Trailer
Plot summary
Radiation drills by the British Army at a base in rural Scotland end in an explosion that kills one soldier and badly burns another, leaving a Y-shaped crack in the ground that appears to have no bottom. Dr. Adam Royston, a researcher at the Atomic Energy Laboratory, is brought in to look into the deaths, and Mac McGill, who heads security for the UK Atomic Energy Commission, joins him. A boy from the village turns up dead with severe burns, and the trail takes Royston to a tower where an old man holds a leftover canister from earlier radiation tests. Something below the ground draws energy from radioactive sources, and each encounter with it leaves worse burns than the one before.
Cast
- Michael Brookeas Willie Harding
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about X the Unknown (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- X the Unknown was originally to be directed by Joseph Losey, the American blacklisted director working as Joseph Walton. He began pre-production, casting actors and building sets, but was replaced by Leslie Norman, reportedly for illness, though multiple sources say Dean Jagger refused to work with him over the blacklist.
- Hammer intended X the Unknown as a sequel to the previous year's hit The Quatermass Xperiment, but writer Nigel Kneale refused permission for the character Bernard Quatermass to be used, so it was retooled into a standalone film.
- Producer Sol Lesser of RKO Pictures supplied half of X the Unknown's budget, and that whole amount, $30,000, went to pay the salary of the film's star, Dean Jagger.
- Director Leslie Norman, borrowed from Ealing, said he hated working at Hammer because he never got on with producer Anthony Hinds, and cameraman Len Harris said none of the cast or crew liked working with Norman, who was harsh with everyone and always complaining.
- X the Unknown is credited with firmly establishing Hammer's shift from B-movie thrillers to horror and science fiction, and together with The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957) it completes a trilogy carrying allegories of Cold War anxiety.
