The Quatermass Xperiment (Hammer had changed the spelling to “Xperiment” to tie in with the expected X certificate) had originally been broadcast in six episodes on BBC television in 1953, the first of the three series concerning Professor Bernard Quatermass which were written for television between 1953 and 1960 by the extremely talented Manx writer, Nigel Kneale … The film retains moments of surprising power largely thanks to a tremendously impressive and pathetic performance from Richard Wordsworth in a Frankenstein-like role as the halfmonster. Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the film when one sees it again today is how decisively the opening sequence (which was completely altered from the TV version) seems to record the intrusion of Hammer into the cosy middle-class domesticity of the British cinema. Two utterly conventional cinematic lovers run across a meadow mouthing their lines with precisely the kind of simpering coyness that had dogged British films through the 1940s and 1950s … They giggle and embrace stiffly on a convenient haystack when suddenly the whole scene is interrupted by a terrible whining noise … the couple stagger to their feet and begin to run in complete disarray back across the field to take refuge in a hut. As they cringe in terror, a huge tubular rocket ship … plunges through the sky into the field exactly at the point where they have been lying. It would be difficult to conceive of a more symbolic or appropriate beginning for Hammer’s eruption into the British film scene in the late 1950s. The Quatermass Xperiment, being the first Hammer monster film, also proved to be an excellent demonstration of Phil Leakey’s brilliance with make-up … His work on Richard Wordsworth manage to convey the sense of a whole body in the process of decomposition in a way that was more subtle than gruesome and greatly enhances Wordsworth’s own tragic mime … The figure of Victor in The Quatermass Xperiment, limping miserably over a bomb-site … undoubtedly amounts to one of the most pathetic monster that Hammer has ever created.

David Pirie,A Heritage of Horror, The Gordon Fraser Gallery, London- Bedford 1974

Few things can strike the heart with fear quite like 1970s cuisine. Who better, then, than the Master of Menace, Vincent Price, to instruct us in the wonders of cheese soufflé, novelty party snacks and Manhattan Vichyssoise? The actor was also a celebrated gourmet, who had published several bestselling cookery books with his wife Mary by the time he came to film Cooking Price-Wise, a six-part series made for Thames Television. Filmed over a couple of days in 1970 while the actor was in the UK filming Robert Fuest’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Cooking Price-Wise is clearly a labour of love made by a man who loves to eat and then tell you all about it. But for all its retro-kitsch aesthetics, the show takes its directive – to open the minds of British housewives to “foreign food” – quite seriously … Cooking Price-Wise is both a cookery crash-course and a whistle-stop tour of the history of common ingredients like potatoes and cream.
Wearing his customary dandy’s neck-tie, Price is a natural host, with easy quips and helpful asides. There are remarkably few references to his horror career, until we arrive at the cheese episode. Price is going to create a monster, something he is familiar with: “That is, if I’m not playing the monster myself”. The result is the cucumber crocodile, a dish I hope to see blowing up on Instagram, and which I can only describe as the party goth’s answer to the cheese and pineapple hedgehog. Party snacks aside, the closest we get in this show to heart-stopping fear is the epic quantities of cream and butter Price uses.

Sophia Satchell Baeza, “Sight and Sound”, vol. 35, n. 1, Winter 2024.