Entry Forty-Seven: It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)

It!  The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)

Dir: Edward L. Cahn

"The revelation shocker of things to come!"

 

These next few entries are going to follow a theme, as I ramp up to my GIANT-SIZE 50th entry!  Can you guess what it is (I won't make it too terribly difficult for you...)?  Tonight, the Basement of Sleaze journeys to the stars to combat It!  The Terror From Beyond Space!

When America's first manned expedition to Mars goes awry, leaving only one survivor, a rescue mission is launched.  Arriving on the red planet, they discover the sole survivor of the previous mission, Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson, Fiend Without a Face, Bog).  Carruthers insists that his crew were slaughtered by an alien being, but asshole mission leader Calder (Paul Langton, The Incredible Shrinking Man, They Were Expendable-the first war movie I ever watched with my old man!) refuses to believe the story and insists that Carruthers is a stone-cold murderer.  When an airlock is left adjacent (How are they not all dead?), the very-real creature described by Carruthers sneaks aboard and begins offing the crew one-by-one...While Carruthers puts the moves on sexy first mate Ann Anderson (Shirley Patterson, World Without End, the original Batman serial), the crew discovers that the creature is using the air ducts to move around and sets a grenade-rigged trap.  The strong-as-shit creature proves impervious to the grenades and demonstrates it's fortitude by bending a rifle in half.  Engineer Eric (Dabbs Greer, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and...ahem...Con Air) rigs up some gas canisters, but these too prove ineffectual.  The creature feeds on human flesh and continues to menace the crew by ripping through steel doors like cardboard.  After being touched by the alien, Calder comes down with a strange alien virus and, in desperation, the remaining functional crewmen hatch a plan to herd the beast through the ducts and flush it into the airlock.  When they fuck that up, they attempt to kill it but unshielding the ships nuclear power source, but that only results in the death of one of their own.  Finally, they all don space suits and suck the air out of the ship, suffocating the creature. 

This ultra low-budget fifties creature feature is unique amongst it's brethren for being TOO bright; a little murkiness might've generated a bit more atmosphere.  Director Cahn also lingers way too long on the silly-looking creature suit (it sort of resembles the excellent, timeless monster suit from Creature from the Black Lagoon as redesigned by a twelve year-old and left under a heat lamp for several days).  The male performances are all of the clipped, this-is-how-military-men-sound variety of the day, and the women are helpless, shrinking violets.  This movie is perhaps best known today for having it's plot partially lifted by Dan O'Bannon for his screenplay for Alien (but he drastically improved on it).  At only 70 minutes in length, does this even count as a feature?