In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1958 space horror film “It! The Terror from Beyond Space,” considered one of several key influences on the 1979 classic “Alien.”
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And I am Joe McCormick.
And this week on Weird House Cinema, we're continuing some of our alien related explorations with a film that is frequently cited as one of the b movie influences on alienscribe Dan O'Bannon, along with the likes of Mario Bob as Planning the Vampires, which we've discussed in the show before, but this week we're talking about it The Terror from Beyond Space.
If you couldn't tell from the way Rob said it, there is an exclamation point in the middle of the title. I love midline punctuation other than a colon in a title like it's this is two sentences.
Yes, I think we could have fit a question mark in there as well, though, like it the Terror from Beyond Space, we don't know.
I really liked this movie, but I feel like the title is misleading. In what way is the Terror from Beyond Space? It's just like a thing somewhere out there in space. It's from another planet, a known planet.
Actually, well, I guess you know. At this point, maybe people had seen enough movies where the terror is from space and they're like, well, can we get beyond that? What's the next logical step?
It suggests some kind of like interdimensional love crafty and sort of origin. It's not there. This is the Terror is from Mars.
Yes. I really like some of the posters for this particular movie. One of them that I pulled up and included in our notes here is the nice horizontal poster we see some version of the monster holding a woman. Of course, one of the classic staples of the old Monster movie is one that I love, and I love some of the promises on this particular poster. It says it reaches through space. It scoops up men and women. It gorgeous on blood.
Now is there any way to reach other than through space? I guess one could reach through time, possibly with one's mind or something.
Yeah, yeah, I guess I'll reached through space. Is it reached through time? I'm not sure.
But it scoops up men and women, It scoops them.
Here's the thing. It definitely scoops up men. Does it ever scoop up a woman?
I don't recall it scooping. No, it's gonna get men multiple times.
Yeah. Another case where the monster holding a woman is a complete lie on the poster.
Yeah, I was trying to think, what's the name of the wrestling move that it does with the guy where it just like fully like you know, presses a guy above above its head.
That is fitting least, I believe, sometimes called a gorilla press, which is fitting because, as we'll discuss, we have a veteran gorilla suit actor playing our monster.
It the Terror from Beyond Space aka Mars, has a sort of a gorilla esque silhouette, especially in some shots.
Absolutely, and the silhouettes work really well. This is a movie that has a i think, especially for the time, a pretty great monster costume. There's some flaws, as we'll discuss, that weren't necessarily within the control of the monster suit maker, but more importantly, one of I mean, the most important thing about a monster suit is you've got to you got to shoot it right, you gotta light it correctly, you gotta know what to show and what not to show. And they don't do that perfectly in this film either, but there are moments where it works really well.
I agree. The movie has a pretty good understanding of how to use how to use shadows, and how to obscure the monster so as to heighten the suspense, and to use what looks good about the monster performance and try to avoid what doesn't look so good about it. And in fact, you may recall the director of this movie, Edward L. Kahn, also directed another movie we did on Weird House, the Creature with the Adam Brain, and that that was a hoot. Of course, that one I think was much funnier than this movie. This one I think overall works better on its own terms when taken more seriously, But in both cases the director was good at using like shadows of the creature instead of a direct shot of the creature.
Yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's obviously a lower budget late fifties affair, but still it's a fun and an effective ride. Like not everything is great, but everything comes together enough that it has this kind of structural integrity, the structural completeness that is very enjoyable, especially when you consider that this film was shot in well as many as two weeks. I've seen two weeks sighted, but I've also seen six days sided as the shooting period for this picture I.
Think isn't that what John Carpenter said about it in the interview we watched.
Yeah, Carpenter in let's see what was this? A twenty fifteen appearance on Turner Classic Movies. He says it was shot in six days, which does not seem unreasonable given what we know about the director and productions of this time period.
It's a fun interview Carpenter does about the movie because he clearly has great affection for it. This is something he saw as a child, and it's stuck with him, like, you know, you can tell he's still even as an adult going back and watching it, sees it with a little kid brain and appreciates it in that way. And you know, that's something I always enjoy when I'm able to do it, when I'm able to like turn off adult brain and become a child again watching a movie maybe on the sillier end of the spectrum. And Yeah, but he says another thing about the movie, which is that, Okay, it does have some pretty large technical flaws, and we can talk about some of those as we go on, but considering the how small the budget was, how fast it was made, it's actually a pretty impressively effective picture. He says, a quote about it, it's something like it has a great little engine that runs it or something like that, And I totally agree. There is a There is a strong sort of mechanical tactile feeling to the plot and a lot of the scenes, and it works really well. It just kind of pushes you through.
Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of I guess it's like thinking about what is the car supposed to do? Is supposed to drive you from point A to point B. What's a movie's supposed to do? Well, answer is a little more complicated, but essentially entertain us and tell us a story and allow us to be immersed in that story. And this film does all of those things. Even if you were to be picky about it, you could be like, well, look at that hubcap, look at that tail light, you know, but hey, it all comes together and you make it to your destination.
Look at that whatever chin or something poking out of the monster's mouth.
Yeah, and in the end too, you know, it's like, we have some pretty pretty solid performances in here. We have some effective scenes, some that are I think actually quite scary, that still hold up and have a certain amount of tension and terror to them. Michael Weldon and the Psychotronic Film Guide praised it as a quote pretty scary space ar And you know, I think it depends what you compare it to. You know, obviously it's a very interesting exercise to compare this to Alien, but it's also a little unfair to hold it to that, to that level, you know. But on its own terms, it has some some scares, some jump scares, some creepy atmospheric moments. I really liked it.
I agree, And I also agree that as far as the sort of set pieces, the horror set pieces go, I think O'Bannon correctly selected the best elements to lift. Like some of the best stuff in the movie is the stuff that gets copied over into the alien plot.
Yeah. So we'll have more to say about all this as we proceed, but elevator pitcher this film, I think all you have to say is alien stow away.
I'd add another element. I'd say there's like two parallel elevator pitches. One is alien stow away, the other is murder on Mars question.
Mok, that's true. I would say that's the beat plot that's sad, kind of gets shuffled aside. But it's a nice what if, like, what if they had really been able to deliver both in equal volumes, or if someone were to re explore it.
Today intriguing idea.
