The movie is one of a series involving the character Dr. Bernard Quatermass, a retired space scientist dealing with an anarchic world made even worse by a mysterious force that somehow attracts and then obliterates young people (young people modeled after the most odious hippie cliches possible). To uncover the cause, he teams up with another scientist, Joe Kapp (derivation of Kaplan?), who lives with his family in the country, along with a team that operates satellite tracking dishes.

I'll leave it to others to outline the plot, but I'll talk about the Jewish angle. In the Kapp household we see a menorah, and then a meal with the Kapps, their two adorable young daughters, and Quatermass. They light candles, don't quite say a prayer, break bread. Later we see Joe touch a mezuzah on the door. Later, left alone, he continues to light candles in the menorah.

The scenes are strikingly, unapologetically Jewish, and so deliberate, even shocking, that I wonder at the writers' thinking.

Dialogue in the movie sets up an explicit sense of Jews as the guardians of civilization in a world that destroys art and science. At one point Joe's wife (played by the lovely Barbara Kellerman) holds up a 5,000 year old beaker she's using in the kitchen. "It should have gone to a museum, but they burned the museum down," she says.

Another time, discussing the "Planet People" hippie collective of glassy-eyed followers of a sneering leader, Joe says to Quatermass, "They're violent in a different way -- to human thought."

That theme, Jews standing against the nihilistic, anti-rational impulses of the crowd, becomes completely explicit in a showdown between a grief-struck Joe and the Planet People leader, after the Plant People invade and trash his tracking station.

The leader asks, "You're a Jew?"

Joe: "Yes."

Leader: OK, start with believing. But you don't do it right. You've got too much sin."

Joe: "Sin?"

Leader: "All this is sin. Your sin is you know things . . . If you want to come with us you've got to get it all out of your brain."

That never happens -- Joe remains true to his Judaism and his scientific method, working with Quatermass to the explosive conclusion.

None of the reviews or comments I've read about this episode of Quatermass -- a character originated in the early 1950s -- makes much of the Jewish theme. It gets mentioned, but more in passing. Maybe because I viewed the series with Jewish eyes, I found the Jewish aspect essential to understanding the opposing sides of the anarchy in the UK. The message remains relevant.