X... the Unknown
Screenplay:
Jimmy SangsterCinematography:
Gerald GibbsComposer:
James BernardCast:
Dean Jagger, Edward Chapman, Leo McKern, Anthony Newley, Peter Hammond, Ian MacNaughton, Kenneth Cope, Philip Levene, Edward Judd, Brown Derby, Shaw Taylor (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Mysterious events surround the sudden appearance of a gaping fissure in Scotland: soldiers on manoeuvres nearby develop a debilitating sickness and a small boy is later engulfed by an eerie presence. The child subsequently dies of first-degree radiation burns, similar to those that killed one of the soldiers. Mankind is at the mercy of a seemingly unstoppable organism that melts the flesh of those in its path. Atomic energy specialist Dr. Adam Royston (Dean Jagger) and his colleague McGill (Leo McKern) investigate the deadly phenomenon, which they trace to the depths of the fissure. As the death toll rises, Royston devises a daring plan to snare the creature in a lethal radioactive trap. X the Unknown was only the second of Hammers horror productions, but contained some of the most grisly and disturbing special effects seen in any of the companys films. (Icon Home Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (2)
Poster tagline: IT KILLS, BUT IT CAN’T BE KILLED!! IT COMES OUT OF THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH TO DISSOLVE EVERYTHING IN ITS PATH!! NEITHER RIFLE BULLETS NOR FLAMETHROWERS CAN STOP IT!! After the success of the Quatermass franchise, the legendary Hammer studio made a few monster-horror movies, and this is one of them. There are several TV versions, because the cinema version was quite violent for its time, as the censors back then judged. So most TV copies don't show those scenes of people's faces melting. Nowadays that wouldn't shock anyone, but in its time people weren't used to it and it had a similarly shocking effect as, for example, The Monster of Piedras Blancas from the same era, where a severed human head appears in a close-up. Unfortunately, a minor problem with this otherwise likeable horror film is that it’s not very visually appealing. It all revolves around a muddy military training ground, with a few shots of a hospital and a science facility thrown in, and the first deadly slime doesn't fully appear until ten minutes before the end. Hollywood would have peppered it with some fancy effects, bombastic front or rear projections, but there's nothing like that here (apart from the very few seconds of shots of slime rolling down the streets) and the centre of the film, the muddy, rocky training ground, is not pretty to look at and not a magnet for nice camera shots. It's a shame, because the actors are otherwise likeable, and it all builds up nicely at the end, but the overall impression is so ....how to say ....sketchy. The low budget is simply more evident here than it should be.
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A British science-fiction horror flick from the rank of Hammer’s series about Bernard Quatermass, but without Quatermass this time. Instead, we have a murderous radioactive cosmic substance that emits noises akin to a panicked dosimeter. Unfortunately, this film doesn’t really stand out and takes a long time before revealing the looks of the space slime (a kind of inconspicuous predecessor to the American flick The Blob). Still, this solid sci-fi flick is more than watchable.
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