Quatermass 2

"Quatermass 2" (English "Quatermass 2") or "Enemy From Space" (English "Enemy From Space") is a film released in 1957. The film is based on the television series of the same name ("Quatermass II"), shown on the BBC in 1955.

The film is the second full-length film about the adventures of Professor Quatermass and is part of a series of classic horror films made by the British studio Hammer.

The film is included by Stephen King in the list of the most significant works of the genre from 1950 to 1980.

Employees of the British radar station discover on their monitors strange objects slowly falling to Earth from space. The streams of these objects are observed several nights in a row, so they decide to report this to their boss, Professor Quatermass. Calculations show that the crash site of the objects is located about 150 km from the station in Winterden Flats.

Quartermass with his assistant Marsh goes there and discovers a protected area where a strange factory is located. They find one of the fallen objects nearby. When Marsh picks it up to examine it, clouds of steam escape from the object and leave an unusual burn in the shape of the letter V on the person's face. Meanwhile, Quartermass and his companion are surrounded by factory security, who takes Marsh with them, and rudely escorts the professor out of the zone. Quartermass decides to find out what is going on here, and turns to an old acquaintance, Inspector Lomax, for help.

Lomax connects him with Vincent Brodhead, a member of parliament who tried to uncover the veil of secrecy surrounding the Winterden Flats, including the organization and delivery of a huge amount of material resources and labor without any real explanation of what it was for. Quartermass joins Brodhead in an official inspection of the complex, which they were told was built to produce artificial foods. Having escaped from the guests, Broadhead tries to get inside one of the large domes towering over the factory. Quartermass later finds him dying, covered in poisonous black slime.

Quatermass tells Inspector Lomax that, in his opinion, the complex does produce food, but not for human consumption. Its purpose is to provide a suitable habitat for small alien creatures living inside huge domes. Lomax tries to warn his superiors, but when he meets the police commissioner, he notices that he also has a V-shaped tag – apparently aliens have taken control of the government.

Quartermass and Lomax then approach journalist Jimmy Hall, who is skeptical of their story but agrees to visit the Winterden Flats. At the local club, they are met with a hostile reception from visitors, most of whom work on the construction of the plant. However, the mood of the crowd changes when one of the objects falling from space crashes into the roof of the building and injures the barmaid Sheila. Armed guards arrive and shoot at Hall, who is trying to call the press. The villagers gather in an angry crowd that is heading towards the factory complex.

Quatermass, Lomax and the villagers barricade themselves in the pressure control room. Realizing that Earth's atmosphere must be poisonous to aliens, Quatermass damages their life support system and pumps oxygen into large domes. At the same time, Quartermass's assistant, Brand, sacrifices his life by launching a Quartermass rocket into an asteroid, which, according to the professor's assumptions, is the starting point of the invasion. Microscopic alien creatures combine into huge 150-foot creatures that soon burst out of the domes.

The rocket destroys the asteroid with a nuclear explosion. The alien base is disappearing, and they themselves are now completely open to the Earth's atmosphere. Giant masses of united alien beings are collapsing and dying. V-shaped marks disappear from people, leaving them even no memories that they were under the control of aliens.

Alien organisms move through space in the form of a swarm of small capsules combined into a massive object like a meteorite. Approaching the Ground, they are placed on the shadow side and begin to separate from the object and fall to the surface in large groups. Each capsule has an aerodynamic shape that allows you to set the desired trajectory of the fall and save the life of microorganisms inside.

Alien microorganisms arrive on Earth in small capsules. They are an oily liquid of black color and are able to assemble into a single shapeless organism that can reach gigantic sizes. They breathe ammonia and its compounds, oxygen is a poison for them.

To survive on Earth, aliens need a carrier. Once on the skin of an earthly being (human), they quickly penetrate into his body and settle in it, seizing control of the nervous system. A scar in the form of the letter V remains on the skin of the wearer.

Alien beings are intelligent and capable of organized joint actions. With the help of captured people, they are building a whole factory designed to adapt them to the Earth's atmosphere.

The aliens die in the Earth's atmosphere after a nuclear explosion destroys their mothership. Infected people then regain their own will, and traces of the penetration of microorganisms on their skin disappear.