Yeah, well, if you want to watch it The Terror from Beyond Space before proceeding here. This one is pretty widely available in digital and physical formats, including a twenty twenty three KL Studio Classics Blu Ray release that has a new HD master, a FEATURETTE, and I think three different commentary tracks. I ended up not being able to pick this one up. I think they do have it at Video Drone, but I ended up watching a quality stream of it that I think must be the HD master, and it looks it looks pretty darn good.
The stream I watched also looked pretty sharp.
All right, let's get into the people here. So we mentioned the director already, and again we have talked about this director before because it is the One Week Wonder. It is Edward L. Cohn, who lived eighteen ninety nine through nineteen sixty three, who also directed The Creature with the Adam Brain that was released in fifty five.
So I've really enjoyed both of the movies of his we watched, but I recall Creature with the Adam Brain being more silly, being more very fun, but a more ludicrous, goofy low budget monster movie, and this one being surprisingly tight by comparison.
Yeah yeah. Creature with the Adam Brain had kind of a serial energy to it, like an old old action serial kind of vibe, and this one is, you know, it's very identifiable as as space horror proto space horror in many ways, and you can see why it was such an influence.
Creature with the Adam Brain was the movie that had the news broadcasts by Dick Cutting.
Yes, oh, good old Dick Cutting. Yes.
Yeah.
So. Con was a highly prolific low budget director for three decades, directing one hundred and twenty eight films. Many of you may be familiar with. Some of his nineteen fifties horror and sci fi films is fifty seven's Invasion of the Saucermen and the Zombies of Maritau nineteen fifty six, Is The She Creature, nineteen fifty nine's Invisible Invaders, and The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. He also did a lot of westerns action films, biker films, and various social exploitation films of the thirties, forties, fifties, and early sixties. So it just to give you an idea of like how fast he was pumping these out, how fast the one week wonder was getting these done. It. The Terror from Beyond Space is one of five con films released in the year nineteen fifty eight.
Even Roger Corman only did five movies in nineteen fifty eight, Oh wow, but he did do eight in nineteen fifty seven.
I mean there are some years where Corman was pumping him out in such quantity that he's unequaled.
Yeah, whenever you're feeling a little too proud of yourself, you think, have I made eight movies this year, three of which are about atomic radiation, and two of which have the word naked and the title.
Now getting to the screenplay. The screenplay is by Jerome Bixby, who lived nineteen twenty three through nineteen ninety eight American writer and composer, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, who also wrote various short stories and two novels, Call for an Exorcist and Space by the Tale, both published in sixty four. His nineteen fifty three story It's a Good Life was adapted as an episode of the Twilight Zone in nineteen sixty one, and also revisited in Twilight Zone. The movie this is the one about the six year old boy with godlike powers that can wish you into the cornfield and so yeah, now it The Terraform Beyond Space was only his second produced screenplay, following CON's Curse of the Faceless Man from the same year. He also has a story credit on nineteen sixty six Is Fantastic Voyage. We often think about Isaac Asimov in relation to that picture, but we have to remember he only wrote the novelization, he was not involved in the screenplay, and also Bixby wrote four episodes of the original Star Trek series.
I'd say the screenplay, like some of the other things we've been talking about, you could look at from multiple angles. Is it high art? No? Is it super smart?
No?
I mean it's it's got some kind of gaps and flaws in it and some failed characterization, but it's for what it is and for the level of movie this is. I feel like it's a pretty tight plot.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's efficient, it's economic, there's not really a dull moment, and it's got some nice little splashes of dialogue here and there, which of course are helped along by a really solid cast of character actors and some leading act Yes, I agree. And speaking of starting at the top, we have Marshall Thompson playing the character Colonel Edward Carruthers. Thompson lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen ninety two, all American actor who we've talked about on the show before because he was in a little film from nineteen fifty eight titled Fiend Without a Face.
Ah. This is the Brain Attack movie, the one that takes place at I think it's a research installation up in Canada or in Alaska. It's some or sort of arctic location, and the idea is that a remote military base that's doing experimental I don't know whether something or other gets attacked by invisible brains and spinal columns.
Yeah. A film that's mostly notable for really incredible stop motion brain monsters and some very squishy sound effects to go along with them. Generally not notable for the acting. In fact, I remember it's just kind of commenting that Marshall Thompson was kind of like a square joed, you know, kind of boring actor like they're just you know, very lukewarm performance.
That is what I thought of him in that movie. I'd say he's a good bit better in this actually.
Yeah, this film gives him a lot more to work with. He has a more complex character. So on one level, he is the square jod chick magnet hero per usual, but especially early on in the picture, he's also the lone survivor of a terrifying encounter on an alien world who has subsequently been condemned to the firing squad you know, all but officially for the murder of his crew. And so he is able to work with that, and you do see that in his performance. He has like kind of a nice haunted look, especially throughout the first you know, third of the.
Picture, framed for homicide by a star beast.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's an unusual type of character, but it's good.
Yeah. So I set out to be kind of again bored by his performance, as one often is I think with leading man performances from genre pictures of this time period for various reasons we've discussed in the show before. But I ended up enjoying his performance.
Somewhat totally agree better than average.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna go through everything we said about him last time, but basically, he's a guy who kind of has like two prongs to his filmography. They're the cult films and then they're like the good natured animal films. So he did like a horse movie called Gallant Bess in forty six, and then sixty five's Clearance The Cross Eyed Lion, and so forth. His final film role was a supporting role in nineteen ninety one's mc bain, an action movie starring Christopher Walken, Michael Ironside and also featuring Louise Gouzman in a supporting role. But I don't think I was familiar with mc bain outside of the yelling McBain on The Simpsons and having the fictional action hero McBain, which when I looked into it a little bit more. Apparently this movie, the ninety one movie McBain, came out after the Simpsons jokes, and because of it, the Simpsons had to stop making McBain jokes. I don't know if that's completely true, but that's the argument I've heard.
I don't think they stopped doing mc bain jokes. I remember mc bain jokes going well into the last seasons I saw, at least like season seven and eight.
Maybe they came back after a while and they had to like just hush it for a bit. I don't know. But then again I thought I was familiar with Christopher Walken's filmography, and then mc bain feels like one that just came out of nowhere, that did not previously exist, And just suddenly I jumped onto a different timeline.
Which episode is it where McBain is delivering a palette of UNICEF pennies out of an airplane and then he gets attacked by COMMI Nazi fighter jets.
