EDITOR’S NOTE: The Quartermass Experiment was on Chiller Theater as The Creeping Terror on Saturday, June 29, 1977 at 11: 30 p.m., Saturday, July 28, 1979 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, February 16, 1980 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, June 20, 1981 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, March 13, 1982 at 1:00 a.m.

This film is based upon The Quatermass Experiment, a British science fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television during the summer of 1953 that was written by Nigel Kneale. Hammer Films producer Anthony Hinds, who had a history of making movie versions of radio shows. Kneale, a BBC employee, was paid nothing for his work making the company so much more cash.

Directed by Val Guest, this starts with the crash landing of a British-American Rocket Group spaceship that was designed by Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy). Of the three astronauts, only Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) survives, while the space suits of Reichenheim and Green are empty.

Caroon begins to mutate as its discovered that not even his fingerprints are human by Scotland Yard Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner). His wife Judith (Margia Dean) hires a private detective named Christie (Harold Lang) to break him out of the hospital, but now the man she loves starts to absorb organic material and kills the man sent to get him. By the end of this movie, he’s grown into a gigantic mass of animals and plants, filling Westminster Abbey, which is filled with electricity and used to destroy the alien before it can infect the Earth.

The start of not just Hammer horror, body horror and the Quatermass series of films all start here. It’s got a monster covered in cow guts and tripe that probably smelled like absolute death, as well as a young Jane Asher as the little girl menaced by the alien.

This played with The Black Sleep as a double feature. In Chicago, the parents of Stewart Cohen sued United Artists and the theater playing this movie after their nine-year-old son died of a ruptured artery, dying of fright. Not to make light of that, but William Castle had to be happy it wasn’t one of his movies, as he’d have to pay off the family with one of his life insurance policies.

You can watch this on YouTube.