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''It! The Terror from Beyond Space'' is an independently made 1958 American science fiction horror film, produced by Robert Kent, directed by Edward L. Cahn, that stars Marshall Thompson, Shawn Smith ( Shirley Patterson), and Kim Spalding. The film was distributed by
United Artists United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford an ...
as a
double feature The double feature is a Film, motion picture industry phenomenon in which theaters would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which the presentation of one feature film would be followed by various short subjec ...
with '' Curse of the Faceless Man''.Maçek III, J.C
"Building the Perfect Star Beast: The Antecedents of 'Alien'."
''
PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, ...
'', November 21, 2012.
The story involves Earth's second mission to
Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...
to discover the fate of the Challenge 141 and its crew. Only a single survivor is found still alive from that crashed spaceship. The survivor, the expedition's former commander, claims that his crew was killed by a hostile Martian life form. No one from the rescue ship believes him until the creature, now a stowaway, begins hunting the crew on their return trip to Earth. The film's premise has been cited as an inspiration for
screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...
Dan O'Bannon Daniel Thomas O'Bannon (September 30, 1946 – December 17, 2009) was an American film screenwriter, film director, director and visual effects supervisor, most closely associated with the science fiction and Horror fiction, horror genres. O'B ...
's screenplay for
Ridley Scott Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is an English film director and producer. He directs films in the Science fiction film, science fiction, Crime film, crime, and historical drama, historical epic genres, with an atmospheric and highly co ...
's classic 1979 film '' Alien''.


Plot

In 1973, a
nuclear-powered Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...
spaceship blasts off from Mars for Earth, bringing with it the sole survivor of the first mission, Col. Edward Carruthers. He is suspected of having murdered the other nine members of his crew for their food and water rations, on the premise that he had no way of knowing if or when an Earth rescue mission would ever arrive. Carruthers denies this allegation, attributing his crew's deaths to a hostile humanoid life form on the Red Planet. Commander Col. Van Heusen is unconvinced and makes sure that Carruthers is constantly accompanied by another member of his crew. While the ship was on the Martian surface, an emergency hatch had been left open, allowing the creature easy access. The crew is at first skeptical that something crawled aboard while they were on Mars. However, when Kienholz investigates odd sounds coming from a lower level, he is killed and his body hidden in an air duct. Next is Gino Finelli. He is found, barely alive, but the creature attacks his would-be rescuer. Bullets have no effect, forcing the crewman to leave Gino behind, much to the distress of his brother Bob. An autopsy of Kienholz's body reveals that it has been sucked dry of all fluids. The crew use
hand grenade A grenade is a small explosive weapon typically thrown by hand (also called hand grenade), but can also refer to a Shell (projectile), shell (explosive projectile) shot from the muzzle of a rifle (as a rifle grenade) or a grenade launcher. A mod ...
s and gas grenades, but the creature proves to be immune to both. They next try electrocution, also with no effect. When "It" is tricked into going into the spaceship's atomic reactor room, they shut the heavily shielded door and expose the creature directly to the ship's nuclear pile. It easily crashes through the door and escapes. The creature is so strong that it can tear through the metal hatches separating each of the ship's levels. The survivors (except for an injured crewman, who is trapped below in a spot inaccessible to the creature) retreat to the control room on the topmost deck. When Carruthers notices the ship's higher-than-normal oxygen consumption rate, he surmises that this is due to the creature's larger lung capacity, needed for the thin Martian atmosphere. In a last desperate move, everyone puts on their spacesuits, and Carruthers opens the command deck's hull airlock directly to the vacuum of space. A violent decompression follows, and the plan works: "It" suffocates and finally expires, stuck part way through the final hatch. A press conference is later held on Earth, revealing the details of what happened aboard the rescue ship. The project director emphasizes that Earth may now be forced to bypass the Red Planet "because another word for Mars is Death".


Cast

* Marshall Thompson as Col. Edward Carruthers * Shirley Patterson as Ann Anderson (as Shawn Smith) * Kim Spalding as Col. Van Heusen *
Dabbs Greer Robert William "Dabbs" Greer (April 2, 1917 – April 28, 2007) was an American character actor in film and television for over 60 years. Greer appeared in nearly 100 film roles and in nearly 600 television episodes of various series. He pl ...
as Eric Royce *
Paul Langton Paul Langton (April 17, 1913 – April 15, 1980) was an American actor perhaps best known for his role as Leslie Harrington on the television series ''Peyton Place (TV series), Peyton Place''. Early years When Langton was 12 years old he mov ...
as Lt. James Calder * Robert Bice as Maj. John Purdue * Richard Benedict as Bob Finelli * Ann Doran as Mary Royce * Richard Hervey as Gino Finelli * Thom Carney as Joe Kienholz * Ray Corrigan as It


