Short Attention Span Review - It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) With Stow-Away Monster Spoilers

Synopsis

It is January 1973 and the first American spacecraft to Mars crash lands. Six months later, a rescue ship finds mission commander Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson, star of Fiend Without A Face), the only survivor. The crew of the rescue ship - in particular, ship captain Colonel Van Heusen (Kim Spalding) - believes that Carruthers murdered his crew in order to survive. Soon, however, they find that they have a stowaway; the real killer, a Martian predator. The crew must wage a life-and-death struggle against a seemingly indestructible creature. Will they be able to find a way to kill "It" before "It" kills them?

Analysis

It! The Terror From Beyond Space is a B-movie classic. While most of the individual elements (story, acting, special effects) have problems - some serious - the film works as a whole. Running a lean 69 minutes, It! benefits from a streamlined, economical story. The narrative moves forward rapidly, keeping the tension at an engaging level. The cinematography - heavy on the use of shadows to both obscure some of the shoddier special effects and minimal sets and to heighten tension and the claustrophobic feel - is sophisticated enough to elevate the film above some of its workmanlike peers. Some thought went into the characters, although developing them is hampered by both the short run-time and the acting, which never rises above the adequate.

The problems are evident and typical of low-budget films of the period. For example, the special effects are not very good, even by the standards of the day. In part, this was due to a low budget (around $100,000) and poor communication among the production team. The monster costume, designed and built by Paul Blaisdell (The Day The World Ended, It Conquered The World) - a special effects man well known among fans of low-budget science fiction and horror films of the 1950s - suffers from having been made by Blaisdell for himself to wear. When the suit was delivered, he learned that Ray Corrigan - a B-movie actor and stuntman considerably larger than Blaisdell - had been cast as "It." This proved a problem, since the mask was fitted for Blaisdell's smaller head. He had to quickly come up with a fix; he made a new lower jaw for the mask and then made Corrigan's chin up to look like the creature's tongue, since it stuck out of the mouth of the mask. Given that the costume is problematic, the less seen of the creature, the better. Director Edward Cahn (director of Invisible Invaders, the subject of Cult Cinema Review #8) and cinematographer Kenneth Peach (cinematographer for 25 episodes of The Outer Limits, among many other television and movie credits) wisely keep the monster mostly in the shadows. When it is seen to "full effect" the costume detracts from the film. Other effects - a space walk on the surface of the ship, a painting of the surface of Mars - are ambitious, but look cheap, again due to the low budget. This was not a limitation of the special effects technology of the time. A visually stunning film like Forbidden Planet (released two years earlier) demonstrates what could be done, given time and resources.

The story itself has some significant problems. There is a missed opportunity with the story-line that Carruthers may have killed his crew. Since the audience sees the monster within moments of the film's beginning, we know Carruthers is innocent. What could have been an interesting twist and generated actual tension among the characters, is undercut by the decision to show the monster too soon. While the crew is co-ed, the female lead - Shawn Smith playing scientist Ann Anderson - mainly serves as the apex for a tepid love triangle with Carruthers and Heusen. The eventual method of killing the monster - "It" needs to breath, so they suffocate It by venting the ships atmosphere into space - is presented as a great revelation. However, it seems like a crew of scientists and engineers would figure this out pretty easily. And, there are some plot points that are just head-scratchers; for example, why is a rescue mission going to a planet that is assumed to be lifeless armed with hand grenades and bazookas?

Verdict

Even with these problems, the movie is still worth watching. The pace is rapid, the film is well shot (given the limitations - the sets consist of a handful of rooms on the ship and featureless exterior of the ship for the space walk), and the acting is not particularly bad (with the exception of the shrill, scenery-chewing of Spalding). With the caveats of budget and time limitations in mind, It! is an enjoyable and entertaining science-fiction film.