Everyone
knows about the Hammer horror movies, but most casual fans don’t realize that
they did some cool early science fiction movies as well. X the Unknown is one
of those movies. Prepare yourself to meet another abomination from the atomic
age as the British do battle with X the Unknown!
The action
starts with some soldiers practicing with their Geiger counter. Someone buries
the “bait” and they have to find it. But suddenly the device goes wild and
there is an explosion. No one is killed by it, at least not right away. A
scientist, Dr. Royston, is called in to figure out why the men are suffering
from radiation burns when there isn’t any radiation. To further complicate
things radioactive materials are suddenly becoming inert and more bodies are
showing up. Eventually a creature from deep beneath the Earth’s surface is
discovered. It feeds on the energy of the atomic materials and is impervious to
everything they can throw at it. Thankfully they have some heroic science types
that can figure it out!
Be warned spoilers to follow. The British were doing some great
Science Fiction movies in the ‘50s, including Hammer Studios. This is an
intelligently written flick that does its best to stay realistic. I mean they
are fighting a radioactive mud monster so that isn’t easy! The cast does a
great job with the material and the writing is top notch. It shouldn’t be a
surprise that the screenwriter, Jimmy Sangster, worked on some of their classic
horror films and wrote an episode of Kolchak the Nightstalker! You can also
count on the British to push the envelope beyond where an American production
would take it. They kill a kid! They put him in danger and he dies. That would
never happen in an American made production from the ‘50s.
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| The Mud Monster! |
It isn’t
just the kid that caught my attention. In addition to the radiation the
creature gives off intense heat that melts anyone that gets too close to it. We
get to see this happen on screen more than once. The flesh melts off of
someone’s face. Put this in the context of a movie that was made in the mid
‘50s and realize that is hard core gore. Remember it was seven years later
before H.G. Lewis got up to his fun at the drive-in. I also thought that the
creature looks good. It has a definite Blob vibe to it as it oozes along the
ground. Of course, the Blob was made two years later so who knows if those
filmmakers saw this one. The creature is kept off screen till the last fifteen
or twenty minutes of the movie and when it appears it doesn’t look bad.
If you
haven’t caught onto the theme of this review yet I’ll lay it out for you. X the
Unknown, and British horror/sci-fi was ahead of the curve in many ways. They
were doing things even before the well-known Hammer relaunches of the classic
Dracula and Frankenstein stories that were beyond what was happening here in
the States. It boggles my mind that these movies aren’t better known. Even
among hardcore fans they have slipped into obscurity. Do yourself a favor and
track down a copy of X the Unknown.
© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer
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