I don't remember that one.
He has to jump down and punch through the cockpit.
Anyway, if anyone out there has seen mc bain from nineteen ninety one, well right in and we would like to hear from you, all right, continuing on with the rest of the cast here, We're not going to do the whole cast because this is still one of those films where there are just a lot of at least on the surface, interchangeable guys.
But I really lost track of the guys multiple times in this.
Yeah, though I did find it easier to keep track of them on the whole compared to a lot of movies, because on the whole, the cast is pretty good, and you know, we got some nice character actors in there, and the screenplay also seems to be doing a little extra work to keep us from getting too confused.
Well yeah, but I am going to ding it for one thing, which is that they do a role call of the cast early on, where you're like, oh great, Fortunately, like all the cast members sound off, they call in on the radio, they say their name and it shows you their face. I'm like, this is a good way to just familiarize you quickly with all the characters and what their names are. But there are characters who don't participate in the role call. Later you think you know them all, and then just random other people are in the mix. It's like, wait, I don't remember that guy.
Yeah, some sort of cast system in play here.
Did not say present.
All right. So Marshall Thompson is playing our doomed guy, or seemingly doomed guy who needs to be picked up from Mars because his mission to Mars ended in terror and death. Yeah, we have this rescue crew coming in to pick him up, and that's where we get into the rest of the cast, and this mission is headed up by Colonel Van Heusen played by him Spalding, who lived nineteen fifteen through the year two thousand. American stage, screen and TV actor the forties, fifties, and sixties, I think best known for this film. He worked in various westerns. I think, sometimes played a villain, sometimes played a hero. He has that kind of gaunt, stern look that I think allowed him to jump back and forth between the two.
Yeah, he played The character he plays in this movie is relatively stoic. You can imagine he's used well as kind of like a moderately threatening man with dark moods.
Yeah. Yeah. I was reading on a classic film board about some of his roles, and apparently he played Doc Holiday in a nineteen fifty four TV western series called Stories of the Century, And apparently he played a villainous Doc Holiday in this. So Doc Holliday is like using his dentistry to torture people or something.
WHOA.
So that's the kind of range he had here. But in this he's essentially one of the heroes. But there's there's some misunderstandings involved as well. All Right, we also have the character Anne Anderson, one of the scientists aboard the vessel, played by Shirley Patterson. I believe she's credited on this as Sean Smith. This is She lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety five, Canadian actress of the forties and fifties, best known for her roles in fifty six is World Without End, fifty seven's The Land Unknown, and the nineteen forty three Batman serial, which I've seen parts of. It's very hard to watch because it's just it's boring. But in this yeah, she's a scientist, I think a geologist, but she's also the captain's girlfriend.
Apparently this movie's approach to gender is not one of its most sort of future anticipating moves. So like, there are two women aboard the ship as members of the crew, and they are both scientists, but they are also the significant others of other crew members, and they have to do all the cooking and the serving of coffee.
So yeah, multiple.
Reviewers have pointed that out, and it's not the only movie of the time like that, by the way, where there's like, oh, you know, there's one woman on this crew. She is a scientist. We are going to the dinosaur planet. She's also the ship's cook.
Yeah. Yeah, it's not one of the best aspects of the picture. There's no Ripley on this crew. Ripley would never Yeah, she would tell you to get your own darn coffee. And you know, even if it is and it's the best thing on the ship, so of course you should get your own coffee. The other female that you just alluded to on board the ship is the character Mary Royce. She's essentially the mom of the ship. That's the way. She's supposed to be a scientist as well, but she's everyone's mom. I guess she seems to fulfill that role for all of these these men that are serving aboard the spaceship.
Yeah, she sort of scolds them for making crass jokes and stuff.
Yeah. Played by Anne Doran, who lived nineteen eleven through the year two thousand. Doran appeared to be in more than five hundred movies and a thousand TV shows from nineteen twenty two through nineteen eighty eight. She apparently started as a child actress, which of course helps if you're going to rack up these kind of numbers. But her mini credits include the nineteen fifty four giant ant movie them nineteen fifty five's Rebel Without a Cause in nineteen thirty nine's Mister Smith Goes to Washington.
She was in two exclamation point movies.
They don't do enough exclamation point movies anymore.
Wait, I just had to check. I thought them has an exclamation point.
It does, Yeah, but I can't have that in the notes exclamation points followed by commas that I just start feeling crazy if I do that, I do hold it against you, all right. So that's Mary Royce, that's grandma or mom. Who's the dad character of the ship, Well, that's Eric Royce played by Dabs Greer, who was honestly, like really good in this, Like he doesn't really have that much to do, but sometimes in the ensemble cast of a particular film, you know you have that you know obviously, you know, veteran character actor who can really just infuse anything he has to say or any scene where he's just present with a certain amount of dignity and seriousness. And that's where Dad's Greer comes in.
He absolutely is the dad. Wait is this the guy who's playing chess and is he smoking a pipe or something?
Oh? Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of smoking on from board the ship. That's something John Carpenter pointed out as well. It's like everybody's smoking like constantly. Yeah, if you listen to our most recent stuff to Blow your Mind Core episode, this is also funny because we were talking about like oxygen levels on actual space flights. Yeah, some of the risks, and this movie is just completely alarming in light of all of that, not only because of the smoking, but because of other things as well.
I would say this movie's general understanding of like pressurized exploration environments is a little fuzzy. So not only is everybody constantly smoking and and shooting firearms inside of a interplanetary spaceship, they also just leave the door open on the surface of Mars.
I mean they didn't think anything would come in. That's the I mean, that's the fatal flaw. But they didn't think there was anything that could crawl aboard. But anyway, Yeah, Dab's Greer here is terrific. I think Carpenter also singled him out as being a fine presence in the film. Longtime American character actor whose credits include everything from fifty three's House of Wax. I don't think we mentioned him in that one, he's somewhere in the supporting cast. He's in fifty six is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is another film that absolutely holds up, and then you also find him in nineteen ninety seven's con Air in nineteen ninety nine is The Green Mile.
I don't remember what he was in either of those.
Well, I think looking at his dates, I mean, think of the oldest person remember in either movie, and it might have been Dab's Greer.
He should have. Okay, so he's like smoking a pipe or whatever. Playing chess got extreme dad vibes, but they should have gone all in. They should have given him like a high backed chair to sit in and give him a basset hound.
