IT THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE

Peekaboo! The Martian monster on the loose

IT, THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958). Director: Edward L. Cahn. Screenplay by Jerome Bixby.

An expedition to Mars picks up the sole survivor, Lt. Carruthers (Marshall Thompson), of the first team to reach the planet. Carruthers is suspected of murdering his team mates so the food would last longer, but he insists they were actually decimated by a ferocious monster [but what about that bullet hole in a skull? everyone wonders]. Said monster becomes a stowaway on  the voyage back to Earth, and pretty soon this new crew discovers Carruthers was telling the truth. The creature absorbs all of the bodily fluids from his victims via osmosis, and is amazingly strong as well. It, an obvious forerunner of Alien, is a taut, adroit little B movie that builds up suspense as the surviving crew members do everything they can think of to stay alive and destroy the monster. Bixby wrote the classic horror story "It's a Good Life" that was adapted by The Twilight Zone. The competent cast members [who sometimes seem to be holding back laughter]  include Shawn Smith [The Land Unknown], Ann Doran, Kim Spalding as the captain, and Dabbs Greer [The Vampire] as a science officer. Thompson appeared in First Man Into Space and many other films of various genres. Cahn directed 125 movies; Bixby wrote a lot for television but did only a few full-length screenplays.

Verdict: Lively, low-budget sci fi horror. ***.

THE LOST MISSILE

THE LOST MISSILE (1958). Director: William Berke. Screenplay by Berke and Jerome Bixby. 

The movie has a great idea and not a bad script but with a 99 cent budget and probably a shooting schedule of about a week it never realizes its potential. A racing explosive deadly missile of unknown origin, possibly extraterrestrial, appears out of nowhere and is on its way to New York (obliterating poor Ottawa along the way). This is the day that Dr. David Loring (Robert Loggia) wants to marry his girlfriend Joan (Ellen Parker), and the same day that another scientist's wife is having a baby. All of this takes a back seat to the fact that New York has to be evacuated in record time, and there seems to be no way to destroy the missile -- or is there? Alas, there's only so much you can do with stock footage (and there's a lot of it) and a lack of directorial panache. Ottawa is destroyed with a few shots of people falling down beneath a fiery beam or something, and there are reasonably well-staged scenes of panic in the subway and elsewhere. One scene that should have been powerful is when one character is exposed to deadly plutonium, dooming him, as the woman who loves him -- unable to touch him for one last time -- watches in horror. This probably worked a lot better on paper than it does on the screen. Too bad. The performances are generally solid. 

Verdict: Watchable but minor-league sci fi. **.