QUATERMASS 2 (vhs) B&W, Hammer Films, alien and similar items

Bought new and only watched a couple of times, plays great of course. Slightly letterboxed at 1.37:1 which qualifies as full screen and is the way they originally shot it back then in glorious Black White. Comes in it's original hard plastic clamshell with liner notes on the inside sleeve artwork if you pull it out. All of the Quatermass films are stand-alone plots so you don't have to see previous entries. The film opens with Donlevy (professor Quatermass), angry that funds for his Moon rocket project have been cut off, meeting a couple who gabble about strange goings-on at Wynnerton Flats. When he later learns of a strange meteorite shower landing in that vicinity he investigates, only to discover that the surrounding area is cordonned off and at its center are a collection of pressure domes which look remarkably like his moonbase life-support system. It soon transpires that the (artificial) meteorites contain tiny living organisms that have the ability to take over humans and that the life-support system is being prepared for the waiting aliens by the zombies they have taken over to provide them with a habitable enviroment, Earth's atmosphere being unsuitable for them. The manner of Donlevy's unravelling of the conspiracy (which ranges to the upper reaches of government and includes the Commisioner of Scotland Yard) is marvellously handled by director Val Guest and cinematographer Gerald Gibbs, as are some of the details, such as Donlevy encouraging the local villagers, done out of work by the zombies, to pump air into the domes to kill the aliens and the authorities responding by blocking the pipes with the bodies of those workers they've bought off. One of the high points of British Science Fiction films. The next one in the series, 'Quatermass and the Pit' was not filmed by Hammer until 10 years later.