The connection from Quatermass to Doctor Who is truly a journey both long and strange. I had a difficult time putting the pieces together since the 1953 TV series never aired on any of my local stations and the movies had their titles changed for distribution in the United States.

UK audiences were very familiar with the hero scientist who confronts strange and alien forces meaning to us harm. There's a common theme that ties Quatermass to Doctor Who, and as the yeas have gone by I've learned something interesting about the 1955 movie, The Quatermass Xperiment!, but in the United States it was titled, "The Creeping Unknown".

This Hammer Studios production stars the American actor Brian Donlevy as Prof. Bernard Quatermass, and British audiences were not amused by this casting. Brian Donlevy is a no nonsense tough guy with a temper, not the affable "Doctor Who-like" character from the TV series.

The story is interesting about a spaceship crash, killing two of the three astronauts onboard, but the third survivor is morphing into a cancerlike alien growth that will spread dangerously unless destroyed.

I'll try the embed here, just remember all my YouTube content is ad-free to me. I'm not sure what you guys will experience as you watch - this is the full movie!

I love the closeup of the woman half screaming, half laughing(?) in the lower right corner of the poster. LOL

Yeah, she really adds that nice touch that makes the movie poster better than average!

Now that I have a better understanding of where all this would eventually lead, I must say that the 1955 movie is a little too flat, and dry, for a better audience experience. Later versions in the Quatermass series got the mix of scary, creepy, excitement and humor just right. 

Sci-fi mystery movies need a touch of the right kind of humor to add real spice to the suspenseful scenes. 

By the 1960's there's no doubt that everyone understood sci-fi/horror/mystery/adventure formula - resulting in some old favorites like, "Quatermass and the Pit" from 1967.