[HorrorScience] It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

Reading time: 5 minutes

Item! The Terror from Beyond Space

Duration

68 minutes

Director

Edward L. Cahn

Distribution

Marshall Thompson, Shirley Patterson, Kim Spalding, Ann Doran, Dabbs Greer, Paul Langton, Robert Bice, Richard Benedict, Richard Hervey, Thom Carney, Ray Corrigan

Script

Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othenin-Girard, Shem Bitterman

American science fiction films were tremendously numerous between the 50s and 60s. Space was the fashionable topic and everyone wanted to show it in their own way or rather, in the way they could, since the low budget was one of the constants in this type of films.

Since there is such a high number of them, we can find films of all kinds and there are few that would survive a critical viewing, since the minimum requirements in realism or interpretation were not a constant.

However, there is another thing that can be valued about these films and that is his legacy and influence. A bad film does not become good because it inspired a better one, but it undoubtedly shows that where some only saw failures, there is something good, which can be polished and exploited to give us something better. How many bad movies have screenwriters and directors watched who went on to create masterpieces?

In the case of Item! The Terror from Beyond Space (translated in Spanish-speaking countries as The terror of the afterlife and The threat of another world) we meet the seed of what ended up becoming Alien (1978) by Ridley Scott.

A spaceship is sent to Mars on a rescue mission, as the previous ship had problems and only one of its crew has survived. The strange deaths and disappearances of the other pilots suggest that the survivor, Edward Carruthers, killed the rest of the crew to be able to survive longer with the provisions they had left.

Edward defends his innocence, but is unable to explain what happened to the rest of the crew, mainly because he is not sure how the rest of his companions disappeared, he only knows that they saw something on Mars and tried to destroy it, without much success.

Surrounded by the contempt of several crew members and always under surveillance, Carruthers hears a strange noise coming from another section of the ship. When they go to investigate they discover that one member of the crew has disappeared and a few minutes later, another suffers the same fate. Apparently, When the ship landed on Mars it took off with an unexpected passenger.

[HorrorScience] It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) — Crew members start turning up dead

Item! The Terror from beyond Space It's a hell of a movie and as such it has things that I liked and others that made me feel more sad than anything else.

The actors are quite pitiful in general terms, the creature's costume is quite bad, the special effects of the ship flying through space could be improved, the behavior of the crew is too casual to be on a spaceship (they smoke, drink and even throw grenades inside the ship) and an attempt is made to include a forced and unnecessary romance that fortunately comes to nothing.

On the other hand, we find that the unfortunate appearance of the creature is compensated by showing in most scenes only a part of it playing with the shadows. The interior of the ship is generic, but quite interesting (also, as they say, it was always the same decoration rearranged in a different way). The unscientific attitude of the crew contrasts with some explanations about the possible feeding of the creature and with very curious scenes (such as the one in which they walk along the outside of the ship outside the ship). I also find it notable to comment that the women of the crew are not only there to serve coffee and be the romantic interest of the protagonist, they are also scientists, and one of them is older than expected in this type of films, which gives it a certain realism. Another thing I consider good about the film is its short duration (one hour) and its final moral, warning us of the dangers of traveling through space.

So in general terms, the film has notable flaws and things that will make us shake our heads, but it also shows a certain interest in keeping us in suspense and try to offer something slightly different from what was seen in similar films of its time, thanks to the fact that its plot revolves around what we could call “space slasher” and that is precisely what has lasted in the memory and what undeniably influenced the scriptwriters of Alien.

Some curiosities about the film:

The screenwriter of this film, Jerome Bixby, ended up working on the classic series of Star Trek
There are two comic book collections based on this film, one published by Milennium Publications in 1992 and another by IDW Publishing in 2010.