Quatermass and the Pit

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

25 mistakes

(2 votes)

Visible crew/equipment: As Quatermass drives back to the spaceship in a cab, just before it is to be drilled, the film crew can be easily seen in the cab's windows. A woman with a white cap can be seen holding a script. Later when the police use a megaphone on their car to announce the spaceship is a hoax, you can again see the same woman with a white cap in one of the windows of the police car.

Larry Koehn

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: How could you tell if the reflection showed the actual film crew and not just a TV and newsreel crew assembled for the scene? They were also using mounted cameras and carrying papers.

Continuity mistake: The martians that were pulled out of the spaceship had compound eyes much like a fly. However, the lifeforce of the martian over London, had cross-eyed pupils.

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: The flashlight that the drillman used when the lights went out around the spaceship didn't match the light from the spot used by the film crew.

Larry Koehn

Visible crew/equipment: As the drillman was removing his equipment from within the spacecraft, the gravity became nonexistent and all the tools began to float. You can easily see wires on all the tools - especially the flashlight.

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: A skeleton of early man is found by a workman digging through mud at an extension to the Underground railway system in London. The skeleton is suspended in a pocket of air, however, and shows no mud inside the rib cage or other body cavities.

Larry Koehn

Continuity mistake: A borazon drill was used to cut a hole into a panel. The hole was rather large, but when the special effects began showing the panel dissolving, the hole was much smaller.

Larry Koehn

Revealing mistake: After the spaceship becomes alive and causes a cave-in, Barbara easily stumbles and moves the large chunks of broken cement beams as she leaves the pit with Quatermass.

Larry Koehn

Continuity mistake: At the beginning of the film when the first skull is found, the black workman is holding a cigarette in his right hand when he tosses the skull to the foreman: The next shot cuts in and the foreman says "It may be worth money" the cigarette is now in the left hand of the black workman.

Will

Continuity mistake: The man who was electrocuted and killed inside the hull of the spaceship is carried on a board and is laid down on the platform, just after Quatermass says "He's dead" he covers the dead man with a sheet that magically appears from nowhere between shots.

Will

Plot hole: When Quatermass is being admonished by the senior minister for talking to the press, Breen gives his own theory to explain the presence of the spaceship: He says that it was used a propaganda weapon in 1944 and that the figures inside were made up of scraps old skin and bone, why was he unable to explain how the hull of the spaceship was heat resistant up to 3,000 degrees and harder than diamond?

Will

Continuity mistake: Quatermass used tweezers to pull away the membrane covering the eye of a dead martian. A scene later, the membrane was intact.

Larry Koehn

Visible crew/equipment: From the first shot, the flashing yellow crossing beacons on Hobbs Lane are powered by cables that lie in full view over the set pavements.

Visible crew/equipment: The very last scene, something swings in and out of the frame, on the right, just as Quartermass is rounding the corner.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: After viewing the scene frame by frame, it is clear that something grey and textured enters the edge of the shot from behind the wall for a few frames, but it is not identifiable. Given the turbulence of the disaster setting it could as easily be identified as a flapping wall poster or a piece of torn curtain as set crew or equipment.

I have studied the image frame by frame and you can see it is a right hand of someone, possibly a crew member not getting out of shot quick enough. The strange thing is that the hand is dark and hairy almost werewolf like. Obviously not a werewolf but maybe someone in makeup from another Hammer movie was visiting the set.

Other mistake: During the press conference, Dr Roney (James Donald) says they have only found parts of skulls and fragments of bone. However a nearly intact skeleton was uncovered by a workman in an earlier scene.

Factual error: Barbara takes an ancient document out of a filing cabinet. One of the words in its title is HIFTORIE, for "history." The old-fashioned way of writing the letter "s" was the so-called long s (ſ), not the letter "f", and this was only ever used as a lowercase letter. So the word would have been written as HISTORIE.

paolog

Character mistake: Colonel Breen theorises to Quatermass that the spaceship is an experimental German V-weapon from the second world war: However according to the story, the underground station (Hobbs End) was dug in 1927: The V-weapons first landed in London in 1944, so how was it possible for a V-weapon to land where it did underground, impacted soild in clay right next to a deep level underground railway station seventeen years later without anyone noticing at the time? Breen should realise that his theory makes no sense.

Will

Continuity mistake: When Roney and Barbara get out of the taxi, the street is in shadow, but in the next shot the sun is up, as it lights up the buildings in the background:. (00:36:05)

Revealing mistake: When Roney enters the spaceship, just before he first helps Quatermass to remove the insects from the their chamber, he is wearing gloves. Then in a shot from inside the hull of the ship, he is not wearing a glove on his left hand. When he reappears outside, he is wearing gloves. (00:39:56)

Shadow 81

Continuity mistake: Just after the discovery of the insects in the spaceship, Roney runs out to tell Barbara to call the institute. Notice in between shots Barbara is standing on her own, then in the next shot a bemused Captain Potter suddenly appears standing right next to her. (00:38:53)

Shadow 81

Revealing mistake: When Quatermass and Breen are theorising inside the spaceship. Breen says "What do you mean by that?" His face has beads of sweat on it, in the next shot his face is dry. (00:39:15)

Shadow 81

More quotes from Quatermass and the Pit

Trivia: The actor who plays the Abbey Librarian in the film is played by Noel Howlett, however the same actor appeared under the name of Arthur Howlett as the church minister in the original 1957 BBC television version, that was filmed in black and white.

Will

More trivia for Quatermass and the Pit

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