It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1956)

 

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1956)

 

Though clearly borrowing from “The Thing from Another World” (1951) there is boldness and originality in this film, or at least in the context of its medium. SF cinema in the USA was newly reborn, the prose was exploding with as-yet-untapped ideas, and this film was heavily derivative of A.E. van Vogt’s fix-up novel “Voyage of the Space Beagle” (1950, but the stories therein go back as early as 1939). Eventually that book and this film would become an obvious influence of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979) but van Vogt sued the Producers of “Alien” not the Producers of this film.

 

It's a mixed bag, ripe with mediocrities but the conceit is strong enough to keep it compelling even when the Filmmaking faltered. Also, after a clumsy and sluggish first act, there are many well-executed scenes of Action and Suspense.

 

It's likely the best feature-length outing by prolific B-movie Director Edward L. Cahn who never surpassed his early work in the Children’s Film franchise “Our Gang/Little Rascals” franchise (the series started in 1922, Cahn’s work on it was 1939 to 1943). The script, which was stronger than the Direction, was provided by great SF Author Jerome Bixby. They collaborated on another SF/Horror that same year “Curse of the Faceless Man” (a reworking of the story of “The Mummy” (1932)) which again was better in Writing than Direction.

 

 

It's set just far enough in the Future that women and men are both a significant presence in the higher-skilled Professions but not of equal status (the Space Ship’s female Doctor and lead Biologist were reduced to serving coffee to lower-ranking Crew Members) and limited Interplanetary Flight had been achieved but it was still fraught with high-risk. That future year was 1973 which, I’m sure you remember, is when Real-World Skylab was launched and it did have female crew members.

 

It concerns a Rescue Mission for the first-manned Mission to Mars. There’s only one Survivor of that first Mission was Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson) and no one believes Edward’s story of an Attack by an Alien Monster, so the Rescuers Arrest him and start their journey back to Earth. The Rescue Ship’s Commander, Col. van Heusen (Kim Spalding), does not put Edward in irons, but he does restrict his movements and insist Edward always be accompanied.

 

Soon the Crew of the Rescue Ship realize they have a big problem because Edward wasn’t lying and now there’s a Monster in the Space Ship’s air ducts, hunting them down one-by-one, and storing the corpses out of reach to feed on later.

 

The van Vogt story “Discord in Scarlet” (1939 and part of “The Voyage of…”) is the greatest influence here, but in the short-story the Alien’s Victims are being preserved to facilitate the Alien’s life-cycle as Hosts for its Larva. That’s left out of this film but exploited in “Alien” and that became a key element in van Vogt’s Law Suit against the latter film.

 

It has a typical-of-the-time subplot with a boring love triangle because Edward and van Heusen are both vying for Biologist Ann Anderson (Shirley Patterson). Edward seems to get the upper hand in the Romance department when the Monster’s Killing Spree clears him of all charges and he takes the role of the film’s main Hero. Also, van Heusen is such a boring Character that the script didn’t bother giving him a first name.

 

As in “Alien” the Crew doesn’t fight back seriously until two of the crew are already taken and, like “Alien,” even when they do, the Monster proves unexpectedly Indomitable and still more Character’s die.

 

The best parts of the production proved to be Lighting and Set Design. The Lighting was likely the work of Cinematographer Kenneth Peach who began his Career (uncredited) on "King Kong" (1933) and would soon-enough be doing remarkable work on TV’s “The Outer Limits” (first aired 1964); it brought Noir-ish menace to a presumably antiseptic environment. Art Director Willaim Glasglow created a large number of surprisingly convincing sets on a low-budget; the interior’s reflected the design of the Space Ship design was an old-school and phallic Rocket (the miniature model was a left-over from another film, “Fight to Mars” (1951)). The sets presented the progressive narrowing of the spaces as the decks reach toward the Command Center at the top. As the Survivors are slowly forced to retreat from the advancing Alien, deck-by-deck, they’re progressively more trapped in smaller-and-smaller spaces. The FX was by Paul Blaisdell and his best sequence was a deftly executed, no-budget, Space Walk wherein the Humans try to get to a deck below the Monster and attack it from behind.

