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‘It! …Reaches through space! …Scoops up men and women! … gorges on blood!’
It! The Terror from Beyond Space is a 1958 sci-fi horror film about a rocket ship invaded by an unknown life form.
The movie was directed by Edward L. Cahn (Zombies of Mora Tau; Curse of the Faceless Man; Invisible Invaders) from a screenplay by Jerome Bixby (The Twilight Zone ‘It’s a Good Life’; Tales of Frankenstein; Fantastic Voyage). Produced by Robert E. Kent and [uncredited] Edward Small, the Vogue Pictures film was released by United Artists.
The movie stars Marshall Thompson (Cult of the Cobra; First Man into Space), Shawn Smith (The Land Unknown), Kim Spalding, Ann Doran, Dabbs Greer (Evil Town; Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat), Paul Langton (The Cosmic Man) and Robert Bice. It! was played by Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan, previously a specialist at being on screen gorillas.
Plot:
In 1973, a spaceship landed on the planet Mars, sent to rescue the crew of a previous, ill-fated mission to the Red Planet; they have found only one survivor, Colonel Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson). He is suspected of having murdered the other nine members of his crew for their food and water rations because he would have no way of knowing if or when he would ever be rescued. Carruthers denies this allegation and pleads his innocence, blaming the deaths of his colleagues on an unknown, hostile life-form encountered on Mars.
The rescue ship’s commander remains unconvinced, ordering Carruthers confined to his quarters and an immediate return to Earth, a journey that will take four months. Unknown to the rest of the crew, and before their blast-off from Mars, a crew member has left a large external exhaust vent wide open for a prolonged period of time.
With Mars now behind them, the crew settles into their shipboard routine for the long journey back home. Before long things start to go wrong. One by one, isolated crew members are attacked by a largely unseen, shadowy presence and dragged away into the ship’s ventilation ducts…
In 1993 It! was adapted by Millennium Publications as a comics series by Mark Ellis and Dean Zachary; a further comic book adaptation was released by IDW in 2010.
The premise of a hostile alien creature hunting a spaceship’s crew as it returns to Earth was allegedly the inspiration for screenwriter Dan O’Bannon’s screenplay for Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien although this has been repeatedly denied.
Buy Blu-ray: Amazon.co.uk
Buy on Olive Films Blu-ray from Amazon.com
Technical specs:
1 hour 9 minutes
Black and white
Aspect ratio: 1.85: 1
Audio: Mono
Trailer:
Clip:
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