That would have been good. Yeah, every ship. I mean, if the Nostromo gets a cat, why shouldn't this ship the name of which he ludes me, it does have a name, but why does it not have a basset hunt?
Are you taking notes, jer Own Bixby, We're giving you good notes here. All right.
I'm going to skip over the rest of the human crew here, but we may refer back to one or two as when we get into the plot later on. But again, like top to bottom. Everybody's good in this There's nobody that comes on screen and you're like, why did they cast this person? Where did this person just walk in off the street, Like, No, they all seem to be experienced actors, solid cast. And then our monster suit. I'm always interested who's inside the creature's suit. And this one's kind of a treat because we have Ray Crash Corrigan, who lived nineteen oh two through nineteen seventy six playing The Beast. He was a Hollywood physical fitness trainer turned actor and creature suit specialist. So this is a guy who, like some of these other gorilla actors, had his own gorilla costume, had his own suit, and war said suit or I guess, sometimes supplied suits if there's something specific they were going for that he could not provide. And I believe more than thirty different films from nineteen thirty two through nineteen fifty eight just going through IMDb and looking for roles that he had that are called like gorilla or ape or something to that effect. This guy played a lot of gorillas.
We've talked before on the show about like ape suit specialists, these creature performers who just do gorilla roles over and over, Like I guess they formed a relationship with a particular suit or style of performance and they're like, does your movie need a large ape? And I will play it. Yeah.
I think it's one of those things where people don't necessarily realize how demanding such a performance is until they either try to do it, or they try and just get some rando to do it, and then they realize that, no, this is grueling. You know, it's gonna be hot work, it's gonna be sweaty work, and you're gonna have to like change your the natural positioning of your body, move in different ways that can act to actually actually just you know, carry you down if you're not ready for it.
Yeah.
So you know, this is something that I'm always delighted to see that it still continues to this day. We still have actors active in film who have kind of made it there specialty to portray the physicality of gorillas and apes, even if they're not necessarily wearing a suit. They may just be doing mo cap, but they're still keeping the tradition alive. So anyway, Yeah, Crash Corgan did a lot of this. He also did some like westerns as well. He started, you know, playing cowboys, not gorillas. But he started the Corriganville movie ranch for Western films, and it was something that I think was open for tourism on the weekends and holidays for a long stretch as well. They would shoot westerns here. And then he eventually sold it to Bob Hope, I believe in sixty six, and you can still find it. It's out there. It's in California. It's called Corriganville Park and it's in Semi Valley, California. So if we have any Californians who want to check in on that location for us and report back, we would luck to hear from you. All Right, So that's the guy in the creature costume. But we also have to talk briefly about the guy who built the creature costume. This is Paul Blasdell born nineteen twenty seven died nineteen eighty three, uncredited, but he is the suit designer and builder here.
So this alien design is not morphologically all that interesting. It is basically humanoid in shape. It's like a big sort of reptilian humanoid with a scary kind of batface.
Would you say, yeah, I mean it's it's not a gorilla costume, but it's a gorilla actor in a suit essentially doing gorilla costume stuff.
Yeah, it's like a like a muscly humanoid reptilian with kind of a bat face.
Yeah. Yeah, though is Girma del Toro. As has pointed out before, like the gorilla costume is a great place to start with any monster. You know, it's like it's it's it's a for a reason. Yeah, the creature, the claws look really good, the basic outline looks really good, and the face really isn't bad. I mean there's a lot you can compare this monsitor to in the you know, the fifties and sixties, and it's this is above average.
I would say, Yeah, I think how good the costume is depends on the shot. In some shots it looks quite good, especially in shots where you're not seeing the whole suit moving at once. They are like some scenes where you say the creature is reaching up through a you know, hole in a hatch that it has clawed, or is sort of busting through a door and you only see part of its body where the suit looks great. There are places where it looks less good, where like you're seeing the whole creature suit, the whole performer in the whole suit, moving around in a space that's fairly well lit, in which case my feeling was both the mask and the suit. Something looks kind of odd about the fit of it, Like the material is kind of thin, and it's less impressive that way.
Yeah, and that is part of the story here. According to some of the sources I was looking at, is that they couldn't get Core again in for a proper fitting for the suit ahead of time for some various reasons, and so it doesn't quite fit him all the way. And most notably Alrea alluded to this, but he's like chin is sticking out of the mask a bit, and they ultimately just you know, did what they could to incorporate that end of the design.
But like I said, there are some shots where it looks quite good and is used very effectively, especially the shadowy ones.
Yeah, I'm reminded a bit of the Thing from Another World, a film that does not have I mean, it has a classic monster design, but it's not one of my favorites. But if you just look at stills of the monster, you're probably not going to be that impressed. But if you watch the film. There are some terrifying sequences with that monster. Again, the the filmmaking doesn't involve just you know, putting a monster in front of a camera and shooting it. There's so many additional elements that go into creating the illusion of terror.
Yeah, that's right.
So still on its own, I would say, pretty great monster suit. You know that they they were working with a limited budget with some additional constraints such as getting the actor in for measurements. And there are also some alleged performance issues with Corgan for this one. You know, I don't want to get into the old movie dirt, but there's some allegations that maybe he wasn't in the best condition to perform for this one, and maybe there was some communication breakdowns between Corgan and the director. So all that taken into account, looks pretty good. And yeah, Blasdell himself was responsible for a number of classic nineteen fifties monster costumes, everything from the creature effects from nineteen fifty five's The Beast with a Million Eyes and The Day the World Ended to nineteen fifty six Is It Conquered the World?
Ah, that's a Roger Korman movie. That's the one where Earth is conquered by a psychic space or to choke.
Yeah, those are not Those are maybe not believable looking monsters. They are very laughable, but they also are unique. They stand out.
They're great.
They're pretty great in that respect.
I've got a big poster if It Conquered the World up on my wall here.
