Review – Five Million Years to Earth

This entry in the Quatermass series seems like the sort of film John Carpenter is endlessly trying to make. And like most of Carpenter’s efforts, it’s more wind-up than delivery. The premise is interesting: subway workers in a London suburb called Hobbs End (Mouth of Madness, anyone?) discover a buried alien spacecraft surrounded by deformed skeletons of primitive hominids. Though the giant insect occupants of the ship appear to be long dead, some psychic leftovers linger on powerfully enough to possess the minds of several Londoners and eventually lead to a violence-rich finale. Some of the effects are a little weak; for example, the video of the Martians’ racial memory looks like a grainy, black and white Orkin commercial directed by Kenneth Anger. But the plot and characters more than make up for the technical problems. Worth seeing