The second Quatermass adventure sees Brian Donlevy’s pushy Professor singlehandedly quash a totalitarian takeover of England in just 36 hours — an incredible interplanetary conspiracy! The most exciting chapter of the classic series is given a massive boxed set by the ‘new’ Hammer Films, a full five discs plus the entire original BBC serial and a deluge of worthwhile extras, video and text. The resulting product is a clever ambush for Sci-fi fans, pushing the $ limit for what true believers will buy.

Quatermass 2 — 4K
Limited Collector’s Edition
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Hammer Films
1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen, 1:66 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 85 min. / Enemy from Space / Street Date July 14, 2025 / Available from Hammer / 83.00
Starring: Brian Donlevy, John Longdon, Sidney James, Bryan Forbes, William Franklyn, Vera Day, Charles Lloyd Pack, Tom Chatto, John Van Eyssen, Percy Herbert, Michael Ripper, John Rae, Michael Balfour.
Cinematography: Gerald Gibbs
Production Designer: Bernard Robinson
Visual Effects: Les Bowie, Vic Margutti
Special effects: Frank George, Henry Harris, Bill Warrington, Brian Johnson
Film Editor: James Needs
Composer: James Bernard
Screenplay by Nigel Kneale, Val Guest from a teleplay by Nigel Kneale
Produced by Anthony Hinds
Directed by Val Guest

Hammer Films made its last classic-era film in the middle ’70s, but subsequent iterations of the company never went entirely away. The newest regime is at present giving hard media home video a spin, with extravagant disc releases. Hammer’s first two Quatermass films are the subjects of new big-box special limited editons. We’re delighted whenever classic Sci-fi and horror get the royal treatment; a few years ago, fancy 4K discs for pictures like  War of the Worlds,  Invaders from Mars and  Invasion of the Body Snatchers were a wonderful surprise. What would Brian Donlevy, let alone Val Guest and Bryan Forbes, think to learn that this movie would be the one to ‘go to the head of the line’ for home video presentation?

The IMDB routinely lists non-American films under their U.S. import titles. It’s interesting that all of the Quatermass films are listed in the IMDB under their original English titles, instead of the replacements for their American releases. That’s probably because the series really came to wider notice only in the home video era. The movie we knew as Enemy from Space fell into obscurity in the 1970s, when United Artists lost TV rights. Bill Warren told me that it disappeared so thoroughly that a U.S. print couldn’t be located for the 1975 FILMEX Sci-fi marathon. When home video re-introduced Hammer’s Quatermass films, they came to light again under their original titles.

The superlative Quatermass 2 finally reappeared in 1988 on a mediocre Image laserdisc. Its 2000 DVD release was transferred flat, still looking fairly grim. We applauded Scream Factory’s 2019 Blu-ray, the first to give the show a proper presentation. By now, a goodly number of U.S. Sci-fi fans list it among the great Sci-fi pictures. Phil Hardy’s 1984 Overlook Film Encyclopedia of Science Fiction called it the bleakest and the best of the Hammer trilogy, and wrote, “With  The Damned, this is the highpoint of the British Science Fiction film.”  Take a bow, Hammer.

With that in mind, this time we’ll be skipping the ‘tell me about the movie’ part of the review almost entirely.  CineSavant’s previous Quatermass 2 review enthuses over everything we find exciting about the movie (and we think it’s a good read as well). In this piece we’ll get straight to the pros and cons of Hammer’s new 4K release.

Yes, home video is not cheap. But it is more economical that it once was. When Laserdiscs were in vogue, we remember seeing dozens of fans lined up at Lazer Blazer and Dave’s the Laser Place to buy $100 boxed sets of things like Terminator 2. And that was with 1990 dollars that bought a lot more than they do now. At that time we were mostly renting, not collecting, and always on the lookout for vintage Sci-fi. Our first DVD Savant review at the ‘DVD Resource Page’ — a pretty tepid review — was for an Anchor Bay disc of  Quatermass and the Pit.

We feared a bloated money-grab release, with a so-so video transfer and some show-off extras. The low end of HD hucksterism came a while back when ‘special editions’ of things like Will Smith’s  I Am Legend came in a box big enough to carry a Thomas Guide map book. The ‘collectors’ extra’ was a piece of Lucite with a lenticular image from the movie. That Blu-ray was $60 back in 2008.

We’re very happy with the remaster of Quatermass 2.  The transfer source is a 35mm fine grain pre-print element from the British Film Institute. Scanned at 4K, it immediately betters the earlier presentations. Gerald Gibbs’ cinematography continues director Val Guest’s semi-documentary look, which tended to look dull in older NTSC and PAL transfers. The added contrast afforded here adds impact to every image. We also like seeing details more clearly, like the artwork for the ‘special project’ insignia and the ‘loose lips’ posters on the walls of the Winnerden community center centre.

