It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

Directed by: Edward L. Cahn

I'm not sure if the tagline "It breathes, It hunts..., It kills!!" is just on the DVD cover and (hopefully) wasn't used back in 1958 to promote this flick as it's beyond stupid. Sure, being hunted by the IT in the movie is probably no picnic and being killed by it isn't of course something that I would choose, but IT breathing isn't really that scary now, is it? Sure, it's a part of the plot, but still... I'm not gonna complain too much though as I live for these over exaggerated taglines for sci-fi/horror flicks from the 50's. The wilder the better, I just felt a little let down by the whole "It breathes!" thing... ;-)

I'm a total sucker for 50's sci-fi and this is one of the classics, so it was with bated breath that I finally sat down to watch it for my very first time. And I have to confess that losing my It! The Terror from Beyond Space virginity wasn't as exciting as I had hoped for... More about that later though, what I want to mention (and I suppose everyone else does as well) is the Alien connection in this flick. This is one of a couple of movies that are said to surely must have been inspiration for the movie Alien, there are flicks like Planet of the Vampires and Queen of Blood that would fit with this one as being close plotwise as well. Ok, we have a space ship with a monster on the lose picking the crew members off one by one, the ending has something to do with an air lock and that's about it that I can recall from this flick. I've read somewhere that some people look at Alien as a remake of this one, but I just can't see that at all.

The movie is set in 1973 (yay! the year I was born, but I don't remember people still dressing in very typical 50's clothes in 1973...) and 6 months after the first manned mission to Mars crashed a second space ship arrives to rescue the survivors. There's only one man left though, Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson), and immediately he is suspected of killing the other members of his crew. Supposedly so he would have more food so he could stay alive longer... Yep, he truly is being treated as guilty without no evidence. That he tells his rescuers a monster killed his crew really doesn't help either... so, it's back to earth and court martial for Col. Carruthers.

Before the ship lifts off some stupid idiot leaves a door to the space ship open for quite some time (hm... here we are in space and people are leaving the god damn doors open???), and just like that something sneaks onto the new ship as well. It doesn't take long before some crew members disappear and when their dead and mangled bodies are found people start to believe Carruthers about the monster. They run into the monster and no bullets can harm it, so the crew has to hide on the upper floors of the space ship while the monster is lose a couple of floors below then munching on dead crew members (or something, I don't know what he does to them...).

The remaining crew members hatch a plan and that is to head outside of the space ship, walk down the body of the ship and enter a floor beneath the monster. There they will try to electrocute it by putting some electric cords on the stairs (yep, it's THAT high tech ;-)). This doesn't work and the monster is now getting mightily pissed off and starts to break through the hatches on the floors above him to get his hands on the remaining crew. But, thanks to some bright thinking they realize that the monster needs a lot of oxygen to live (kinda strange as I just don't see that much oxygen existing on Mars to begin with) and when it breaks through the last hatch they throw everything they got at it. That includes a bazooka, ladies and gentlemen... yep, a big fucking bazooka on a space ship!

When the monster is getting weak from the attack they open an air lock and let all air out (while having donned space suits themselves) and the monster soon dies of lack of oxygene... back on earth we get to witness a press conference telling people about the dangers of the planet Mars. And the over dramatic guy holding the press conference ends the movie by letting us know in an typical 1950's over the top way: "There's another name for Mars, and that is... Death!".

This is a movie I have read about many times and have wanted to see for a long time and maybe it was my anticipation that kinda killed it a little as it really wasn't as good as I had hoped for. I'm not gonna say that this is a bad movie though, I did enjoy it in a way, but I just felt that there was something lacking. The movie is very short, only 69 minutes, but still at times it did feel like it was a lot longer than that as there isn't anything happening. The monster itself was quite underwhelming as well, I don't think it was made for the guy wearing it ("Crash" Corrigan) as it looks very much like a suit and not the body of a space creature. We get folds and creases all over when it moves and the head just looks stupid (also probably due to it having a last minute change right before they started shooting the movie).

If you enjoy, just like I do, old black and white 50's sci-fi you should check it out though, I might just have had a bad day (I'm gonna rewatch it later on just to see why I didn't like it more than I did, after all this is the stuff I live for). But, I would rather recommend movies like This Island Earth and Forbidden Planet first if you haven't watched them yet, those are some really good 50's sci-fi movies (both in color though).