The Quatermass Xperiment (a.k.a. The Creeping Unknown in the United States) is a 1955 British science fiction horror film from Hammer Film Productions, based on the 1953 BBC Television serial The Quatermass Experiment written by Nigel Kneale. The film was produced by Anthony Hinds, directed by Val Guest, and stars Brian Donlevy as the eponymous Professor Bernard Quatermass and Richard Wordsworth as the tormented Carroon. Jack Warner, David King-Wood, and Margia Dean appear in co-starring roles. The film concerns three astronauts who have been launched into space aboard a single-stage-to-orbit rocket designed by Professor Quatermass. It crashlands with only one of its original crew, Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), still aboard. He begins mutating into an alien organism, which, if it spawns, will engulf the Earth and destroy humanity. After Carroon escapes from custody Quatermass and Inspector Lomax (Jack Warner) of Scotland Yard have just hours to track him/it down and prevent a catastrophe. Like its source TV serial, the film was a major success in the UK. It also brought public attention to Hammer Film Productions around the world. The film was released in the United States in a double feature with The Black Sleep. Plot The British-American Rocket Group, headed by Professor Bernard Quatermass, launches its first manned rocket into outer space. Shortly thereafter, all contact is lost with the rocket and its three-man crew: Carroon, Reichenheim and Green. The large rocket later returns to Earth, crashing into an English country field. Quatermass and his assistant Marsh arrive at the scene. With them are the local emergency services, Carroon's wife Judith, Rocket Group physician Dr. Briscoe and Blake, a Ministry official who chides Quatermass repeatedly for launching the rocket without official permission. The rocket's hatch is finally opened, and the space-suited Carroon stumbles out. There is no sign of the other two crew. Carroon is in shock, only able to say the words, "Help me". Inside the rocket, Quatermass and Marsh find only the fastened but completely empty spacesuits of the two missing men. Carroon is taken to Briscoe's laboratory facility on the grounds that conventional hospitals and doctors would have no idea how to evaluate or treat the world's first returned astronaut, now suffering from some sort of adverse outer space event. Even under Briscoe's attentive care, Carroon remains mute, generally immobile, but alert with eyes that now have a feral and cunning quality. Briscoe discovers an oddly