November 9, 1967 –
The under-rated sci-fi film, Quatermass and the Pit (AKA Five Million Years to Earth,) directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Andrew Keir, James Donald, Barbara Shelley and Julian Glover, was released in the US, on this date.
Of the three Hammer Quatermass films produced, this is the only one their creator Nigel Kneale liked, largely due to his being happier with Andrew Keir’s performance as the title character than Brian Donlevy’s in The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. Kneale described Donlevy as “a former Hollywood heavy gone to seed” and claimed that he was drunk during much of the shooting of the latter film, a statement its director Val Guest repudiated.
