevice in the bomb! Quatermass, taking a look at the area, learns from a policemen that the area has been abandoned for years - supposedly because it is haunted. They comment that Hobb is a nickname for the devil. Quatermass goes to Roney's laboratory where the doctor describes his theories. On the way out, Barbara shows the Professor clippings from newspapers about the hauntings on Hobb's Lane.

Quatermass goes back to the site where a blowtorch has failed to cut into the now totally uncovered device. A soldier and him investigate a crevice inside the device and they discover a pentacoth on the surface - a symbol of ancient witchcraft. Quatermass tells the soldier not to breath a word of the pentacoth to Colonel Breen. However, as Quatermass continues to inspect the area, there's a scream from the device. Another soldier is found in the crevice screaming about seeing strange things, like hideous goblins. Colonel Breen dismisses the man as claustrophobic and panicky, and someone that should never have been put in demolitions. Quatermass however, suspects there's more. He and Barbara go to the local library to do research on Hobb's Lane, and discover that throughout history there have been strange activities and sightings reported whenever excavation work was being done around the Lane. These hauntings go all the way back to the Roman era.

The Professor arrives back at the site just as a special drill arrives for cutting into the object. The drill operator attempts to cut through the object in the crevice with the pentacoth, but instead a tremendous amount of energy is released and the craft shakes wildly. Everyone piles out of the crevice to decide what to do next when suddenly someone notices a small hole near the pentacoth has suddenly appeared. The drill operator states that it couldn't have been made by his drill - the bit is too small, and besides that, the hole appears to have been melted. Suddenly, the wall of the crevice cracks and disintegrates, revealing an internal crystal-like structure, inside of which a half-dozen dead insect-like creatures are found.

Dr. Roney and Professor Quatermass take the bodies back to Roney's lab where his staff dissects them. Quatermass puts forth a theory that these are extraterrestrial creatures from some other long dead world - Mars. Perhaps he states, the Martians knew they were dying and tried to colonize earth, but found they couldn't stand the atmospheric pressures. So then they engineering the Earth's neolithic men into thinking beings with suppressed memories of Martian culture. An indirect method of colonization to be sure, but better than leaving nothing behind. Convinced of this theory, the two men release this theory to the press, causing a media uproar.

Furious at the story, Quatermass' supervisor calls him to his office where Colonel Breen offers his own theory as the strange beings. When the Germans started to lose the war, they got desparate and tried new propaganda methods, creating the insect creatures out of old bits of skin and bones to create the very uproar that is now occurring. Breen, convinced that the object is not a bomb, sends the soldiers back to their barracks and decides to open up the site to the public the next day.

As the army pulls out, the drill operator heads back into the site to collect his stuff. Barbara also enters to collect some of Roney's scientific equipment. As the drill operator gathers his equipment, there's a sudden rumbling and objects begin flying all over the place. Dazed and confused, the operator wanders out of the underground and stumbles into a church yard where a priest finds him and calls in Quatermass and Barbara. The Professor questions the man, who the priest believes to have come into contact with spiritual evil. The man describes to Quatermass what he saw - hundreds of creatures like those in the pit, hopping about, coming after him. After hearing this account, Quatermass theorizes that what the man saw was a vision of life on Mars five million years ago.

Deciding to try and recreate these visions, Quatermass calls for special video equipment from his laboratory. Roney hooks him up into a special cap that records brain waves and sends him down into the tunnel. The ground starts to shake once again, but Quatermass realizes that the power isn't going through him. Barbara starts to act strangely and Quatermass realizes that it's her who's having the vision. They put cap on her and the Professor's equipment starts to record images. Suddenly, the shaking stops.

The two scientists show Colonel Breen and his superiors the film they recorded of Barbara's vision, in which they see a racial purge of the Martian hives, of hundreds of the little grasshopper creatures killing and being killed. Quatermass speculates that what they saw was the Martian race cleansing racial imperfections and mutations. And they intended for us to be programmed to do the same. Breen's superiors however, dismiss it as just another hallucination and announce that the pit will be opened to the public that night.

Down in the tunnel, reporters and TV cameras have taken position as Colonel Breen announces that the West German government is planning to make a search of wartime records to identify the object. Quatermass enters the tunnel and confronts Breen just as a man setting up a camera inside the craft screams and dies, apparently of electrocution. Barbara walks up to the craft and announces that it's coming alive. Quatermass tells everybody to leave the pit, but Breen and his superiors insist that the news conference go on. Suddenly, there's a burst of energy and everybody runs screaming out of the pit. Everyone except Colonel Breen. Quatermass staggers out of the pit just in time to see the ship start glowing.

The ground begins to shake once again and the streets around the pit erupt into chaos. Quatermass and Roney meet in the street, with the Professor in a daze. Quatermass states that the ship got a huge intake of energy and seems to be coming alive. He also says the Breen was the only person left in the pit. We flash underground where Colonel Breen has been burned to a crisp. As the ground starts to shake again Quatermass starts to go into a trance, but Roney shakes him out of it. Quatermass states that just then he'd wanted to kill Roney because he was different, and had to be destroyed. Suddenly there are screams from the street as people gang up against one another. Quatermass realizes that instinct to destroy all those who didn't belong came from the Martians.

As the block around Hobb's Lane crumbles an energy apparition of a Martian creature appears. A horned devil. Roney realizes that the devil's ancient enemy was iron. Roney climbs up upon an iron crane and sends it into the apparition, discharging the energy into the earth, stopping the Martian influence but killing Roney in the process. Quatermass and Barbara sit down to rest.

Starring James Donald, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, Julian Glover, Duncan Lamont, Bryan Marshall, Peter Copley, Edwin Richfield, Maurice Good, Grant Taylor, Robert Morris, Sheila Steafel, Hugh Futcher, Hugh Morton, Thomas Heathcote, Noel Howlett, Hugh Manning, June Ellis, Keith Marsh, James Culliford, Bee Duffell, Roger Avon, Brian Peck, John Graham and Charles Lamb.

A Hammer Films Production. A 20th Century-Fox Release.