An original United Artists logo helps launch the film properly. The previous encodings couldn’t handle the Day for Night opening prologue. This time ’round the colorists were able to smooth out the granularity, mainly by letting the images stay pretty dark. Because earlier transfers had issues, the extra polish on the transfer and encoding makes a difference. The Blu-ray copies look better too. This feels like seeing the film properly for the first time, without caveats or excuses.

The only composite audio for Q2 had to come from a print. But Hammer did locate an archived music and effects track, and used it to create an alternate 5.1 stereo track.

Hammer’s multi-disc packages gives us a lot to choose from. The foldout disc holder is clearly labeled, listing what’s on each disc and in what aspect ratio, on two 4K discs and three Blu-rays. Quatermass 2 and the U.S. version Enemy from Space are segregated on separate 4Ks and Blu-rays.  Q2 can be viewed in 1:66 or 1:37; EFS is present in 1:85. Except for the main titles, the feature content is identical in both versions. Both the 4Ks and the Blus carry audio and video extras; the UK and U.S. versions list different extras.

Did the box need that many aspect ratios?  We don’t mind, as Luddites that remember the show from 1960s broadcasts will be indulged. This must have been a killer matinee item in 1:85 widescreen back in the day. The disc extras say that in England, the common double bill marquee partner for Quatermass 2 was another ‘Certificate X’ attraction, the racy Brigitte Bardot picture  … And God Created Woman.  That reminds us that most American Sci-fi shows were rated ‘X’ in Britain, and set aside as ‘adults only’ entertainment. Over here, Enemy from Space would have been a kiddie matinee performer.  Someone please tell us what the film’s common second feature was in the states.

Hey, the title Enemy from Space is a great choice … it doesn’t lead with the promise of yet another monster. The original title graphic is terrific, too.  ↑  It certainly beats the literal translations of the foreign language versions covered in Hammer’s copious extras:

Terre contre Satellite (Earth versus Satellite) — French
La marque (The Mark) — French
I vampiri dello spazio (Vampires from Space) — Italian
Fiende aus dem Nichts (Enemies Out of Nowhere) — German
Vasallos del mal (Vassals of Evil) — Spanish

The fifth disc in Hammer’s set is actually a BBC product. It’s a Blu-ray of the 1955  Quatermass II  TV series, with show content that is standard definition. There’s a downside here for U.S. buyers, as this 5th disc is Region B only, and requires an all-region player. Some eager buyers are bound to be blindsided by this, and disappointed.

We’ve never described the TV serial at CineSavant. The original teleplay has more characters and is drawn out to a full three hours.  →  It’s a mix of live studio performance and pre-filmed sequences, an odd choice; the video encoding is presumably a Kinescope, filmed right off a TV tube. It must have been gripping in 1955 but the suspense tapers off in the middle chapters. The infection process is repeated several times before even Quatermass (John Robinson) catches on. Two main characters were eliminated by Val Guest, as was an entire finale in outer space — Bernard boards a rocket to destroy the alien craft.

We accept the BBC’s fairly primitive TV techniques and even more primitive special effects, but we love the eerie main title graphic, created with zero resources.  ←  The threatening drums of Mars from Holst’s The Planets pounds away under the episode recaps to very positive effect. The first thing we hear in episode 4 is a verbal announcement warning off children and ‘nervous’ viewers. Delivered in perfect BBC cadence, it now comes off as chilling too!

“That pipe disc set has been blocked with stuffed with human pulp! extras!”

The extras come together as a very long list split between the U.S. and UK discs. We sampled a few commentaries. Hammer’s group of new expert commentators know their subject and take it seriously. All seem qualified; the spokesperson with the strongest on-camera presence is actor-personality  Toby Hadoke.  One of the new docus has fun editing Hadoke ‘into’ a scene or two from Q2. The commentators are predominantly English but one commentary has excellent input from the amiable Stephen R. Bissette, and another has some good observations from the late Ted Newsom.

The many docus can be redundant at times, but the disc producer (?) organizes things well. Special featurettes and interview discussions cover Nigel Kneale, Brian Donlevy, the Donlevy casting issue (hey, he’s great), and the restoration. Val Guest did many interviews before he passed away in 2006, and the extras here might include every last word he said on this picture.

We particularly liked sampling the film’s audio in Italian and French. An interesting array of foreign language subtitles is present as well. No UK trailer for Q2 has surfaced. United Artists / MGM long ago surrendered its printing elements for the show but has had multiple trailer negatives and tracks all this time for the Enemy from Space release. The set shows everything MGM had, including a textless title sequence with a couple of raw takes from the film attached, with camera slates. Special effects man Henry Harris appears on the slate for one effects setup, in the ‘cameraman’ slot.  ←

An excellent, exhaustive photo and art gallery extra is present as well. One still shows what must be a maquette of the film’s colossal alien blobs from the finale … it looks like a pasta dish that didn’t come out well.

