Horrorfest 2020: Hammerfest - X the Unknown

The sky's gray, the rain has come, the leaves are falling... guess that means it's time for Horrorfest! Usually I try to watch and comment on 31 horror movies in 31 days during the month of October. Sometimes I have a theme -- this year is a theme year. The last couple years I tried to round out my knowledge of Universal horror by watching all the Universal horror, suspense or monster movies I'd either never seen, had only seen parts of or maybe had seen but forgotten about. 

The next logical step is to check out the horror, suspense and monster output from Hammer Film Productions, a London-based film production company that brought gothic horror back into vogue, mostly in the 60s and 70s, though technically starting in the 50s. I've seen (and loved) several of their most famous movies, and even reviewed some of them here, but I decided I'd give them the same treatment I gave Universal and watch 31 Hammer horror films this month that I've either never seen before, only seen parts of, or maybe saw and forgot about.

Hammer is probably mostly known for their Dracula and Frankenstein movies, differentiating them from their popular Universal predecessors by using blazing full color and amping up the sex and violence factors. I remember reading about these as a kid, thinking they must have been insanely excessive, full of nudity and gore. While it is true they're way more up front with skin and blood than Universal ever was, they're tame by today's standards.

I'll be skipping some of the more famous Hammer movies because I've either already reviewed them in a previous Horrorfest, or at least already seen them. Let's start with...

X THE UNKNOWN (1956)

Starring Dean Jagger and Edward Chapman

Written by Jimmy Sangster and directed by Leslie Norman and Joseph Losey

I'm going mostly in chronological order here, so my first few entries are from an era before Hammer struck gold with their series of gothic, color monster movies. X THE UNKNOWN is no less striking for having been shot in black and white, however, and is primarily a sci-fi story, though it does feature a monster.

The monster in question is a radiation-created blob. Unlike its more-famous 1958 successor, THE BLOB, which came from outer space, this amorphous blob creeps up from under the ground to spread its reign of terror. The military tries to stop it, which seems impossible, and enlists an atomic scientist (Jagger) to help.

Like most Hammer productions, the run time is brisk, though the pacing is off a little, with what should be an edge-of-the-seat thriller coming off as a little too dry in parts. Of course the military doesn't make the most interesting protagonist, and the doctor, who should be the character we can latch onto, being almost equally dry and almost laconic. Sure, everyone's worried things might not out all right, but the whole thing lacks an immediacy you'd expect from a radioactive monster movie.

All that said, it's still an efficient little thriller that gets the job done with a little more class than your average 50s-era atomic monster movie, though it doesn't rise to the heights of the greats of the genre, whether a silly crowd pleaser like TARANTULA or an ominous dirge like GODZILLA.