ALL SCI-FI

[Morbius]

I saw this movie in a theater with my dad when I was 10. As I recall the most frightening aspect was that the monster could not be killed and could penetrate with relative ease the various levels of the spaceship.

Ultimately without a means to kill it the crew was facing a very bleak future and this to me was the most frightening aspect. When the creature cannot be killed, this is the worst possible outcome in a child’s mind or at least for me.

Same thing with the blob. Early on in the movie there was no way to kill it.

These movies are supposed to convey a sense of security and hope by the time they end. Imagine if the creature killed all the crew that would be a truly horrible ending.

Same thing with the blob, eventually it absorbs everybody in the world and the globe is just encased in red jelly.

These prospects for a child were most frightening. So, I was glad to realize that towards the end of the movie there was a solution to the problem in both movies. Once they figured out that the creature was consuming large amounts of air, I knew there would be a solution, and when the Blob could be frozen, I knew there was a solution.

Phew, that was close.

[Bud Brewster]

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Let's Create a Sequel!
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~ A Question for the Members: I dislike pessimistic stories which depict the darker side of mankind.

But perhaps the only sequel to this movie should be one which sticks with the Alien movies it allegedly inspired.

So, should we design a sequel similar to the idea in Alien, in which the "Weapons Division" of Wayland Industries attempts to capture all the surviving Martians we see in this movie and turn them into super-soldiers?

~ Here's what I came up with.: Obviously the answer to this question is yes, since the Alien franchise did that very thing.

But since we're "turning back the clock" and creating an imaginary 1950s sequel, we've got to make it distinctly different from Ridley Scott's later versions.

Therefore, let's do what the Alien movies never did!

The warmonger authorities bring a few dozen of these nasty Martians back to Earth with the idea of turning them in "super soldiers" who could be unleashed on the enemies of our country!

Sound like a great strategy, right? Hell no, of course not!

The plot twist here is that these creatures prove to be smarter than their captors imagined after they escape from their hi-tech confinement.

The rest of the story is all about the ruthless military men who just want to hunt down and destroy the escaped Martians — and the more rational scientist who realize these terrifying creatures might be intelligent enough to reason with!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

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By gum, I'd forgotten about the "imaginary sequel" I'd already posted on page 1 of this thread back in February of 2018!

It has a few similarities to your concept, including the "fort for protection" you mentioned. The quote below is how I described it. I modified the image below to put an electrified fence around it.

[Bud Brewster]

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TCM aired this movie on November 27th, 2021, and Ben Mankiewicz made his usual great introduction, mentioning that it inspired the blockbuster hit, Alien in 1979 — which TCM aired immediately after this one.

Ben discusses the fact that this movie was a low-budget B-movie which lacked state-of-the-art special effects.

In all fairness, some of the FX are state-of-the-art, while others are not. And the worst of these are that lousy monster suit!

With that in mind, I propose that an enhance version of this movie could be made using CGI to replace all the embarrassingly bad scenes of the clumsy monster.

A more slender, agile creature would work better than the bulky alien who was supposed to crawl around in the ship's air ducts.

Forgive me for promoting my artwork yet again, but a good CGI crew could take designs like the ones below and improve this movie by making the alien lith and agile — instead of a lumbering Frankenstein monster!




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Ridley Scott knew the alien creature needed to be slime and spidery, and that's exactly what this movie needs too. Enhancing it with CGI would be complicated, but I think the result would be spectacular.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

The Martian was a Paul Blaisdell creation, and a good looking monster. The big problem with the costume is that Ray Corrigan refused to show up to be fitted for the costume. This forced Mr. Blaisdell to work from measurements that were given to him. As a result, the Martian head was too small, and Mr. Corrigan's chin stuck out of the mouth. The solution was to paint Mr. Corrigan's chin to look like a tongue.

A problem with electric fences is that they can be shorted out when grounded. If a Martin got stuck on the fence, it could short the fence out. Then all you have is the fence trying to stop a creature that can punch through a metal pressure hatch.

I read recently that a better choice for colonization would be Titan. It has resources, maybe even water, and an atmosphere where you wouldn't need a pressure suit. Just one with really good insulation and a respirator. The downside is that with current technology, it would take seven years to get there.

David.

[Pow]

It! The Terror from Beyond has been cited as the inspiration for the Dan O'Bannon screenplay for the classic Ridley Scott science fiction-horror movie Alien.

Jerome Bixby who wrote the script for It!, might have been influenced, in turn, by the A.E. Von Vogt book, The Voyage of the Space Beagle. In that novel, a massive exploration spaceship discovers an intelligent, starving carnivore on another world. The creature, known as a Coeurl, sneaks on board the ship and begins killing crew members. It also implants its parasitic eggs in humans.

20th Century Fox was sued by Van Vogt for plagiarism, the suit was settled out of court.

The movie had about a $100,000 budget with a six-day shoot.

Final film of Ray "Crash" Corrigan.

Corrigan refused to travel to the film's makeup artist Paul Blaisdell's Topanga Canyon home and studio. Paul was then unable to take exact measurements of Ray's head when devising the alien mask. Once filming began, there were problems with making the mask prop properly fit upon Ray's head. Ray's bulbous chin stuck out of the mask's mouth, so Paul added a row of fangs on Ray's chin in an attempt to cover up the glaring issue.

Ray came onto the set a few times drunk, refused to follow directions at times, and damaged the monster suit.

Actress Shawn Smith was constantly in a foul mood. She was furious at having been cast in a low-budget monster movie.
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Now this sounds like one big fun production to have worked on.

