Hammer’s QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (aka 5 MILLION YEARS TO EARTH) is a big screen adaptation of the BBC series of the same name. It is well-acted by Andrew Kier, James Donald, Barbara Shelley, Bryan Marshall, Julian Glover and Duncan Lamont, it is also genuinely creepy and full of great ideas.

I like how writer Nigel Kneale managed to merge the story of a delayed alien invasion with concepts involving the evolution of man, possession, ghost sightings, the horned imagery of the devil, telekinesis, and so on.

There are lots of great touches: the renaming of the street Hobb’s Lane, the policeman getting spooked in the abandoned house, the ‘living’ spacecraft, Duncan Lamont’s ‘possession’, the finale featuring people psychically killing anyone who is ‘different’ to them and the horned spectre of a martian rearing over London.

The film also has one of my favourite end credits sequences, where the exhausted protagonists just stand/sit, not talking, as the credits roll past.

One of Hammer’s best movies, I think. I love it!

Here are some of the posters that have been created for the film…

Some lobby cards…

Some DVD & Blu-ray covers…

Here’s a book cover…

And finally, here’s a shot from John Carpenter’s IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1994): John Trent (Sam Neill) looks at a poster for a fictional horror book called ‘The Hobb’s End Horror’, which is a nod to the name of the subway station in QUATERMASS AND THE PIT.