Quatermass 2

Quatermass 2 (1957) is a British sci-fi horror you can watch online on iFILM. A Hammer production directed by Val Guest, with Brian Donlevy as the scientist, it follows Professor Quatermass to a bleak stretch of England where strange "meteorites" keep falling.

Out in the wasteland he stumbles on a vast, guarded complex — built to the exact blueprints of his own planned Moon colony. When a colleague is wounded by the substance leaking from a cracked meteorite, armed men appear and haul the injured man away without a word of explanation. Quatermass keeps digging and uncovers an extraterrestrial life form that has already begun quietly taking over the people in charge.

This is the second chapter of Hammer's Quatermass trilogy, grown out of Nigel Kneale's television serial. Underneath the sci-fi runs a chilly parable about 1950s paranoia, secret installations and bodies that aren't quite their owners anymore. Spare, black-and-white and genuinely unsettling for its day — essential viewing if you care about where the modern invasion film came from. Stream Quatermass 2 online on iFILM.