It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

The prairie jackalopes of Epona, a frontier planet in the star system Kitalpha, are cute and very tame, but make the most aggressive-sounding, bellowing growls and threatening howls. Pity the crew of the space station Terra Epsilon don't know that, as they flee from the creature scuttling around the station's air ducts, certain they're being hunted by a terrifying star beast. Nebuleena, not welcome in the Terran system since almost starting a war with the Amazons of Bellatrix, takes the opportunity to steal back her guitar, then retrieves her jackalope companion to return it home.

Back aboard the Silver Swift, she sits at the console and pets the jackalope, which lets out an ear-splitting howl of contentment. Nebuleena puts on some earphones and activates the stardrive.

In folded space, time and space mingle, and a journey of light years can be achieved in hours. There are signals here, too, leaked into space centuries ago and frozen in time; echoes of an Earth long lost to memory, but accessible to a spaceship's scanners. Let's see what Nebuleena finds in the abyss...

Premise

The opening narration of It! The Terror from Beyond Space sucks you in immediately. As you see a bleak, barren Martian landscape, with a rocketship lying on the ground that's not passing its next inspection, the voice of Colonel Carruthers describes Mars as, "Dangerous! Treacherous! Alive with something we came to know only as 'Death'". He perhaps should have read the opening titles. We've not seen it yet, and we know it already as, "It!" I feel the exclamation mark is important.

In fact, let's address that title, then never again mention it. I've been watching old science fiction movies for a while now, and bad titles are kind of a feature. There has been many an "It", a "Thing" or an "X", and while many hail from "Outer Space", occasionally they come from "Beyond Space". I don't know where that is - it sounds like a trek - but spoiler; this one comes from Mars. I say this because bad titles often indicate bad films. I'm just going to say; ignore that measure in this instance.

So the camera pans the Martian surface, in January 1973; presumably mid to late January because the Christmas decorations on Mars had all been taken down. Standing a little way from the wrecked rocketship is a fine example of a fully functional rocketship. I love the design of this three-finned, cigar-shaped, silver rocketship as it stands on Mars. This one is the rescue ship, here to give Col. Carruthers a lift back to Earth.

Now, to Washington, D.C., in the Capitol Building, and the Science Advisory Committee Division of Interplanetary Exploration. SACDIE? Here, we get back story, as an official holds a press conference. He explains the first Martian expedition had launched six months prior, and then contact had been lost, with assumptions being inclined towards pessimism for the fate of the crew. Col. Carruthers was already a space hero, having been the first man in space and an interplanetary pioneer, which makes his subsequent treatment seem a little unfair. So, rocketship two has been sent to investigate, found Carruthers the sole survivor, and he's to be returned to Earth for a court-martial, and tried for murdering his crew. A presumably decorated space hero, leading an expedition to an unexplored alien world, seems to have been tried and found guilty in the minds of his superiors without so much as a questionnaire titled, "Did You Murder Your Crew?". The reporters immediately flee the office, and I'm hoping some, at least, will write about the sorry state of American justice in the distant future of 1973.

Meanwhile, on Mars...

Col. Carruthers' voice-over is bleak, as he muses on spending four months with a crew of strangers whose single goal, he feels, is to ensure he faces a firing squad. Not a court-martial. Not a fair trial. A firing squad. What kind of authoritarian, ultra-nationalist dystopia has America become in the distant future of 1973? It makes it seem trivial that Lt. James Calder accidentally left an emergency airlock open after dumping some rubbish on Mars, because the human need to litter is an emergency, apparently. But the open airlock is not trivial; at least not for this crew. As the airlock is closed, it's made clear a humanoid creature has secretly entered the rocketship, presumably without a passport or ticket, and oblivious to what sort of treatment illegal immigrants are likely to receive in the far future oppressive dictatorship America of 1973.

The rocketship blasts off from Mars, and I know it's nothing spectacular, but I'm here for sleek rocketships blasting off the surfaces of alien landscapes. I'm a sucker for it. This ship is commanded by Col. Van Heusen, and it's soon clear he doesn't believe a word of Carruthers' story about a mysterious creature, and he's convinced Carruthers killed his crew for their rations. A skull of one of the dead crew sporting a bullet hole seems to incriminate Carruthers, if Van Heusen needed any further convincing. In fact, as he sits with the crew in the mess, he publicly sets himself the aim of getting Carruthers' taped confession by the time they reach Earth.

