Dean Jagger is a scientist working at a lab in Scotland, trying to find a way to render radioactive materials (like a bomb) harmless. The earth splits open nearby and a rude lump of glowing stuff comes pouring out, lethal, crackling like bacon in a frying pan, and conveniently built of the kinds of radioactive stuff that Jagger is working on.

The blob -- for the most part unseen -- manages to kill several locals by radioactive poisoning before Jagger and the authorities are able to deploy a full-scale replica of their laboratory model. It may not work because "the fans are out of synch." Or it may explode, like the tiny lab model does.

Will it work? Is Jagger's fantastic theory of blobby organisms having been forced underground as the earth's crust thickened correct? Is the short, squat dilatory figure who runs the lab correct when he calls the whole thing balderdash? Will the whole mess blow up? Why does hail always have to be the size of something else? Did the Masons really design the first dollar bills?

It starts off slowly and mysteriously. That's the best part. Then it gets fast, complicated, scientifically inaccurate, and very loud. Sometimes the suspenseful musical score, on top of all that crackling, as of cellophane being wrinkled, literally drowns out the speech so you can't hear what the characters are saying.

It's not terrible. It's just a routine example of those 50s Briish SF movies that used an imported Yank as the main figure -- here Dean Jagger, there an improbable Gene Evans -- and sometimes they worked quite well -- Brian Donlevy as Quatermass.

In this one, the performances aren't bad but the script has a tendency to lose itself once in a while. In the very last scene, there is a blinding explosion from the creature's fissure. Knocks everyone flat. What was that, asks a soldier. Jagger is staring thoughtfully at the smoke wreathing out of the fissure. "I don't know," he replies, "but it shouldn't have happened." Camera draws away. The End. It should have happened if you'd decided at the last minute to end the movie with a big bang in order to use up the left-over special effects explosive.

What's with Leo McKern's voice?! I've seen Leo McKern in many movies and TV shows over the years and his deep resonant voice is one of his trademarks. However, in this film with a younger McKern, his voice is nothing like it was in films made just a few years later. He must have had a lot of voice lessons, as I've never heard an actor's voice change THAT much.

And, speaking of voices, you'll notice that Hammer Films put an American, Dean Jagger, in the leading role. They never even mentioned why everyone in the film but Jagger had British accents. He wasn't bad in the film--just a bit out of place.

The film is about some sort of monster from below the Earth's surface. Whenever it comes out, it emits enormous amounts of radiation and turns many people into something resembling KFC! Overall, it's better than most monster films of the 1950s. While you might laugh when you finally see the atomically charged creature, for the time it wasn't bad--plus the rest of the film was played quite convincingly. Plus, it's worth seeing just so you can see cameos with Ian McShane and Anthony Newley--but watch close, as the both snuff it soon after they are introduced!

Hammer Films had scored some great success importing American actor Brian Donlevy to star in its two Quatermass films and in that tradition had Dean Jagger as an American atomic scientist starring in X: The Unknown. It was a Quatermass film in everything, but name.

Some British Army troops out on maneuvers in Scotland get themselves in an earthquake and one of them is unaccountably burned to death. A giant fissure is left in the earth and then there are some other deaths involving radiation burns. With no atomic weaponry being tested there is no rational explanation for the mass of radiation that is needed to cause these deaths.

Life not as we know it is the reason. An energy creature which feeds on the earth's magma core for life, but finds none when occasional earthquakes bring it to the surface. Until now because the atomic age is upon us.

Jagger plays the nuclear scientist who is on the scene and has to figure out how to kill this thing which is made of radioactive earth. The science here may be at bit shaky, but the suspense is present in abundance.

Such fine players as Leo McKern and Anthony Newley are in the cast, you can't go wrong with X: The Unknown. One of the best of Hammer Films science fiction works.