It!

The Terror from Beyond Space

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It! The Terror from Beyond Space

Directed by

Edward L. Cahn Robert Kent Edward Small (uncredited) Jerome Bixby Marshall Thompson

Produced by

Written by

Starring

Shawn Smith (Shirley Patterson) Kim Spalding

Music by Cinematography Editing by

Paul Sawtell Kenneth Peach Grant Whytock

Distributed by Release dates Running time Language

United Artists August 13, 1958 68 min English

It! The Terror from Beyond Space is an independently made 1958 black and white science fiction film that was produced by Robert Kent, directed by Edward L. Cahn, and released by United Artists.[1]

Contents

1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 4 Adaptations 5 References 6 Additional reading 7 External links

Plot
The film opens with a nuclear-powered spaceship perched on the cratered surface of an alien world. A voice-over tells us the year is 1973, that the world is the planet Mars, and the perched spaceship has been sent to rescue the crew of a previous, ill-fated mission to the Red Planet; they have found only one survivor, Col. 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. He offers up the first incident: Caught on the surface during a blinding Martian sandstorm, one of his crew mates was quickly plucked from their moving transport vehicle by something unseen, "It" running fast enough to keep pace. The rescue ship's commander remains unconvinced, ordering Carruthers confined to quarters and an immediate return to Earth. 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 trip home, a four-month journey. Before long things begin to go wrong: One by one, isolated crew members are attacked by a largely unseen, shadowy presence and dragged away, still alive, into the ship's ventilation ducts.

As the return trip progresses, the crew are at first skeptical that something has come aboard while they were on Mars. But the body count begins to rise when they discover the shriveled corpse of a colleague and then another near death; both have been sucked almost dry of all moisture, including bone marrow. Mars is a world with almost no water, so the crew reason their stowaway must be the same creature that hunted and eventually killed Carruthers' shipmates. They arm themselves with various weapons aboard, including conventional .45 caliber sidearms. The humanoid alien proves largely immune to their weaponry. They finally lure "It" into the spaceship's nuclear reactor room, quickly shutting and locking its heavily shielded door behind the creature, which is then exposed directly to the ship's nuclear pile. Heavily agitated, the creature crashes through the heavy door and escapes, the intense radiation seemingly having no more effect than an old-fashioned hot foot. As the number of crew dwindles, the survivors retreat upward, deck-by-deck, in their spaceship as "It" pursues them. The alien is strong enough to eventually break through each of deck's central floor pressure hatches. Eventually, they are trapped on the topmost deck, the spaceship's central control room. In the final standoff weapons are unleashed in the confined space, both pistols and hand grenades, but the creature is unstoppable and begins breaking through the last deck hatch. Having noticed that the ship's oxygen consumption level is much higher than normal, likely due to the creature's larger lung capacity, Carruthers deduces that opening the command deck's large airlock to the vacuum of space, while the survivors are safely in their spacesuits, should suffocate "It." After an explosive decompression, they see the plan is working; the creature writhes around, growling and panting heavily for air. "It" finally expires, stuck halfway through the last shattered hatch. Back on Earth a press conference is quickly held at the crew's base that reveals the details of what has happened aboard the rescue ship after it left Mars. More importantly, the project director announces that Earth may now be forced to leave the Red Planet out of all future manned planetary space exploration, "because another word for Mars is death."

Cast

Marshall Thompson as Col. Edward Carruthers Shirley Patterson as Ann Anderson (as Shawn Smith) Kim Spalding as Van Heusen Ann Doran as Mary Royce Dabbs Greer as Eric Royce Paul Langton as Calder Robert Bice as Purdue Richard Benedict as Bob Finelli Richard Hervey as Gino Thom Carney as Kienholz Ray Corrigan as It

Production
The film was financed by Edward Small. It was originally known as It! The Vampire from Beyond Space.[2]

Adaptations
In 1993 It! was adapted by Millennium Publications as a comics series by Mark Ellis and Dean Zachary; a further comics adaption was released by IDW in 2010. The premise of a hostile alien creature hunting a spaceship's crew as it returns to Earth was the inspiration for screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's screenplay of Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien.[1]

References^ Jump up to:

Maek III, J.C. (2012-11-21). "Building the Perfect Star Beast: The Antecedents of 'Alien'". PopMatters. 1. Jump up ^ Kristin' Seen as Challenge: Kaufman Phones Terry Moore; 'Diamonds' Polished for Laage Scheuer, Philip K. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 21 Nov 1957: C11.

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Additional readingStrick, Philip. Science Fiction Movies. Octopus Books

Limited. 1976. ISBN 0-7064-0470-X.

Warren, Bill. Keep Watching the Skies: American Science Fiction Films of the Fifties, 21st Century Edition. 2009. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-89950032-3.

External linksIt! The Terror from Beyond Space at the Internet Movie Database

It! The Terror from Beyond Space at allmovie It! The Terror from Beyond Space at the TCM Movie Database

Selected filmography of director Edward L. Cahn

Homicide Squad (1931) Law and Order (1932) Laughter in Hell (1933) Death Drives Through (1935) The Omaha Trail (1942, uncredited) Gas House Kids in Hollywood (1947)

1930s/1940s

1950s

Destination Murder (1950)

Experiment Alcatraz (1950) Two-Dollar Bettor (1951) Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) Girls in Prison (1956) The She Creature (1956) Shake, Rattle & Rock! (1956) Runaway Daughters (1956) Flesh and the Spur (1957) Voodoo Woman (1957) Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) Dragstrip Girl (1957) Motorcycle Gang (1957) Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) Jet Attack (1958) Suicide Battalion (1958) Curse of the Faceless Man (1958) It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) Hong Kong Confidential (1958) The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959) Guns, Girls, and Gangsters (1959) Inside the Mafia (1959) Invisible Invaders (1959) Pier 5, Havana (1959) Riot in Juvenile Prison (1959)

