bursts into flames as it discharges the energy, killing Roney. The image and its effects on London disappear. Quatermass and Judd stand amidst the devastation of London, slowly recovering from the personal upheaval the alien energy has wreaked on them. Cast James Donald as Doctor Roney Andrew Keir as Professor Bernard Quatermass Barbara Shelley as Barbara Judd Julian Glover as Colonel Breen Edwin Richfield as the Minister Production Origins Professor Bernard Quatermass was introduced to audiences in two BBC television serials, The Quatermass Experiment (1953) and Quatermass II (1955), written by Nigel Kneale. The rights to both these serials were acquired by Hammer Film Productions, and the film adaptations—The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2, both directed by Val Guest and starring Brian Donlevy as Quatermass—were released in 1955 and 1957, respectively. Kneale went on to write a third Quatermass serial—Quatermass and the Pit—for the BBC, which was broadcast in December 1958 and January 1959. Once again interested in making a film adaptation, Hammer and Kneale, who had by then left the BBC and was working as a freelance screenwriter, completed a script in 1961. It was intended that Val Guest would once again direct and Brian Donlevy would reprise his role of Quatermass, with production to commence in 1963. Securing financing for the new Quatermass film proved difficult. In 1957 Hammer had struck a deal with Columbia Pictures to distribute their pictures, and the companies collaborated on thirty films between 1957 and 1964. Columbia, which was not interested in Quatermass, passed on the script, and the production went into limbo for several years. In 1964 Kneale and Anthony Hinds submitted a revised, lower-budget script to Columbia, but the relationship between Hammer and Columbia had begun to sour and the script was again rejected. In 1966 Hammer entered into a new distribution deal with Seven Arts, ABPC, and Twentieth Century Fox; Quatermass and the Pit finally entered production. Writing The script of Quatermass and the Pit is largely faithful to the television original. The plot was condensed to fit the shorter running time of the film, the main casualty being the removal of a subplot involving the journalist James Fullalove. The climax was altered slightly to make it more cinematic, Roney using a crane to short out the Martian influence, whereas in the television version he throws a metal chain into the pit. The setting for the pit was changed from