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.

MegaMonsterMonth! #4 - War of the Colossal Beast (1958) - Now With 60-Foot Tall Spoilers!

Bert I. Gordon. The name is a legend among B-movie afficiandos. Active mostly in the late-Fifites and early-Sixites, Gordon produced and directed a string of low-budget horror and sci-fi movies.

Here are a few that any genre fan will recognize:

• The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) - The first part of the Glenn Manning Saga!
• Beginning of the End (1957) - Peter Graves versus giant grasshoppers!
• Valley of the Giants (1965) - Super-sized teenagers, a scourge of the 60s!
• The Food of the Gods (1976) - HG Wells comes back as a giant rat!
• Empire of the Ants (1977) - I want to pollinate Joan Collins! With sex!

Anyway, his films are generally low budget, have terrible special effects, laughable scripts, c-list actors...basically, everything you'd associate with drive-in fodder. They are also pretty entertaining, as long as you have the right mindset.

Synopsis

Picking up where The Amazing Colossal Man left off, Beast finds the 60-foot tall, diaper-clad Colonel Manning (Dean Parkin) horribly scared and driven insane from a bazooka blast he received at the end of the last film. He is living in the hinterlands of Northern Mexico, menacing the locals. He is eventually captured and brought to Los Angeles. While being held in an aircraft hangar, his sister Joyce (Sally Fraser) tries to reason with him, unsuccessfully. While chained to the floor, Manning has a lengthy flashback, retelling the story of The Amazing Colossal Man. All of the highlights of that film are shown. Manning eventually escapes. He makes it to the Griffith Observatory where he is surrounded by police and Army personnel. Joyce talks him out of destroying a convenient bus load of school kids. He has a brief moment of sanity, grabs hold of some high tension wires and evaporates. The End.

Analysis

By any reasonable standard, War of the Colossal Beast is a bad film. The acting is wooden. The effects are bad, even for the time, with Manning often transparent, a sign of poor mattes. While the make-up is effective in a few shots (and in stills) whenever he moves his mouth it looks like a latex appliance glued onto the skin. Which, of course, it is. The decision to go briefly to color stock for the finale when Manning electrocutes himself is pretty neat, even if it is only there for a ballyhoo effect; but it adds nothing to the movie. The music seems to be the same stock the Gordon uses in all of his films. And the direction is comprised mostly of static shots.

There are a few good scenes. The opening, where a Mexican teen (Robert Hernandez) is being chased by some unseen menace is well shot and tense. The initial appearance of the horribly scarred Manning delivers a jolt, as he emerges from behind a hill top, while our heroes stand among the wreckage of cargo trucks Manning has been raiding for food.

While a low-budget can be used to explain some deficiencies (like threadbare special effects work or the caliber of a cast) it cannot be used to justify a poorly written story. The film lacks drama. The characters who should get most of the screen-time, Joyce, is often pushed into the background. There are scenes that are in the film just to pad it out, like a 3 minute segment showing different agencies in DC passing the buck about who is responsible for the giant. It's a weird sequence that stops whatever forward momentum the film has and one that adds nothing to the story. The long, unneeded flashback (well, unneeded except to pad the movie run-time with recycled footage) is another scene that has nothing to do with the story and has no apparent impact on the character of Manning. It is there solely so Gordon could reuse footage. There are a number of scenes like this that exist to extend the film to feature length.

Not all of Gordon's work was like this. The Amazing Colossal Man is pretty good with Glenn Langan displaying some real pathos as the man slowly becoming an alien in his own body. Earth vs the Spider is a likeable enough romp, some decent effects and some fun moments of giant spider action. Even Beginning of the End (showcased in one of the best MST3K episodes) had decent acting by the Beginning was literally achieved by having grasshoppers crawl on photographs). While Gordon never made a really great movie, he did make films that tried to be entertaining. Unfortunately, War of the Colossal Beast is just lazy.

Notes

Even though it continues the story of The Amazing Colossal Man, Beast has a different cast and wasn't marketed as sequel.

Verdict

Beast straddles the line between so bad it's bad and so bad it's good. It is not one of Gordon's better films, mostly because of how, even at only 69 minutes long, it feels padded. It has some amusing moments and isn't a horrible way to spend an hour. However, if you want to check out a decent Gordon movie, check out The Amazing Colossal Man or Earth vs The Spider.

Check out the trailer.