Production

''It! The Terror from Beyond Space'' was financed by Edward Small and was originally known as ''It! The Vampire from Beyond Space''. Principal photography took place over a two-week period during mid-January 1958. Small kept changing his mind over whether or not he wanted plastic eyes installed in the creature's mask, causing a lot of aggravation for the film's makeup artist, Paul Blaisdell.Palmer, Randy (2009). Paul Blaisdell, Monster Maker: A Biography of the B Movie Makeup and Special Effects Artist. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0786440993. ''It!'' was the last film of actor
Ray "Crash" Corrigan Ray "Crash" Corrigan (born Raymond Benitz; February 14, 1902 – August 10, 1976) was an American actor most famous for appearing in many B-Western movies (among these the '' Three Mesquiteers'' and ''The Range Busters'' film series). He ...
. Corrigan was set to play the creature, but during pre-production, he did not want to travel over to Topanga Canyon in western
Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles and sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 2023. Its population is greater than that of 40 individua ...
where Paul Blaisdell lived and operated his studio. Therefore, Blaisdell could not take exact measurements of Corrigan's head. Consequently, there were final fit problems with the creature's head prop: " orrigan's..bulbous chin stuck out through the monster's mouth, so the make-up man painted his chin to look like a tongue". Blaisdell then added a bottom row of fangs that covered Corrigan's jutting chin.Stafford, Jeff
"It! The Terror From Beyond Space"
''Turner Classic Movies''. Retrieved: January 6, 2015.
Blaisdell said working for United Artists wasn't nearly as happy an experience as working at AIP was for him. As filming progressed, Ray Corrigan turned up drunk on the set a few times, refused to follow certain directions from Ed Cahn and even damaged the monster suit, causing Blaisdell to be called in to do a couple of quick "patch-up" jobs. Blaisdell said it wasn't a happy set, what with Corrigan drunk on and off, and the film's female star Shawn Smith constantly in a bad mood, furious that she had been cast in a low-budget monster film. Blaisdell said only Marshall Thompson seemed to be enjoying himself. The creature costume became the property of UA, and wound up a year later showing up in their 1959 John Agar opus, ''Invisible Invaders'' (without paying Blaisdell for reusing his props). More information on the production can be found on the audio commentary for Kino Lorber's 2023 Blu-ray: Blaisdell's assistant Bob Burns is on the commentary track along with Tom Weaver, Larry Blamire and David Schecter.


Reception

At the film
review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 69% based on , with a
weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
rating of 5.9/10. '' Variety'' noted that the creature was the star: "'It' is a Martian by birth, a Frankenstein by instinct, and a copycat. The monster dies hard, brushing aside grenades, bullets, gas and an atomic pile, before snorting its last snort. It's old stuff, with only a slight twist". A retrospective film review by Dennis Schwartz favorably compared ''It!'' with '' Alien'', a classic 1979 film that borrowed its creature feature plot liberally from its earlier counterpart."It! The Terror from Beyond Space"
''Ozus' World Movie Reviews'', September 23, 2001. Retrieved: January 6, 2015.


Adaptations

In 1992, Millennium Publications adapted ''It! The Terror from Beyond Space'' as a short-run comic book series, written by Mark Ellis and Dean Zachary. A further comics adaptation was released by ''Midnite Movies'' (IDW Publishing) in 2010, for a three-issue run.


See also

*
List of films set on Mars There is a body of films that are set on the planet Mars. In the late 19th century, people erroneously believed that there were canals on Mars. Into the early 20th century, additional observations of Mars fed people's interest in what was called " ...


References


Notes


Bibliography

* Strick, Philip. ''Science Fiction Movies''. London: Octopus Books Limited. 1976. . * Palmer, Randy. ''Paul Blaisdell, Monster Maker: A Biography of the B Movie Makeup and Special Effects Artist''. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1997. . * Warren, Bill. ''Keep Watching the Skies: American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties 21st Century Edition''. 2009. McFarland & Company. .


External links

*
''It! The Terror from Beyond Space'' at AllMovie
* * *

{{DEFAULTSORT:It The Terror From Beyond Space 1958 films 1958 horror films 1958 independent films 1950s science fiction horror films 1950s English-language films 1950s monster movies 1950s exploitation films American black-and-white films American science fiction horror films Films about astronauts Films about extraterrestrial life Films directed by Edward L. Cahn Films with screenplays by Jerome Bixby Films scored by Paul Sawtell Films scored by Bert Shefter Films set in 1973 Films set in the future Mars in film American monster movies United Artists films American exploitation films English-language science fiction horror films Films set on spacecraft