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Peter Elliott: What happened, sir? I don't understand.
Dr. Adam Royston: Peter, I'm afraid I don't either. Yesterday the material in that container was giving a danger-point radiation reading. Now, as you just saw, it's nothing.
Peter Elliott: But that's impossible! Isn't it?
Dr. Adam Royston: Yesterday I would have said yes, but this fact is inescapable: The energy trapped in that trinium has been sucked right out of it. And furthermore, that window was barred and these doors were locked all night. So whoever it was came in here must be most ... unusual.
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Dr. Adam Royston: Now, Mac, how would you go about killing that?
Inspector McGill: What is it?
Dr. Adam Royston: It's a particle of mud. But by virtue of its atomic structure it emits radiation. That's all it is. Just mud. How do you kill mud?
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Peter Elliott: How do you explain it, sir? All this extraordinary damage just to steal an old sample container?
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Major Cartwright: You know this Royston chap. Brilliant, of course, I'm sure. But the trouble with these scientific types is they can't see the easy way out of anything. It's got to be complicated if it's going to work.
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Amazon.com
Hammer Studios' attempt to replicate the success of the superior Quatermass films gives us a kinder, gentler hero, the polite and soft-spoken Dr. Royston (played with almost paternal kindness by American Dean Jagger). When the populace of the area surrounding a bottomless fissure in an abandoned quarry is devastated by a rash of lethal radiation burns, Royston tries to convince authorities of the possibility of a life from deep within Earth that has surfaced to feed to a rather skeptical reception. Sure enough, the sludge from 20,000 fathoms is spotted pouring down the road like a self-contained lava flow, headed for the military's own nuclear reactor. Director Leslie Norman can't quite match that taut, wound up quality of his inspirations, The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2, but he creates an inky-black atmosphere with moody night shooting and heaps on the horror with blistery, blotchy burns that culminate in the gooey remains of a man whose flesh is found melting off his skeleton--one of the most startling moments of any Hammer picture. A young Leo McKern can be spotted as a reporter and Anthony Newley is a whining soldier. --Sean Axmaker
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