Three astronauts are launched into space, but the spacecraft returns to earth with only one survivor named Victor Carroon, bringing with him something strange causing the guy to be real sick. He then begins mutating into a blood thirsty monster.
The playing, as usual in films of this type, is serviceable rather than distinguished, with Brian Donlevy as a brusque and peremptory Quatermass and Jack Warner as the sturdily dependable representative of Scotland Yard.
This film featuring the super-scientist Quatermass was Hammer's first international hit and moved the studio to do films in the sci-fi and horror genres.
This is Hammer's first major horror/science-fiction hit, but almost as notable is the fact that its doomed astronaut is the founding member of the studio's tragic rogues' gallery of transformed innocents -- monsters that didn't ask for their fates.
