IT! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)
Starring Marshall Thompson, Shawn Smith and Kim Spalding

Before reviewing this movie, I should first explain the significance it has made on the world of motion pictures. Believe it or not, this movie was the inspiration for the movie Alien, starring Sigorney Weaver. This concludes its significance on the world of motion pictures.

As the movie opens, we see the crashed rocket ship Challenge 141 laying on the surface of Mars. The narrator, astronaut Col. Ed Carruthers, informs us the story is being told in the distant future -- 1973! A rescue ship (Yep, you guessed it...the Challenge 142) is now landing on Mars to bring Col. Ed back to Earth to await court marshal charges for killing his entire crew. Back in Washington, newspaper reporters are told the news. As soon as the press secretary informs the reporters, they all bolt out of their seats and run to telephone their editors. I can't imagine what they'll tell them because none of the reporters bothered to ask a single question! What could they have to write about?

Back at the rocket ship, we learn the root cause of all the impending chaos: LITTERING! When the commander asks why the air lock has been left open, an astronaut replies he was throwing empty crates out of the ship and, unbeknownst to him, a shadowy alien creeps aboard! On the rescue ship, the crew shows Col. Ed a human skull they found belonging to one of his slain crewman. The skull has a bullet hole through it, pointing the finger at poor, confused Col. Ed.

The commander of the Challenge 142 promises that by the end of the trip, he will have Ed's confession on tape! The very next scene shows the two of them in a room just looking out a window not saying a word. Hey commander, if you're going to get that confession, you'd better get started!

Col. Ed tells his side of the story to a female astronaut who has just brought him a sandwich! GEEZ, DIRECTOR ED CAHN, WHY DON'T YOU JUST MAKE THEM WEAR APRONS AND HAIR CURLERS?!! Ed explains that, during a dust storm on the surface of Mars, his crew were taken away by strange creatures. Naturally, Ed assumed firing blindly at the hostages would be the best thing to do! He concludes he must have accidentally shot one of his buddies in the head (NASA gave this guy command of the first mission to Mars?).

Meanwhile, a member of the crew hears a disturbance on the lower deck of the rocket and is savagely attacked by the alien! It doesn't take the crew long to notice he's missing. They decide to search the ship. The creature eventually picks off crewman #2 named "Gino." It's funny to hear one of the first men on Mars yelling, "Hey! You seen my brudda Gino? Gino! Hey, Gino!" I expected him to say, "When I find dat freakin' alien, I'm gonna bust his head open wit my aluminum bat!" In an attempt to find him, one guy says, "I'll crawl through this small passageway. I'll go because I know the layout in there!" Shouldn't ALL the astronauts know the layout in there?

Sure enough, Gino is indeed in the big drain pipe...I mean...high-tech passageway. But before poor half-dead Gino (who now has black paint around his eyes for some reason) can be rescued, the alien attacks! Luckily, "layout guy" drives him away with his NASA-issued revolver!

Just when it seems the crew is powerless to stop this rampaging alien, they discover a large wooden crate filled with hand grenades! What luck to have those on a space mission! One guy asks, "What are you gonna do with those?" He replies, "We can wire them up to the hatches!" So, while hurtling through space, they decide to detonate more than a dozen grenades. That shouldn't damage a fragile space vessel! Oh, that's right -- this is the 1950s. The rocket is probably made of concrete, I-beams and coated with pink, lead base paint!

Soon enough, the trap seems to have worked! The creature breaks through the hatches releasing the awesome power of all the grenades. Unfortunately, the explosions create little more than a flash pod of smoke and the creature is unfazed. THAT’S why it’s OK to have hand grenades on a rocket! The crew decides to climb down to the lower level to investigate. They find a metal door twisted and torn, seemingly by a pair of claws.

Suddenly the monster attacks, grabbing an astronaut's rifle out of his hands and bending it over his head! They are chased back up the stairs to the highest level of the rocket, trapped. Since the grenades didn’t work, they come up with another sensible plan. They decide to use gas bombs! Gas bombs on a rocket ship! Unconcerned with their own air supply, the astronauts don gas masks. They open the hatch and attack the creature with bullets and gas bombs as the alien struggles to make its way up the staircase. But alas, not even the gas can stop it. It forces the hatch open and attacks the astronauts. In one pretty cool scene, the beast lashes out, slashing a guy's boot wide open, tearing his flesh! Whether driven back by the gunfire, or because it was simply his "cue", the monster returns to the bottom levels.

In the next scene, we learn that astronauts simply have to know how to do EVERTHING, as one of them finishes an autopsy on crewman! They discover that every drop of fluid has been emptied from the body. They say it makes sense since Mars is void of water and therefore the creature needs moisture to survive.

The crew decides to ambush the creature. After careful planning, they decide to walk on the outside of the ship and sneak up on the creature from behind. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew is ordered to distract the Martian with "casual banter." But if you listen closely, the casual banter is really just the actors reciting dialogue from earlier scenes in the movie. At any rate, they lure the creature onto the staircase, which they've rigged with high voltage cables -- something else that apparently doesn't cause disruption on a rocket. The electric current does little more than sting the creature and the alien then turns on the crew, breaking the leg of an engineer. Only his small acetaline torch keeps the monster from killing him. So we've learned that a torch is not as powerful as a dozen hand grenades! That bit of information might have helped during WWII.

When the alien wanders into the reactor room, they quickly close the door, trapping him inside. The injured astronaut, in his delirium, decides to release radiation from the reactor even though it endangers the crew. Again, even though a little torch brings terrible pain to the creature, bazillions of degrees of radiation doesn't faze it.

Imagine this next scene: The crew is trapped on the rocket's top level. The camera slowly pans across the frightened faces of the crew and the last astronaut is suddenly armed with...hold on to your hat...a BAZOOKA!!! NASA packed a freaking bazooka on a space mission! The astronauts come up with a plan even better than exploding grenades! They
decide to let all the oxygen out of the rocket in an attempt to suffocate the creature, concluding they can always turn the air back on later for themselves!

As soon as the creature reaches the top level, they open fire with the bazooka, but it has no effect on the monster. The pilot opens the airlock. But instead of the rocket blowing up from explosive decompression, the creature slowly suffocates. At the end of the movie we're back in the briefing room for an update. The crew is alive and they've brought us this message: "Another name for Mars is death!"

And another name for "your acting career is dead" is...IT! The Terror From Beyond Space!