BERGCAST – Episode 11 – Quatermass and the Pit AKA Five Million Years to Earth (1967)

BERGCAST

It's a force more powerful than 1,000 H-bombs unleashed to devastate earth!
What is? Our excitement at, for the final episode of BERGCAST Season One, not only the both of us being in the same place, but getting to meet Hammer archivist and Doctor Who Magazine editor Marcus Hearn in the headquarters of the BFI no less.

Marcus enlightened us on why it took so long to make a third Quatermass (but why they kept trying), and who else could have played our pal Bernard.

We touch on the awkward relationship that Quatermass has with the sex/colour/blood aesthetic of Hammer Horror and Babs Windsor's bra.

We hear a tale of two Roy Bakers, and muse on whether the only things violated in this movie are trade descriptions.

And we talk about the power of this film, and how the juxtaposition of the prosaic and the uncanny lend it its curious power.
We're taking a break for a month or so now, as we get our Martians in a line for BERGCAST Season Two, where we'll be meeting a whole new set of guests, and going to the Quatermass Conclusion... and beyond.

Thanks to our lovely engineer Emma, Andrea Kinnear, Toby Hadoke and Sarah Reuben of the BFI, and also Kier-La Janisse of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, without any of whom, as the saying goes, this would not have happened.