Yeah, that's a fun film. We may have to come back to that one. He also worked on the little alien flying creatures in Not of This Earth from nineteen fifty seven that we talked about on the show. He worked on Invasion of the Saucermen from the same year, and he also worked on nineteen fifty nine Teenagers from Outer Space, which I don't know if that one has creatures or not, but if I'm remembering correctly, that one is the one that has a great dog zapping scene where somebody shoots a dog with a ray gun and turns it into a pile of smoking bones. I know a lot of people don't like it when the dog dies, but the dog dies well in this picture worth it. Paul also wore the Monstra suit in several films, including The Day the World Ended It Conquered the World nineteen fifty six is the She Creature and fifty seven's Invasion of the Saucer Men. He also helped make that giant hypodermic needle in nineteen fifty seven's The Amazing Colossal Man, which I hope will come back to on the show if they ever put it out on a proper Blu Ray release. And he was a special designer on Attack of the Puppet People from fifty eight, which we also talked about on Weird House. That one did have a lot of you know, little people in a big world gimmicks and props. So I'm not sure what he worked on there, but that I'm sure it was something spectacular. Mm hmm.
Okay, So we have crossed paths many times.
Yes, yeah, and we'll and we'll undoubtedly come back to him. Now on the music end of the spectrum, there are three different individuals. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on them. We have Paul Sautel or Sawtel entirely sure on that one, and then we also have bert A. Schefter. Sautel was born nineteen oh six died nineteen seventy one. Schefter nineteen oh four through nineteen ninety nine. The former Polish born film score composer, the latter Russian born pianist and film composer. They worked together on a lot of different pictures, especially a string of low budget sci fi films. They also did various other genres, westerns and so forth. In fact, Sautel worked on the at least via stock music. His music was used, shall we say, in the US release of nineteen sixty three's King Kong Versus Godzilla, And he actually has a composer music themes credit on nineteen sixty five's Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, which I don't think we mentioned in our episode on that movie. So we have those two, and then we also have Jack Cookerly who lived nineteen twenty six through twenty seventeen, uncredited composer electronic music on this one. So. Cokerley was a pioneering electronic musician who contributed electronic sci fi sounds to various pictures. He often worked with the aforementioned gentlemen on their scores and their sound work. He developed many of his own instruments and contributed sound effects to such titles as The Black Scorpion for fifty seven Space Children in fifty eight, The Colossus of New York in fifty eight, Invisible Invaders in fifty nine, and Robinson Crusoe and Mars in sixty four. He also did some work on the original Twilight Zone and Star Trek series.
This movie didn't really have amazing music themes that stood out to me, but there are some nice sort of ambience score moments that are very on the quiet side, but they're effective, like when there's the spacewalk scene. I remember thinking the sound in that scene mostly by actually by having a lack of sound in a very compelling way, and what was there was minimal but effective.
Yeah. Yeah, we have a wonderfully tense, atmospheric, believable space walk sequence like that, you know, totally suspended my disbelief. And it has this wonderful, yeah, ambient, electronic, minimalist score going on that sounds nice and spacey, and I think we get a little splash of that towards the beginning of the picture as well. Yeah, and speaking of that, let's get into the beginning of the picture. Let's jump into the plot.
They hit you right at the beginning with something that looks great, which is a I don't know exactly how they composed this shot. I think what we're looking at is a is a miniature model set in the foreground with a painting in the background, but it is supposed to be a I guess the surface of Mars, but it has these very steep, jagged knife like mountains reaching up above a desert plain. And then the sky in the background is a night sky, deep black, with a transparent view of the stars and the constellations, and it looks quite beautiful. It's a great opening shot. And in the foreground we see crashed spaceship of some kind.
Now, this is a black and white movie. I don't think we mentioned that up front, but yeah, it's black and white, but it looks great, and really, given the tone of the picture and the space hor the red planet looks great in black and white. Here, you know it is it is a planet that is supposed to be full of terror and death, and so this very inky black appearance to it looks.
Nice and it hits you right with the title. It's it exclamation point in these giant animated block letters that are I don't know, they're supposed to look like the wall outside, you know, the fortifications of a medieval city or something.
Yeah, it's like made out of little blocks or something. It looks great. I do love it, and it's right in your face. Whatever it is, it's gonna be big.
So while looking at this, we get an opening voiceover which says, this was the planet Mars as my crew and I first saw it, dangerous, treacherous, alive, with something we came to know only as death. This was what we faced when our spaceship cracked up in landing just six months ago, in January of this year, nineteen hundred and seventy three. Woo, But it seems as if six centuries passed before a rescue ship arrived. For today, of all my crew, I, Colonel Edward Carruthers of the United States Space Command, have the only one alive. Now I will be going back to face my superiors on Earth in Washington, and perhaps there too, I will find another kind of death.
Oh man, absolutely solid, just a great start.
And I don't know how metaphorical he's being there, because they do end up talking about how he's going to face a court martial and potentially a firing squad because he's suspected of murdering his crew. But you could could also read that as just like, oh, man, going back to Earth after what I have seen is is like a metaphorical kind of death.
Yeah, Like, I'm just I'm not at all going to be the same person I was, and so forth. Now, this is again a film from the late fifties set in the future of nineteen seventy three. I just want to remind everybody about this cinematic setting. This is the same setting year for the events of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We get that in the intro. This is also the setting for the opening sequence of the nineteen ninety three Super Mario Brothers film.
What what was the opening sequence? Oh that there were many dinosaurs or something.
Yeah, when the eggs and the dinosaurs the cross dimensional cross crossing there.
Oh yeah, that's when the lady leaves the egg at the convent or whatever.
Yeah, that's seventy three, So that's taking place in the same world. This is in the same world, same cinematic universe. Perfect also nineteen seventy three, this is the year of the opening flashback sequence. In nineteen ninety six is space Jam, in which a young Michael Jordan decides to take up basketball to prevent alien invasion.
I remember that opening sequence. It tugs at the heart strings. There's like a single overhead light and he's out shooting hoops.
Yeah yeah, to protect the planet. So that's that's seventy three.
I think he talks to his dad or something.
Yeah.
Yeah, but in this nineteen seventy three everybody still has that same flat top haircut then yeah.
Yeah, everything is still fifties to the max. Yeah.
Oh, this is a principle we've talked about on the show before about how every every time period's science fiction just imagines that the future will take whatever fashion trends are currently hot at the time the movie was made and exaggerate them. So just like more like so the future and it's imagined by the fifties is super fifties, and the future as imagined by the seventies is super seventies.
Yeah, like you know, it's if shoulder pads are in well, future is going to be such shoulder pads you've never seen.