Vice Raid (1960) Cage of Evil (1960) Dog's Best Friend (1960) Gunfighters of Abilene (1960) The Music Box Kid (1960) Noose for a Gunman (1960)

1960s

Oklahoma Territory (1960) Three Came to Kill (1960) Twelve Hours to Kill (1960) The Walking Target (1960) Boy Who Caught a Crook (1961) Frontier Uprising (1961) Five Guns to Tombstone (1961) Police Dog Story (1961) Operation Bottleneck (1961) Gun Fight (1961) The Gambler Wore a Gun (1961) When the Clock Strikes (1961) You Have the Run Fast (1961) Secret of Deep Harbor (1961) Gun Street (1962) The Clown and the Kid (1962) Incident in an Alley (1962) Beauty and the Beast (1962)

Films produced by Edward Small

Who's Your Neighbor? (1917) The Sporting Lover (1926) The Cohens and the Kellys (1926) The Gorilla (1927) McFadden's Flats (1927) Ladies' Night in a Turkish Bath (1928) The Cohens and the Kellys in Paris (1928) My Man (1928) Companionate Marriage (1928) Song of Love (1929)

1910-20s

Clancy in Wall Street (1930) Igloo (1932) I Cover the Waterfront (1933) Palooka (1933) The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934) The Legion of Valour (1935) Red Salute (1935) The Melody Lingers On (1935) The Last of the Mohicans (1936) The Bride Walks Out (1936) We Who Are About to Die (1937) Sea Devils (1937) New Faces of 1937 (1937) Super-Sleuth (1937) The Toast of New York (1937) The Duke of West Point (1938) King of the Turf (1939) The Man in the Iron Mask (1939)

1930s

My Son, My Son! (1940) The Son of Monte Cristo (1940) South of Pago Pago (1940) Kit Carson (1940) International Lady (1941) The Corsican Brothers (1941) A Gentleman After Dark (1942) Twin Beds (1942) Miss Annie Rooney (1942) Friendly Enemies (1942) Up in Mabel's Room (1944)

1940s

Abroad with Two Yanks (1944) Brewster's Millions (1945) Getting Gertie's Garter (1945) Temptation (1946) The Return of Monte Cristo (1946) T-Men (1947) The Black Arrow (1948) The Fuller Brush Man (1948) Raw Deal (1948) Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) Black Magic (1949)

Davy Crockett, Indian Scout (1950) The Iroquois Trail (1950) Valentino (1951) Lorna Doone (1951) The Texas Rangers (1951) Indian Uprising (1952) Scandal Sheet (1952) The Brigand (1952) Cripple Creek (1952) Kansas City Confidential (1952) Bandits of Corsica (1953) Captain John Smith and Pocahontas (1953) Dragon's Gold (1953) Gun Belt (1953) The Neanderthal Man (1953) 99 River Street (1953) Raiders of the Seven Seas (1953) Sabre Jet (1953) The Steel Lady (1953)

1950s

Wicked Woman (1953) Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl (1954) Khyber Patrol (1954) The Lone Gun (1954) Overland Pacific (1954) Return to Treasure Island (1954) Southwest Passage (1954) Down Three Dark Streets (1954) New York Confidential (1955) The Naked Street (1955) Top Gun (1955) Comanche (1955) Gun Brothers (1956) UFO (1956) Chicago Confidential (1957) Five Steps to Danger (1957) Gun Duel in Durango (1957) The Iron Sheriff (1957) Monkey on My Back (1957) Curse of the Faceless Man (1958) Hong Kong Confidential (1958) It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) Toughest Gun in Tombstone (1958) Witness for the Prosecution (1958) The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959) Guns, Girls, and Gangsters (1959) Inside the Mafia (1959) Invisible Invaders (1959) Pier 5, Havana (1959) Riot in Juvenile Prison (1959) Solomon and Sheba (1959)

Timbuktu (1959) (had name removed from credits) Vice Raid (1959)

Cage of Evil (1960) Dog's Best Friend (1960) Gunfighters of Abilene (1960) The Music Box Kid (1960) Noose for a Gunman (1960) Oklahoma Territory (1960) Three Came to Kill (1960) The Walking Target (1960) Boy Who Caught a Crook (1961) The Cat Burglar (1961) Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961) Frontier Uprising (1961) Five Guns to Tombstone (1961) The Flight that Disappeared (1961) The Gambler Wore a Gun (1961) Gun Fight (1961) Mary Had a Little... (1961) Operation Bottleneck (1961) Police Dog Story (1961) Secret of Deep Harbor (1961) The Snake Woman (1961) Three on a Spree (1961) When the Clock Strikes (1961) You Have to Run Fast (1961) The Greengage Summer (1961) Beauty and the Beast (1962) The Clown and the Kid (1962) Deadly Duo (1962)

1960s

Gun Street (1962) Incident in an Alley (1962) Jack the Giant Killer (1962) Saintly Sinners (1962) Tower of London (1962) Diary of a Madman (1963) Twice Told Tales (1963) I'll Take Sweden (1965) Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966) Frankie and Johnny (1966) The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968) The File of the Golden Goose (1969) The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=It!_The_Terror_from_Beyond_Space&oldid =588084346" Categories:

1958 films English-language films 1950s horror films 1950s science fiction films Films about extraterrestrial life Films directed by Edward Cahn Films set in 1973 Films set in the future Monster movies Science fiction horror films United Artists films

Source Material: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It!_The_Terror_from_Beyond_Space More Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051786/ http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/22852/It-The-Terror-from-Beyond-Space/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzGEFWAi5ZA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WncV1eIOZRU