Quatermass on the Potty

I now have Quatermass and the Pit.

Having just missed what I think what was the original TV version in the Save the Children charity shop, I found a 5 movies for 6 quid Hammer compilation with this classic movie on it, and snapped it up.

This is the 60s cinematic version, featuring Andrew Kier as Quatermass, and a young but not looking it Julian "The Shield Will be Down in Moments Lord Vader" Glover as the cliche sceptical military bloke.

T and A hunters will be sorely disappointed after seing this rather misleading poster

The plot, the same as the TV original, involves maintenance work at a London Underground station unearthing skeletons what turn out to be previously unknown species of hominid from several million years ago. Further rummaging by a gang of archaeologists reveal a long buried space capsule.

At about this time rocket scientist Bernard Quatermass turns up on the scene, and fails to stop the military taking over the investigation of what they end up believing to be a Nazi propaganda weapon.

All the while, increasingly powerful paranormal phenomenon are taking place in the vicinity of the eponymous "Pit", and Quatermass discovers that over the centuries, many terrifying phenomena have been seen in that part of London - Spring Heeled Jack type glowing apparitions. When the previously empty capsule suddenly reveals a sort of mini-hive of dead alien locusts...

The three legged martian locust is unearthed

...Quatermass somehow determines (with no evidence at all) that these creatures are Martians, who were involved in experimenting on primitive primates to alter early man.

Things now get rather bizarre, as he works out that the psychic happenings are caused by a sort of mental cinematic projection into people's brains. Rigging up a Heath-Robinson brain viewer to an early video recorder and monitor, and attaching it to his damsel-in-distress assistant's head and sticking her in the capsule, reveals the truth.

The Martians had been enganged in some sort of genocidal race war, and the extreme violence of these events has caused a great evil to be couped up in the Pit - and now it has been released!!!

It is these scenes of Martian warfare that stick in the memory. Utilising small Martian models in a sandpit, unintentionally amusing scenes of puppet carnage follow, as the creatures are stuck to pieces of card and pulled along through the sand, manhandled like a child playing with a star wars figure, wafted about on strings, and thrown into holes by unseen FX merchants.

It reminded me of something, but what? The old educational children's show "Watch" used the figures pulled along on cardboard strips to animate their tales of the nativity, but that wasn't it. And then it occurred to me what it was.

Michael Bentine's Potty Time!

This was anarchic children's TV show from the 1970s that I only just remember, a sort of puppet "Horrible Histories" of its day, involving the former Goon presiding over occasionally rather racially dubious portrayals of historical events.

Anarchic, and much filled with explosions and destruction, this will be only remembered now by those hitting 40. THere's not much to see on Youtube either. But Quatermass and the Pit reminded me instantly of it.

The 70s might have been a grim decade, but there was some great Television around.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 08.11.13