Quatermass

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a space pilot when I grew up. Then in 1953, I saw the BBC television serial The Quatermass Experiment. It scared the shit out of me, and I had dreams of Cactus Men coming through the ceiling of my bedroom.  So I shelved all my plans to explore the deeps of space.

Below is a clipping from the Radio Times of that year:

And then:

Two years after the Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass II was telivised, and once again the shit was scared out of me, and cactus men started coming through the ceiling again!

In this serial those humans taken over by the aliens sported a horrible looking mark, Cockney families pick-nicking on the beach were machine gunned by Zombie soldiers, rebellious  construction workers were crushed and stuffed into pipes so that blood dripped from the joints, and a reporter fell into a vat of alien slime and appeared on a gantry screaming: IT BURNS, IT BURNS!

Good clean family entertainment in the 1950's!