[Bud Brewster]

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I've never been a big fan of the original Alien, or any of its sequels. I prefer this movie because of the likable characters.

I guess I'm just a Cock-eyed Optimist!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

The monster suit was reused in "Invisible Invaders". In the scene where they capture one of the dead and use sound to make the Invader leave the body, the Martian suit was used to show the Invaders true form.

David.

[Pow]

Let's see what the late Bill Warren had to say about IT in his marvelously written book Keep Watching the Skies!

"Although a low-budget film, this has an unusually good idea, and is well-made for its budget level, resulting in an above-average exploitation thriller. It's not outstanding on any level, and is routinely developed with performances that are rarely better than adequate, but in a period of declining quality in SF movies, this film does deserve some credit for a job well done."

"The script of It! The Terror from Beyond Space was by Jerome Bixby, a sometime science fiction writer. It is, in fact, the first produced SF film after Project Moonbase to be written by a practicing science fiction writer."

"Actually, while his output is large, little is actually science fiction; he only wrote it for about ten years. His best known story was "It's a Good Life" (1953), about a child with incredible powers who holds a town in thrall. It was dramatized on "Twilight Zone" and was also redone by Joe Dante for Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). Although competent enough by the standards of the 50s, and occasionally showing some wit and imagination, Bixby cannot be considered a major figure in the field of SF."

Note from Pow: Jerome Bixby's episode for the Twilight Zone is one of the finest ones the series ever produced. It remains a favorite among critics and fans to this very day. Bixby provided the story for the epic sci-fi film, Fantastic Voyage. Bixby would write the popular Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror." So Bixby was notable to some degree with his works.

"The copy of the script I have is dated November 11, 1957, and seems to be first draft. In this draft, Bixby is scrupulously careful to be logical and scientifically reasonable throughout. His structure is awkward: the entire story is in flashback. However, his script is more ambitious and intelligent than the film that resulted."

"Bixby admitted that The Thing from Another World, a film he greatly admires, was one of the key inspirations for his story, which is essentially the same as that of the Howard Hawks film, with the monster and all his potential victims aboard a spaceship instead of trapped in an Arctic research base."

"Both Bixby's original and final script err in revealing to the audience that there really is a monster aboard the ship. The film would have worked better if we simply had not seen the feet in the early scene. No one seeing the film thought there would not be a monster --- the title is more than a hint there is one --- but to withhold it, giving only clues that it's there, would have built a kind of entertaining if bogus suspense."

"The actors don't seem to have had much guidance. They're mostly on their own. With pros like Marshall Thompson, Ann Doran, Dabbs Greer and Paul Langton, this doesn't present a problem. But Kim Spalding is weak as the other male lead, and no one has made an attempt to hide his ineptitude."

"It's a conventional film; there is little camera movement and the camera often seems too far from the actors, making the action seem remote. Aboard a spaceship, there should have been a feeling of claustrophobia. There is occasionally a try for this feeling, but this only used below decks and only when the monster is at large. There's some attempt at creating a suspenseful atmosphere by means of shadows, but this is inconsistent. And the film has long dull spots here and there. The movie is still above average for a film of this nature, and has an original (if derivative) idea."

"The monster suit in the film was designed by Paul Blaisdell, but may have been constructed by someone else. It has most of the virtues and flaws of Blaisdell's work: an interesting basic concept, a silly face, and a generally cumbersome look. When Bixby saw the suit, he rewrote the script to keep the monster in the shadows most of the time."

"Bixby had made the creature quick, frighteningly quick in its movements in his script. It is one thing he wanted very much, and instead they stuck Ray Corrigan into the suit. He had been playing gorillas for twenty years in films. And that was the way the creature was portrayed, as lumbering and slow, except for two scenes where he acted very quickly."

"As it is, the effects here are elementary but occasionally ambitious. It! The Terror from Beyond Space is a fairly tidy little picture. It presents a problem, raises possibilities as to how to solve it, and finally solves it in an irritating burst of inspiration. No one would ever mistake this film for a classic, but it was adequate entertainment, and much above average for the level of SF films of its period."

[Bud Brewster]

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Pow, I want thank your for posting Mr. Warren's detailed and gruesome autopsy of this enjoyable movie from the 1950s.

Frankly, I enjoyed your comments in the middle of Warren's review better than Mr. Warren's somewhat bloated "Big Word Fest". He works too hard to impress his readers on how knowledgeable he is on the subject, and how large his vocabulary is.

But he does NOT do what you and the rest of us on All Sci-Fi do when discussing movies like It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Simply put, he doesn't see them through the eyes of childhood.

Films like this where classics because they inspired the youths of the 1950s to dream big and look at the night sky with a feeling of wonder and awe. Gentlemen, that dream put men on the Moon!

None of Bill's lofty criticisms would have been understood by the young people who saw this movie in 1958 — and they were ones it was made for!

It was almost like he was criticizing a Dr. Seuss book because it hadn't been illustrated by Frank Frazetta!



Any film critic worth his salt would focus his review on the audience for which the movie had been made. I regret to say that Mr. Warren wrote his review for readers his own age — most of whom had lost their childhood sense of wonder and awe.

Happily . . . I have not.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[WadeVC]

[WadeVC]

It, the Terror from beyond Space is a enjoyable movie that sits in my "Purchased" cue on Amazon for viewing time and again.

I love the alien, albeit a little hokey, but love it just the same. I love the "Trapped in a Spaceship" concept this film delivers, and the story and acting are just great, IMHO.

A fun Sci-Fi movie that never gets old, and one of the most watched movies in my collection.
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"You look like a pooped out pinwheel."
-Robot Monster