So anyway, we're here on the surface of and we see the second ship, the ship that came that came to get cor others here, and it's one of these fifties movie rocket ships that's got the fin the three fins on the bottom and it's got we see basically the whole length of it is inhabited. So it's like where for movie rockets like this, where is the fuel stored?
I don't know. Maybe they got like a central stem in the middle or something that's pumping it down.
I don't know.
We don't really get a good handle on that, and we but but we otherwise do get a good handle of the layout of the ship, just not maybe where all the propulsion is handled.
Yeah, we'll come back to that. And then I love they cut straight from this spaceship to the US Capitol Building.
An alarmingly mundane cut after such a nice opening. But thank goodness they teased us with all this this fun and off world stuff before we go to what like it's like a press briefing at the White House.
Yeah, but I'm sorry, build it's at the Capitol. Yeah, it's like the Science Advisory Committee, Division of Interplanetary Exploration of Fortunately, we will spend very little time here on Earth. It's just an exposition thing. A guy comes in, a guy who looks rather grizzled. Actually he's kind of like mad to be there, and he gives an opening narration that sort of sets everything up for the plot, so I might as well read a transcription of it, so you know what we're dealing with here, spokes guy says, ladies and gentlemen of the press. As you know, the first attempt to send a space ship to the planet Mars was made six months ago. We knew that that ship, the Challenge one for one, had reached its destination, but that's all we knew. Teleradio communication with Mars ceased immediately, and we were forced to assume that the ship and crew had been lost. The man in charge of this expedition was a man who had become known to the world as the first man to be shot into space, the man who pioneered interplanetary space travel, Colonel Edward Carruthers. Two months ago, we sent a second ship to Mars to learn the fate of Colonel Correthers and his crew. The President has asked me to pass on to you this significant news. Colonel Edward Carruthers has been found alive on Mars. But there's a tragic side to this history making event. Colonel Caruthers was the sole survivor of this first expedition. One hour ago, we received a teleradio communication from Colonel Van Hewson, the commander of the second spaceship. This ship is now ready to take off for its return trip to Earth from Mars, and Colonel Carrethers is being brought back for a court martial to face trial for the murders of the rest of the crew. That's a good setup. I think it is.
A great setup. Now, presumably the second mission here is also doing some science, right, I mean, they take scientists with them. It surely is not just a rescue slash arrest mission. But we don't really see any of the science that's going on.
I mean, the only science that's really done is once the creature pops up, they do science about it. But yeah, well, I don't know what their original research project is. There is a geologist, there is a they specify a cold temperature physicist. And is what is Mary supposed to be? She like a doctor, basically physician of some kind.
Yeah, yeah, some sort of doctor. So, I mean, I guess they have all these scientists in case they need to tackle some problems on the way or you know, on the way back, or on the surface of Mars. But presumably I'm just gonna assume there were some other science projects that also were handled in addition to our main plot points.
So after this monologue, the press corps immediately bolt for the exit. They're practically climbing over each other to get out and file their stories because in reality, I think this would be a really big news story. Murder on Mars, suspect apprehended.
I can't remember did they give us any newspaper shots, any clipping song?
Oh we don't see any of the kerning.
Yeah, murder on Mars, I can see it.
So we go back to Mars and the voiceover by Colonel Carruthers continues as we zoom in on the rocket ship. He tells us basically, you know, they're making preparations to return to Earth. The return journey is going to be four months long, and the crew of the ship are dedicated to making him face a court martial and a military firing squad. And then we go inside the ship and meet the crew. Now, the first person we meet, I believe is Kim Spaulding as Colonel van Heusen.
He is.
He's sitting at sort of a command seat and he sees a flashing light on the wall and sends an intercom announcement that the emergency air lock in sea compartment has been left open, and he's mad about this. He's like, who left it open? And then another character comes in. This is Paul Langton as Lieutenant James Calder. He's sort of the number two around here. He says, Oh, yeah, I left it open. Sorry, I was dumping trash outside on Mars.
Langton, by the way, lived nineteen thirteenth through nineteen eighty another solid American character actor in this picture, whose credits include a couple of classic Twilight Zone episodes in addition to some other stuff.
Yeah, he looks like a man would be dumping crates.
Well, they brought a lot of crates. This is a cargo heavy craft man.
They've got so many crates you wouldn't believe.
I will say that. On the whole though, the sets look really good, like it's it's definitely of the time, you know. That's you know, all of the all of the electronics and dials and all. It looks very archaic and all, but in that lovable way, like you want to see this in a nineteen fifties sci fi and I feel like they put together a very believable set.
If you normally tell me it's a movie set entirely within a nineteen fifty spaceship set, I'm like, oh, this is going to look boring, but no, it's it. Actually, it's it's relatively interesting to the eyes for a bottle episode of this sort.
Yeah, I never got a hint of cardboard off of anything. Everything feels like it is. It is just hard steel.
But the other thing about this plot moment is like, wait a minute, he left the air lock open. Now. At first I was thinking, Okay, maybe he only meant one of the two doors. Nope. Then we see it and both the inner and outer doors of the air lock are hanging wide open to the surface of the planet Mars. So Colonel Vin Hugheson presses a button and then they both begin to swing closed. And this is one of many things in the movie that you know, doesn't really detract from enjoyment at all, but it's just kind of amusing, like how far off of the scientific reality it is you can just leave the door open to Mars.
My brain was extremely forgiving of this moment, I think because it's like they're talking about what's happening with the airlock, and not only did I assume that only one door was opened, but my brain just went in and filled it, filled in the rest and just made it be so I didn't even really notice.
This air anyway. So we pan away from the doors as they closed to see a dark storage room filled with crates and steel drums, and in the background, a shadow falls over the wall, and it's a shadow of a very broad shouldered, very muscly looking human annoid figure, not quite human but close to human, just bulky, big, threatening, imposing. And then we see a foot fall across the floor. It's a close up of this three toed reptilian foot, and these feet move along as something is stalking through the cargo hold, and we hear a deep, rasping breath, almost like the growl of a crocodilian.
The feet are not the best feature of the costumes. The claws are great, because of course the claws are fully articulated. The feet are not so they the feet kind of feel like big rubber monster feet. But I don't know, it's not too bad. At least, they're not showing the whole monster yet. They're they're they're sparsing it out a little bit.