We will probably return to the commentaries soon, perhaps to hear more of what the new personalities have to say. But I’ve already read much of the fat insert book, The Quatermass Papers Volume Two. It’s the best starting point to learn about the world of Quatermass, through Bruce Hallenbeck’s opening essay. Committed fans will appreciate the detail offered in Andrew Pixley’s account of the filming of the TV serial, and Wayne Kinsey’s exacting comparison of the serial to the Val Guest film adaptation. Stephen Laws discusses Brian Donlevy’s Bernard Q. in relation to the other actors that played the character.

The topic of England’s ‘socialist era’ New Towns is examined by Jon Dear … we’ve long picked up on the film’s quiet condemnation of the reorganized postwar England. Most of the actors in Q2 have been gone for decades, but we get an interview with one of the bit players, conducted by Wayne Kinsey.

Also present are a double-sided poster (a quality printing), a full set of miniature lobby card reproductions (for Enemy from Space) and an entire graphic novel version of the story published in the 1980s. It will surely have its fans.

The bottom line is positive for this box set, a behemoth tailored to the specific desires of 10,000 rabid Sci-fi collectors. The rest of the world will dismiss us as insane, but when have we ever listened to them?

The only downside we found is that the BBC disc of the Quatermass II serial won’t play on a domestic Blu-ray player. Personally, I find Hammer’s opening logo montage to be annoying, due to repetition. It lasts a full 36 seconds and overpowers whatever follows it. It can’t be skipped when each disc is loaded. But all is not lost: the logo montages before the actual features can be scanned through at 2 or 3 times speed.

Despite what they’re told by home video people who know, some fans persist in thinking that the ‘new’ Hammer will work through the studio’s entire history of films, creating more fabulous special editions. The principal rights holders on many of the films are the corporations behind Columbia, Warners, 20th-Fox, etc.  Anything is possible, and if these discs sell big maybe Hammer can cut a few deals here and there. We wish them luck with Warner Bros., which mostly licenses only to Criterion. The entire 20th Fox library is presently being held back from most any new hard media exposure.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Quatermass 2
Limited Collector’s Edition
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
All six episodes of the BBC TV serial Quatermass II, from 1955.
60-page graphic novel version from The House of Hammer magazine, 1978
Documentaries and featurettes
Part 2 of the documentary The Legend of Nigel Kneale: Enemy from Space, with Toby Hadoke.
Making-of featurette Doubling Down: Uncovering Quatermass 2 with Jon Dear, Stephen Gallagher, Toby Hadoke, Wayne Kinsey, Andy Murray and Stephen Volk.
Featurette A Question of Character, with the same group of experts on the Brian Donlevy casting controversy.
Featurette Man of Action Stephen Laws and Derek Sculthorpe on actor Brian Donlevy.
Featurette Reviving Quatermass 2 on the 4K restoration / remaster.
Interview videos
— roundup Quatermass Crew sit-down with 3rd assistant director Hugh Harlow and special effects assistant Brian Johnson.
Val Guest in Quatermass and the Hammer Experience with Ted Newsom from the early 1990s.
Val Guest from original UK DVD release of Quatermass 2, 2003.
New Commentaries
— with Toby Hadoke, Stephen R. Bissette, and Nigel Kneale biographer Andy Murray
— with writer/academic Brontë Schiltz and Jon Dear.
Older commentaries
— with Val Guest, recorded for laserdisc in 1998.
— with Nigel Kneale and Marcus Hearn, recorded for laserdisc in 1998.
— an edit combining the two previous laserdisc commentaries, edited for DVD in 2003.
— with Ted Newsom, recorded for Blu-ray in 2019.
— with Constantine Nasr and Dr. Steve Haberman, recorded for Blu-Ray in 2019.
Other Video
Trailers for Enemy from Space, in multiple formats, and languages.
Title sequences in alternate languages, and textless
Super 8 cut-down version
The original BBFC censor card
Image gallery of stills and publicity material.
Illustrated 176-page booklet
with new articles by Bruce Hallenbeck, Andrew Pixley, Andy Murray, Stephen Laws, John Dear, Wayne Kindey; reprint article by Edith Nepean, and an interview with actor Barry Lowe.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: Two 4K Ultra HD + 2 all-region Blu-ray and 1 Region B Blu-ray with books, posters, and card in nested heavy duty boxes
Reviewed: July 25, 2025
(7362enem)

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