I have a strange fascination with the Devil. So, when it was, uh, revealed that "Quatermass and the Pit" was based around the very origins of the devil, I became quite excited. However, I have absolutely no idea what in the hell that movie was actually about. It would be a lie to say that I walked away from it with anything at all. First of all, it doesn't really fit the rest of the semester very well. Every other film has dealt, in some form or another, with artificial life. I guess (and this would be one hell of a stretch) that one could say that humans are the AL in this movie, but come on.
The idea that human life originates from Mars is actually a rather common theory, but the very bizarre path that this film took with it left me disappointed. Honestly, bug armies and random spaceships? That was bad enough, but then you introduce the whole "devil bug is back for vengeance" storyline and everything falls apart. I was pretty excited in the beginning of the film when there were just small hints of ghosts and "simian" life creatures in the shadows. I started to think that the film was going to center around creepy dealing like this one, yet instead it took a completely random path towards absurdity.
A part of me just wants to write the film off as a sign of the overall poor quality of the 70's sci-fi flick, but those notions were completely destroyed earlier this semester with Colossus. That film was still corny and stuck in its popculture moment, but it was also smart. It never talked down to its audience. Quatermass began strong and then degraded into illogical and boring "horror." Why anyone would be terrified by a giant devil bug is beyond me.
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