Five Million Years to Earth (1967) on Netflix
Approved19671h 37mHorrorMysterySci-Fi
Workers extending the London Underground at Hobbs End uncover a five-million-year-old skull and a metal object beside it. Professor Bernard Quatermass and Dr. Matthew Roney take on the find.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.0/1012,757 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
A five-million-year-old skull comes out of the ground at Hobbs End, where contractors are extending the London Underground, and paleontologist Dr. Matthew Roney dates the find. A metal object beside it is taken for an unexploded bomb from the Blitz, so an army bomb disposal team is called in. Professor Bernard Quatermass, whose rocket group is being folded into military plans for missile bases in space, arrives with Colonel Breen. A second skull inside a chamber of the object is equally ancient, and the object resists heat, which leads Quatermass to suspect an alien craft. Barbara Judd, Roney's assistant, notes that Hob was an old name for the Devil, and a policeman speaks of a haunted house opposite the station. Accounts of hauntings at Hobbs End reach back centuries, at moments when the ground was disturbed.
Cast
- Maurice Goodas Sergeant Cleghorn
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Five Million Years to Earth (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Star Andrew Keir found the shoot an unhappy experience, recalling that director Roy Ward Baker had not wanted him and had wanted Kenneth More instead: "Normally I enjoy going to work every day. But for seven-and-a-half weeks it was sheer hell."
- Roy Ward Baker denied he had wanted Kenneth More, who he felt would be "too nice" for the role, and said he had no idea Keir was unhappy while they were shooting, insisting the performance was "absolutely right in every detail".
- Nigel Kneale had long been critical of Brian Donlevy's interpretation of Quatermass and lobbied for the role to be recast; André Morell, who had played Quatermass in the television version, was among those considered but was not interested in revisiting a role he had already played.
- Tobe Hooper's 1985 Lifeforce has been called largely a remake of this film: Hooper said Cannon Films gave him $25 million, free rein and Colin Wilson's book The Space Vampires, and that he thought he would "go back to my roots and make a 70 mm Hammer film".
- This was the first film on which the director was credited as "Roy Ward Baker" rather than "Roy Baker", a change made to avoid confusion with another Roy Baker who was a sound editor; he later regretted it, as many people assumed he was a new director.
- Roy Ward Baker was particularly taken with his leading lady, telling Bizarre Magazine in 1974 that he was "mad about her in the sense of love" and that the two used to waltz about the set together in "a great love affair".
- The Martian massacre scene was achieved with a mixture of puppets and live locusts, while London's destruction, including the climactic crane swinging into the Martian apparition, was done with model sequences.
- Tristram Cary, who had picked up electronics working on radar in the Royal Navy during the war, was not mad about scoring the film because Hammer wanted masses of electronic and orchestral music, but he had three kids at fee-paying schools and needed every penny.
