X... l'Inconnu

Poster tagline: IT KILLS, BUT IT CAN’T BE KILLED!! IT COMES OUT OF THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH TO DISSOLVE EVERYTHING IN ITS PATH!! NEITHER RIFLE BULLETS NOR FLAMETHROWERS CAN STOP IT!! After the success of the Quatermass franchise, the legendary Hammer studio made a few monster-horror movies, and this is one of them. There are several TV versions, because the cinema version was quite violent for its time, as the censors back then judged. So most TV copies don't show those scenes of people's faces melting. Nowadays that wouldn't shock anyone, but in its time people weren't used to it and it had a similarly shocking effect as, for example, The Monster of Piedras Blancas from the same era, where a severed human head appears in a close-up. Unfortunately, a minor problem with this otherwise likeable horror film is that it’s not very visually appealing. It all revolves around a muddy military training ground, with a few shots of a hospital and a science facility thrown in, and the first deadly slime doesn't fully appear until ten minutes before the end. Hollywood would have peppered it with some fancy effects, bombastic front or rear projections, but there's nothing like that here (apart from the very few seconds of shots of slime rolling down the streets) and the centre of the film, the muddy, rocky training ground, is not pretty to look at and not a magnet for nice camera shots. It's a shame, because the actors are otherwise likeable, and it all builds up nicely at the end, but the overall impression is so ....how to say ....sketchy. The low budget is simply more evident here than it should be. (08/02/2018)

Un film d’horreur et de science-fiction anglais produit par la société Hammer, dans la rang de série sur Bernard Quatermass. Sauf que cette fois-ci, il n’est pas question de Quatermass, mais plutôt d’une substance cosmique radioactive aux élans meurtriers qui émet des sons dignes d'un dosimètre en folie. Malheureusement, ce film n'arrive pas à se démarquer et met trop longtemps avant de révéler les charmes de la masse visqueuse de l’espace (qui est un genre de prédécesseur du « blob » américain de Danger planétaire). Malgré tout, cette aventure de science-fiction se défend bien et se laisse voir volontiers. (24/11/2018)