 

Though unstated, Artificial Gravity would’ve been provided by constant acceleration for half the trip, then constant deceleration the other half. As the Space Ship “flips,” reorientating its engines to point towards Earth instead of Mars, is not shown, the stories Time-Frame from launching from Mars to credits rolling couldn’t have been longer than three and a half months, and the confrontation with the monster seems no more than a day. The sense of Time-Compression in this short-ish feature, barely more than an hour, is deftly executed and adds to the tension.

 

Soon the surviving Crew Members have only the Ship’s Bridge left open to them, so they are cornered, but they also see they have an advantage. They don Space Suits (the Space Suits were leftovers from “Destination Moon” (1952)) and trap the Monster half-in-and-half-out of a hatch, evacuate the Oxygen, and suffocate it, yet another similarity to “Alien.”

 

The Space Ship then sends a message to Earth which is read at a Press Conference by the Director (Pierre Watkin) of the Science Advisory Commission of Interplanetary Exploration (they had to call it something and NASA wasn’t founded until the month after this film’s release). The message advises that further Space Exploration might be forced to bypass the Red Planet "because another word for Mars is Death."

 

The tale, in outline, is straightforward and logical enough, but suffers from a host of unnecessary illogics in its specifics, like the handling of Edward’s arrest for multiple Murders, he simply wasn’t kept securely. Then there was use of projectile weapons and explosives in a pressurized environment, a problem obvious to even a non-Scientist. I’m a fan of Bixby’s short-stories and have to wonder why his scripts were sometimes so much weaker. I suspect that studio interference played a role. I know, for example, that “Curse of the …” was originally conceived as a Supernatural tale but then made ludicrous when revised to be nominally-SF. I also refuse to accept that any SF Writer worth his salt would be guilty of this line, “Mars is almost as big as Texas, so maybe there are monsters.”

 

The Acting was Professional, but only just-so despite the cast being filled with talented Veterans. Apparently, the production was plagued by personal conflicts.

 

It was the last film of the legendary Personal Trainer/Stuntman/Actor Ray “Crash” Corrigan, whose illustrious career began in a Gorilla suit for “Tarzan and His Mate” (1932) and then he became a Leading Man with the SF Children’s serial “The Undersea Kingdom” (1938, and he took his stage name from his Character in that Production) but by this point he was a difficult to work-with drunk. He was cast as the Monster but refused to travel to FX Man Blaisdell’s home to get properly measured for the Rubber-Suit. It didn’t fit properly when time for filming came, requiring last-minute modifications and even then, remained ill-fitting (the Monster famously had an absurd tongue which was actually Corrigan’s chin sticking out the Creature’s mouth). Corrigan also repeatedly damaged the suit because of his stupor, requiring constant repairing. This all in the context of a hellaciously short, 6-day, shooting schedule.

 

Corrigan was not entirely to blame on that count, Producers kept changing their minds about the Monster’s face and ultimately it was an eyeless mask, so Corrigan was stumbling around blind and drunk.

 

Actress Shirley Patterson was constantly in a bad mood because she’d been reduced to B-grade Monster-Movies, this was the second of three consecutive ones, and expressed her displeasure by changing her stage-name for them to “Shawn Smith.” These would prove to be her last three films of her career as she had a severe injury in 1958 causing her to be out-of-commission for a year-and-a-half; she never returned to the screen.

 

By Blaisdell’s account, only Actor Thompson seemed to be enjoying himself. If so, it anticipated Thompson’s long and successful career of being cast in films beneath his worth.

 

Blaisdell was famous for his Monster suits but this was the last film he made one for film. He was more regularly employed by American International Pictures, an even lower-budget outfit than this film’s United Artists, but he found UA less professionally run. Also, at the end of production, UA claimed the Monster Suit and other props Blaisdell created as their property and reused them in “Invisible Invaders” (1959), also Directed by Cahn, and Blaisdell wasn’t paid for their re-use.

 

Trailer:

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) - Trailer - YouTube