So the colonel calls up for a name check on the radio. This is the thing I was talking about. It's like a convenient way for all of the characters to announce their names as it shows their face to the audience. So we meet Eric Royce, ship dad, very very very much the dad. Yeah, this is the guy who we said she'd have like a high backed chair and a dog. We meet Mary Royce yep, ship mom. She is the I think we're saying physician she does later in the movie. She does medical research and autopsies, but she's also the mom. Yeah, she like scolds you for dirty jokes and uh and brings you coffee. There is Anne Anderson yep, ship wife. Yes there is Major John Purdue.
Yeah, I don't know ship uncle.
I guess ship uncle I think is very correct. Yeah, this guy needs a he needs a Coors light in his hand. Then we got Bob Finelli. He's I don't know ship something.
So yeah, I don't he doesn't really last long enough to get proper classification.
And Lieutenant James called her Yeah, other uncle. I guess it is a ship of many uncles. But as I said earlier, for some reason, it's not the entire crew. There are at least two guys who do not sign off on this role call. We got Geno and we got kind Holts, and we'll meet them later.
They're both Red Shirts though, right.
Yeah, they are the first two to get killed.
Yeaheah.
So there's a takeoff and they leave the planet Mars. The ship leaves the atmosphere and we see the planet retreating into space on a view screen. And then finally we meet Carruthers, our main character, the prisoner and murder suspect, on one of the middle decks of the ship. Now I want to talk for a minute here about the set of the movie. We've already talked about how as far as nineteen fifties spaceship sets go, it looks pretty good. But there's another thing about the setting that I think works quite well, and it's that there is a sort of comprehensible geography to the ship that you don't get in a lot of sci fi movies from any period. Really basical lay out of the ship is a vertical stack of different decks that are accessed by the these ladders, the steep staircase ladders. So you have a command deck on top, and then below that you have living quarters, and then you have a laboratory, and then you have a couple of storage decks, and then you have the engine down below. And something about the arrangement of these decks in a way that feels like you can really understand where things are happening in the film. It's kind of unique. Spaceship layout is often vague in movies. It feels like it changes to serve the needs of the plot or for convenience of shooting, and this is a rare exception. It feels like you can understand where things are and what's going on. I think in part because of the linear vertical arrangement of the decks as opposed to the normal horizontal arrangement of like hallways and doors.
Yeah, yeah, this is a great point because you do have a good sense of where everything is in this ship. We get to see some maps, and yeah, it's not the case in other examples. We can turn to. The one of course that I instantly thought about was Alien and then Nostromo. And you know, I've seen Alien so many times over the years, but I don't know if that I've ever had a great understanding of the Nostromo's inner layout. But then again, the Nostromo is supposed to essentially be a haunted house, right, So as long as you have some vague idea of the house, the basement and the attic and classify those however you will within Nostromo, you're good to go. I guess you know there are going to be other sci fi films where it pays to understand where everything is a bit more.
Yeah, I agree that it's not always a drawback. I think that the confusing, maze like nature of the Nostromo makes the movie more effective because it's, you know it to the audience. At least, it's it's confusing where you are. It feels it feels more claustrophobic that way. But in this movie, I think it works really well that you have such a grounded sense of place. I think it contributes to what John Carpenter said about that feeling that there's really this this little engine driving the movie. Some think about the movie works in a very tactle physical sense, and the good understanding of the space I think helps with that.
Yeah, I would agree.
Anyway, Carruthers is sitting here looking melancholy as they drive into space, and then Colonel van Heusen, the commander of the mission, he comes down the ladder from the deck above. He comes up to him and he says, what are you thinking about? He says, then you thinking about those nine bodies you left down there, and Carrother says, yes, that is what he's thinking about. But he protests again. He says, I didn't kill them, and then Van Heusen, shaking his head, says, still sticking to your story about a mysterious creature. And from this conversation we learned that they never found the bodies of the rest of Carrether's crew, but Van Heuson thinks there is still enough evidence to convict him. Van Houston starts acting like a prosecutor. He's articulating a theory of motive. He says, okay. When the challenge one for one broke up. Upon landing, Carruthers realized that their limited food rations would not allow them all to survive until rescue showed up, so he killed all of his crew in order to extend his chances of survival until rescue to make more rations for himself and Carrothers. Of course, maintains that his crew was killed by some thing, not me.
I love this conflict. I think it's it's it's a minor tragedy that they don't do as much with it, and that we know from the get go that Caruthers is probably correct. You know that we've seen the monster. We know there's a monster, so we we believe him. We're never we never really doubt him, even though the performance is such that we could read that into it, we could read guilt into it and so forth. So they don't. They don't really explore this possibility as much as they could, and they don't really explore another possibility that came to mind while I was watching it, and that is that you could have both, right, You could have a situation where it's at least some members of the crew were killed by a creature, and perhaps you decide, well, my chances to survival were better if there are fewer people to consume the remaining rations, and so forth. Like I feel like I wanted more of I wanted this to be milked more, and the film ultimately has to move past it and get to the main plot concerning what to do about the monster on the ship.
Yeah, I agree with all that, but I think a very strong setup. Yeah. So then Van Houston takes Carrothers to his cabin to show him something, which is a human skull, clean and polished with a hole in the top of the head. And he says, there's only one kind of monster that uses bullets. So he says, you know, we found this near the ship. At first he says they didn't find any bodies, but he did find a human skull. I guess that's part of a body. And it's like, look, you know, we know you did it, not some monster, because look this is this is a wound inflicted by a human.
I mean, I assume they found a head and they had Mary boil it down to that skull. That was some of the science that was taking place before they left Mars. Can't bring a whole head back boil it down.
The stew that night was so good.
It's a harsh planet.
Yeah. By the way, I just we started noticing I think around the scene. I watched it with Rachel and she was really struck by all of the shiny zippers on their jumpsuits there. They got a lot of pockets.
It's a great point. I didn't give this film a lot of a lot of points for its spacesuits and its jumpsuits, but those those zippers are really shiny.
So then we got another thing that's a little bit similar to Alien. There's like a mess hall dinner scene where everybody's sort of ribbing each other and having little bits of banter and jokes. They're talking about being excited to get back to Earth. One guy's like, I'm going to jump out of the airlock and roll around in the grass. Now this is where we get to the thing we mentioned earlier, the thing that many reviewers have noticed, which is that the two women of the crew are just going around serving everyone coffee and almost like taking their orders.