One crewmember, at least, is less certain of Carruthers' guilt. Ann Anderson brings Carruthers a sandwich, and the two stare lovingly into each other's eyes, something for which they seem to have developed a habit. Carruthers fills in further detail about how he and his crew were attacked on Mars, and the bullet hole was likely from a ricochet as they fought the creature. Van Heusen arrives and it seems he has a pet name for Ann, "Chicken," and that there has been some romantic interest there, but the details are never made clear.

Strange noises draw a crewman called Kienholz down to the rocketship's lower decks, and he becomes the creature's first victim. The sound of Kienholz's scream prompts a search, and Gino Finelli is the next victim. Kienholz's body is found in an air shaft, and the dying Gino is found in another shaft, but with the creature guarding him. The crew booby trap the air ducts with grenades, to which the creature proves resistant. It's also impervious to bullets and direct exposure to the ships reactor. It possesses phenomenal strength and bends rifle barrels and tears its way through doors.

At one point, Col. Van Heusen's leg is badly mauled by the creature's claws. He's soon suffering the effects of infection. Ann admits to Carruthers they were wrong to assume his guilt, which might have landed better coming from one of the people who had assumed Carruthers was guilty, rather than Ann, who was always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

At one point, Carruthers and Calder spacewalk to a deck below the one containing the creature in an attempt to set an electrocution trap, but Calder winds up with a broken leg, holed up between "induction pumps", holding the creature at bay with a blowtorch. It seems highly improbable the creature wouldn't tear its way through the machinery to get to him, given the power it's displayed previously.

As the creature makes its way through one level after another, with Calder trapped below, and the crew in need of blood from the ship's store to fight alien infection, the crew try increasingly desperate measures to defeat the indestructible creature.

Okay, it's time to acknowledge the xenomorph in the room. This tale of an alien presence being accidentally introduced into a space vessel, where it hunts the crew, has obvious similarities to another, better known science fiction movie; 1968's The Green Slime. However, as far as I can tell, It!... is not considered an inspiration for this Japanese-American co-production. Both these movies, among others, have been speculated to have been an influence on Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). Perhaps that's true. Screenplay writer Dan O'Bannon is reputed to have said, "I didn't steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!" And we're glad you did, Dan.

Cast and Crew

Edward L. Cahn was an editor and director who directed many shorts in the Our Gang series before becoming known for B-movies in many genres. His reputation as a director who could churn out features at the rate of several a year made him sought-after. Such movies as The She-creature (1956) and Invisible Invaders (1959) may be a bit obscure, but Invasion of the Hell Creatures (1957) is a comedy sci-fi horror well thought of in the classic genre cinema fan base. Among the five directorial credits Cahn has from 1958, It! The Terror from Beyond Space is certainly one. And it's directed well. There's a real sense of threat and tension here. The important characters get to shine, the story progresses at a pace, and there's a sense of desperation as the characters face escalating problems and the creature annexes more and more of their spaceship.

The screenplay was written by Jerome Bixby. Bixby was predominantly a short story writer. His story "It's a Good life" (1953) was the basis of a classic episode of The Twilight Zone, and was adapted again as a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). He co-wrote, with Otto Klement, the story of classic movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). For TV, Bixby wrote four episodes of Star Trek (1966-1969). Of these, the popular "Mirror, Mirror" has had a huge impact, setting up a parallel world that's been repeatedly bludgeoned with increasingly blunt objects as the franchise has progressed. His work on It! The Terror from Beyond Space is good. With so many characters, it's difficult to make anyone "pop", but the important characters do. You can see why certain characters are given relationships to others in order that they can be defined together. Bixby also wrote Curse of the Faceless Man, also directed by Cohn, and released with It!... as a double feature.

Marshall Thompson played Colonel Ed Carruthers, and brought quiet sympathy to the role of the man who'd lost his crew and friends, and knew he had no way to prove his innocence in their deaths. In the early scenes, you can feel the weight of the situation on him, but also his determination to simply tell the truth even though he knew it would make no difference. Thompson had a varied career, including some work in genre films. 1958's Fiend Without a Face is notable.

