It! The Terror From Beyond Space

Thanks to Turner Classic Movie's June scheduling on Thursdays devoted to creature features, drive-in classics and sci-fi gems, I was able to catch up with a lot of movies that aren't readily available in other formats.  Some were really good, genuinely enjoyable, well-made movies -- like Tarantula and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms -- while others were so bad they were good, especially Creature from the Haunted Sea. Maybe they weren't good movies, but I enjoyed them nonetheless.  Fitting then that the last one I watched, 1958's It! The Terror From Beyond Space, was the only one I just didn't like.

There is a certain cheese factor that is to be expected with these movies. We're not talking big budgets at all with movies that were made on shoestring budgets instead.  These were most often movies made on the cheap that audiences ate up. But cheese factor (read = bad but entertaining) doesn't necessarily mean a movie can skip the steps.  This was a movie that had some potential -- if not a lot -- but it never amounts to anything.  It's slow-paced, dull, boring, and still not bad enough to be a guilty pleasure where it is so awful you enjoy it. Bad...bad...and bad.

It's 1973, and astronaut Captain Carruthers (Marshall Thompson) and his crew crash land on Mars, but when the rescue mission arrives months later, Carruthers is the only surviving member of the crew. What happened? Did he kill them all in hopes of increasing his odds of survival? Leading the rescue mission, Van Reusen (Kim Spalding) believes the astronaut murdered his the members of his crew, and now must bring him back to Earth to stand trial. Carruthers can't explain what happened, but he maintains he had nothing to do with the deaths. No one believes him, but after leaving Mars behind with a four-month journey ahead of them, the Carruthers, Van Reusen and the crew start to think they are not alone on-board the ship. Could he be telling the truth? Was something or someone killing the astronauts?  

There were moments as I watched this dud where I thought it was going to amount to something.  A 1958 movie jumping way into the future...sort of, 1973....seemed like a good idea, and exploration to Mars opens all sorts of doors for what space offers.  Which by the way is rarely a positive. Apparently everything in space wants to kill us, eat us, break us for their own benefit.  The journey to Mars was a good idea too because it's not a day trip or even a week. This is a space trip that's going to take three or four months to get back to Earth. In other words, you just can't ignore the monster/creature until you reach safety. It needs to be dealt with NOW!  For all the little things that could have added up to something though, well....they don't add up. They never click into place, into anything interesting.

This could be the most visually dull horror/sci-fi movie I've ever seen. Straightforward enough for you? At just 69 minutes, I'd bet I fast-forwarded through about 40 minutes of this movie. The claustrophobic setting of an Earth-bound spaceship seems like a grooved fastball that any movie/story should be able to bomb away with a home run.  Director Edward L. Cahn must like football or basketball though. Most of the attempts to dispatch the monster have Carruthers, Van and the crew opening a hatch and shooting at the monster or throwing grenades at him. Meanwhile, the pissed off monster starts to bash his way through the hatches, forcing the crew to seek solace in a higher level until finally...there's no levels to run to! One extended interaction has a member of the crew, Calder (Paul Langton), holding off the monster with a flame for several hours just by waving it at him. Calder actually stays in constant communication with the rest of the crew via radio in one of the dullest man vs. monster encounters I've ever seen.

However badly the creature is handled, the monster is actually pretty cool; an immense humanoid that somehow survived on Mars' barren surface. Now in a confined setting, he needs water and some sort of sustenance, turning to the crew for anything he needs. The explanation to his motivations (provided by Dabbs Greer, one of the crew) is feasible if not very realistic. Played by stunt man Ray Corrigan, 'It' is the best thing going for the movie, but even that is mishandled. There was a chance for the monster to be actually scary, but his attacks are usually shadows/silhouettes on walls as he tears his victims apart. With such a short movie, I figured it would be monster heavy, but I was incorrect. Unfortunately there's more time devoted to the mind-numbingly boring crew while the monster walks around in the lower decks.  Too bad because it's not like the movie would have been saved with more monster, but it couldn't have hurt.

One of the more prolific actors in Hollywood in film in the 1940s and 1950s, Thompson was in some gems; To Hell and Back, Battleground, They Were Expendable.  Here as the heroic lead, Thompson is the only even somewhat recognizable face in the cast, but he looks so bored with the proceedings that he doesn't register much at all.  Greer is a relative bright spot, but no one else even makes an impression, good or bad, just boring. Steer clear of this flop which takes itself too seriously and never has any fun with a premise that could have been interesting.

It! The Terror From Beyond Space <---trailer (1958): */****