It! The Terror from Beyond Space - 1958
December 15, 2007 - 9:08 pm - Posted by Administrator
It! The Terror from Beyond Space is your typical fifties science fiction movie… spaceships, rubber-suited actors portraying alien monsters, special effects that may or may not work as intended, and so forth.
This movie takes place in the distant future of 1973, by which time we’ll surely be flying to the planet Mars. And hence, the concept… a mission to Mars has been wiped out with the exception of one survivor. A rescue mission bringing the survivor back to Earth is then menaced along the way by a unknown alien which has apparently stowed away on the ship.
If that premise sounds a little familiar, it may be due to a similarity to a much higher profile movie which came later, Ridley Scott’s Alien. Internet fans and non-fans have long insisted Alien bears an uncanny resemblance to this film. And in this viewer’s opinion, I would agree, not that I see anything wrong with that. Both movies take place on spaceships with multiple levels. In Alien, the alien is held at bay with flamethrowers. In It!, with a blowtorch. In Alien, the creature is pursued through the air vents. There’s a nearly identical scene in It! There are other similarities as well.
In the end, It! The Terror from Beyond Space is a low budget, poorly produced attempt at realizing a good science fiction concept. Special effects that couldn’t be created in the fifties were simply avoided with directing tricks. For example, the ship’s passengers rig a vent shaft with grenades to keep the alien out. When the alien comes through the shaft, the director cuts to a shot of the crew listening to the explosion on an intercom several levels above, thereby eliminating the need to show the explosion. However, when the camera returns to the vent shaft, which by all rights should be a smoke-filled environment due to the explosion which just happened, the rubber-suited alien comes out of the vent shaft a full ten seconds before the special effects crew remembers to blast some smoke into the scene. Either it’s a mistake that was overlooked, or it was ignored due to a time and money crunch. Either way, it’s a good example of why I can’t watch too many sci-fi flicks from the fifties.
Anal Probe Rating: It’s two hours of discomfort and you won’t remember it tomorrow.
Posted in 1950's, Alien Contact, Anal Probe Rating, The Future | No Comments »