Shirley Patterson played love interest of the two leading men, Ann Anderson. Patterson was billed as Shawn Smith, as she often was. Her portrayal of Anderson seemed to me a little distant, but that added to the feel of the unexpected situation the characters were in. Patterson appeared in a number of B-movies in the forties and fifties, with It!... being her final big screen credit. Shortly after filming, Patterson broke her leg badly in a skiing accident in Southern California. I didn't think skiing was possible in Southern California. After a year and a half of recovery, Patterson's acting career was effectively over. Her last credit is in TV series Frontier Doctor, in the episode "Broken Barrier" from February 1959. In spite of her character having an accident early in the episode, with me wondering whether it would be an excuse for her to sit for the remainder of filming with her cast hidden beneath a period dress, in fact she seems perfectly able to move around. I suspect this episode was filmed before her accident. She remains, to my knowledge, the only actress to portray Batman heroine Linda Page, having done so in The Batman (1943).

Colonel Van Heusen is portrayed by stage and screen actor Kim Spalding, another whose acting career seemed to hit a brick wall with this movie, after a twenty year career, appearing after this in just a few episodes of television shows until 1961. I found him the most interesting character in the film, and that's largely because of Spalding's commanding presence. From 1944 to 1951 he was married to Jeanne Cagney, sister of James Cagney. What Kim was up to between 1961 and his passing in 2000, I know not. But I've seen far worse actors have far greater success. His portrayal of Van Heusen in obvious physical pain and existential fear, while also dealing with the rapidly blossoming relationship between his crush and this newcomer, is excellent, even if the blossoming relationship itself is about as convincing as the alien wandering about the spaceship's lower decks.

Of the other crewmen, Eric Royce was played by Dabbs Greer, an actor who performed on television and in movies for decades, shining as the elderly version of Tom Hanks' character in The Green Mile (1999). Richard Hervey, the ill-fated Gino Finelli, clocked only nine acting credits, between 1957 and 1973. The rest had fairly regular work in TV and cinema. Ann Doran, underused here as Mary Royce, played the mother of James Dean's character in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

Then, there's It! Ray "Crash" Corrigan was a star of B-movie westerns, a stuntman and a frequent gorilla actor in movies. In Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), when Tarzan swings through the jungle, that wasn't Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller, but Crash Corrigan. I have fond memories of watching exotic adventure movie serial Undersea Kingdom (1936), in which Corrigan first used the name Crash Corrigan, the name of his character. Most of his career was in ape costumes, including those he owned himself, and were largely uncredited. It!... is his final screen credit. Corrigan passed in 1976.

Design

So, let's talk about the look of this movie, before getting to the creature earlier than we have to. I love the Martian landscape. The rocketship looks terrific, sleek and functional. The interiors are well designed, with each level containing a staircase with solid looking central hatches to the levels above and below. The jumpsuits of the astronauts look comfortable, and useful with several pockets. Okay, let's finish this off.

Before watching It!..., I'd seen clips and shots containing the monster. I thought it looked terrible, and I put off watching for that very reason. The fact the mouth looks like it has a swollen tongue pushing from it, and teeth cut out of cardboard stuck to the front, makes this monster look like it belongs with the worst of Hollywood's many bad monster designs. Then I watched. Those aspects of the face are all that's really wrong. The rest of the face looks terrifically bestial, and the rest of the suit is scaly and threatening. So, what went wrong?

Crash Corrigan! That's what went wrong. Painter and sculptor Paul Blaisdell created many a B-movie monster. When he needed Corrigan for a final fitting of the suit, our boy Crash refused to travel to Blaisdell's studio. Consequently, the final mask didn't fit. Corrigan's manly chin protruded through the monster's mouth. This, they thought they could hide with some paint to make it look like a tongue and some added teeth. It didn't work. With Corrigan frequently turning up drunk for work, and Shirley Patterson miserable because this B-movie was beneath her, the set was not a happy one for the few days it took to film.

Conclusion

And that's a pity, because if you can overlook Crash's chin, this is a great, fun film. The creature seems truly indestructible, and a looming threat. It!... follows the themes of isolation and extraterrestrial menace that were brought from literature to the silver screen with The Thing from Another World (1951), and that continue to thrill us in films to this day. Except, nowadays they're usually accused of being Alien rip-offs, not rip-offs of all the things Alien ripped off.

Nebuleena's Thoughts

"So, Colonel Van Heusen is half insensible from alien bacterial infection. He's clearly had a few romantic moments with Ann, and calls her by a pet name. While he's calling for her from his sickbed, she and Carruthers, who she's just met, are standing within his sight, clasping hands and gazing into each other's eyes lovingly, unable to tear away from each other for several moments. They both deserved to be eaten by the monster!"


All screenshots of It! The Terror from Beyond Space taken by me for purposes of review. If you dispute the fair use of these images, contact me at ptbyrdie@gmail.com.