TS: 'Cannibal Holocaust' vs. 'Quatermass & the Pit'

('Last Movie' vs. 'Aguirre')

'Cannibal Holocaust' - like one of those great lost albs you search for for years but when you finally find it for a quid in a car boot sale you realise isn't quite as great as you always dreamt it wld be. The fact that most ppl (in the UK, at least) have only ever seen the uncut version in grainy nth gen bootleg version only adds to the 'mystery'. Self-reflexive exploitation - see also THAT SCENE in the far superior 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer'.

A friend told me that the BBFC have just refused to give a cert to an uncut print of 'Last House on the Left' - despite the fact that it was briefly available uncut on vid here during the glory years of the 'video nasty', not to mention that the NFT screened a slightly trimmed version called 'Krug and Company' in the mid-90s. I'm not sure why this is still such a taboo pic.

The first Quatermass movie is the best - great performance from the guy playing the infected astronaut - although Donleavy is terrible in the lead. I's also like to see the early 80s TV version w/ John Mills again - I remember it being v. unfocussed and new age weird - lotsa Stonehenge etc. - but it might look better now...

Cannibal Holocaust, though I usually don't like message movies.

Never seen "Cannibal Holocaust" (and somehow doubt I'll ever get around to it) but "Quatermass" is pretty impressive for a low-budget thriller.

I notice in CH's scorched-earth class satire gender trumps absolutely fucking everything, is this progressive or regressive? (I love the film anyway, just want to see what political film-studies types think)

wasn't Quatermass II the first sequel to have a '2' in the title? and Quatermass and the Pit is excellent, and a good sci-fi plot if i remember.

mixed feelings abt the TV version of QatP: i'm glad i saw it at last obv, and nice that a v.ancient but lucid and charming Nigel Kneale (writer) and Clifford Hatts (production designer) got to say a little b4 the show, on successive nights

for TV in 1959 this may well have been radically terrifying (my sister is quizzing my dad abt this as you read): erm, it's not really, any more, and while the movie fluffs many things it actually got other things better (like the climax, which i think i wd have found incomprehensible if i hadn't seen the movie)

more later

haha the vicar went on to be the headmaster in PLEASE SIR!

a. i liked the bounder and the floozy in the pub (which looked as if it wz decorated w. mud from the pit itself, "dirty protest wallpaper", as sistrah becky calls it)
b. i liked how the v.cynical and pushy name journalist was TOTALLY unaffected by the alien brainwaves (ditto the canadian paleantologist, who is secretly the hero, and also aforementioned vicar, apparently)
c. quatermass himself — "bernard" — has always made me laugh, in the filmsd and now he, as whoever he's played by, his abiding quality is USELESSNESS (he can predict doom w/o ever averting it) (but i liked how he kind of beat himself up about this later on: "i came across like a madman, talking about martians and biological engineering" (haha col.breen: "captain potter, there's been enough drivelling idiocy talked today — leave that to the civilians!!" )
d. the catastrophic breakdown of society at the end apparently used stock footage of london ablaze during the blitz
e. i forget if Q2 did this too, but Xperiment and QatP both arrive at climax with a BBC cameracrew (off camera) filming a BBC cameracrew (on camera) making a live news broadcast which escalates into calamity
f. the large lady reading the tea-leaves: good how the camera zoomed in on her face as she read the senile old man's fortune — it clearly said something like "YOU WILL BE CONSUMED TOMORROW IN A CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST WHICH WILL WIPE OUT HALF THE CAPITAL" (does anyone on ilx read tea-leaves?)
g: the general dialectic between scepticism and susceptibility was nicely handled

oh oh the girl paleantologist had that weird deep fluty posh voice which seems to have passed away entirely

ha ha, we are all martians and doomed to violence and the destruction of our own home world ONCE AGAIN

Quatermass & The Pit is pretty scarey. never seen Cannibal Holocaust, but with a title like that it must be good.

also good: bbc cameras = REALLY REALLY BULKY and UNPORTABLE, but v.cynical and pushy name journalist has a miniature camera the size of a matchbox

i forgot this also: the little mobile tea-caravan which the drillman runs past — where the saucers all fly and chase him — had a sign saying HOT PIES, but it wz hand-written and looked like NOT PIES (which is a grebt sign obv)

i asked my dad abt it but he said it actually wasn't that scary at the time, though it was very orignal