Yeah. Yeah, so if it is comparable to the messof scene an Alien, it's like eighty percent more sexist.
Yeah. The crew members are commenting on how every time Van Heuston sees ann Anderson, the geologist, which must be often because they're occupying a small spaceship together. They say, every time he sees her, he floats, even though this ship is equipped with artificial gravity. Yuck, yuck, and then Ann Anderson replies, these days he seems more concerned with a man hunt than a woman hunt.
You know. Speaking of artificial gravity, though, one thing I wanted to mention about the layout of the ship is that this is a case where the artificial gravity is somewhat believable because I guess given the way it's laid out with the decks, it would be propulsion based.
Yeah, linear acceleration.
Yeah, yeah. Now it doesn't work throughout the entire picture because they also walk on the sides of the ship, and I'm not sure how they're doing that, but at least in small doses you can say this works.
Now, there are at least two established couples within the crew of this Mars rescue slash cop mission. So Eric and Mary Royce are married again. Eric is the ship dad and Mary is the ship mom. And then Van Heuson and Anderson are I guess dating, but possibly their relationship is on the rocks because Van Heuston cares more about murder on Mars than he does about romance.
It is his job.
Yeah, he does seem extremely focused, like he announces at dinner quote, by the time we reach Earth, I'll have his confession on tape, and.
Den Carruthers come down the stairs, like right, After that, he's kind of he's still looking for Lauren, and he's kind of like, oh man, I'm right here.
Yeah, that's right. I guess this is an unusual circumstance for relationship troubles in storytelling. I mean, I guess in one in the generic sense, it's not because people often have the issue of like work coming between them and a relationship, just not this kind of work. Anyway, we see Anderson showing some tenderness for Carrothers, the prisoner, like she brings him a sandwich, and she says, such a cold, desolate world. We saw so little of it. I guess she's talking about Mars, and they start kind of chatting, and she makes clear that she wants to hear his side of the story, so he tells it.
Here.
We're going to get a monologue that explains what happened from Carother's point of view. He says, we were all outside the ship exploring the southern tip of Curtis Major. Suddenly a sandstorm came up and we started back. I was driving the jeep, so it was a jeep. Sand was so thick we could barely see. We were almost back to the ship when Cartwright just disappeared. One minute he was there, and the next minute he was gone, as if something had plucked him out of the jeep like candy out of a box. We heard a weird sort of sound. We thought we saw a dark shape running near the jeep and started shooting at it. A few moments later, Kinner and the rest were all gone. By the way, Kenner was the guy the skull belonged to. We learned that I was the only one who made it back to the ship when the sandstorm quit. I went out and searched all over. There wasn't a sign of them.
Curtis Major, by the way, is indeed a massive shield volcano in the eastern hemisphere of Mars. It was first the first documented surface feature of another planet, discovered by Christian Hugens in sixteen fifty nine.
Ah, so that part is very real. But wait, I would have assumed that this creature was picking them off one at a time. And it sounds like his entire crew was killed all in one event, right at the very beginning of the time he was there.
You know, I mean, it's not out of keeping with what we know of natural world organisms. You know, it's like like a fox in the hen house. What's called surplus killing or I think in house syndrome sometimes.
Oh yeah, So the Mars beast got excited in the presence of all this food, this human biomass, and was like, yum, yum, I'm gonna eat, I'm gonna I'm gonna get them all.
Yeah.
So Anderson, she listens to the story and she's like, I don't know, I don't believe you, but I also don't disbelieve you. And we can see she's softening on him because she and Van have an argument about it. Van is a he's a hardliner and he wants to crack him, and Anderson thinks it is not for them to judge his guilt. Oh and then after this he Van calls Anderson chicken, and he goes, okay, Chicken, I'll let up on the third degree. And then they ask what about everybody else? Do they believe her others? And Lieutenant Calder says, Mars is almost as big as Texas. Maybe it's got monsters.
This is a great line and the actor delivers it perfectly. I really liked it.
So time passes, ship drifts through space, but eventually we get to the first attack and it occurs late at night when a crew member named Kine Holtz is sitting up he's looking at what looks like architectural drafts or something. He's sitting at a table looking at these big sheets, and we hear some crashing and growling in the lower decks and see a claw reach out from behind something and scrape across the top of a table and good looking clause as you mentioned earlier, Rob, but kind Holtz goes down to investigate the strange sounds in the cargo deck and here begins a sedate, slow, quiet, suspenseful investigation process as kind Holtz goes down the decks one by one looking for the source of the sound. And I really like the pace here. This is one of these scenes that's just mechanically quite a fit. We have a good idea of what's going to happen, but I just like watching the investigation. It's it's kind of calm but suspenseful at the same time, and it reminds me of scenes an Alien like when Harry Dean Stanton is looking for the cat in the cargo area.
Yeah. Yeah, solid reference point. Yeah, because it's it is it is laid back. This guy's not like super concerned. He's not expecting to find anything, but we know what's down there for him. We know that this guy's gonna get it any moment, but that moment is delayed, and so there are several moments where we think it's going to jump out and get him and it doesn't. And then when it finally occurs, it's it's satisfying.
It ends with a really good jump scare. I thought where the cree is like, there's a scream, and we don't see it. We see the shadow of the creature grabbing him and doing that wrestling move you called it a gorilla press where he lifts the guy up above his head.
Yep, yeap, smashes him down, breaks him. Yeah, very well done. Now.
Meanwhile, Carruthers is playing a game of chess with ship Dad Royce and he hears the scream and the crash when no one else in the room does, and he know He's like, did you hear that? And they're all like no, and he says, I learned to hear all over again on Mars. So he gave him superhering and the men go to investigate. Initially, all the other crew, they're very skeptical of Correthers looking into this, but things do start to appear. It starts to appear that something is wrong. Kind of Holtz is not at his post. They look for him in his cabin. He's not there either. Coro others checks for him across the intercom and there's no response. After a while, I think it becomes clear to all the characters that really something is wrong, and the whole crew wakes up and as symbols to look for kind Holts, They're like, let's split up, so they, you know, look in different places. And while isolated in the cargo area, another crew member named it Gino Finelli is attacked and the cigarette drops right out of his mouth.
And he's he going in to get more cigarettes.
That's what it looks like.
Yeah, and there you know their their strategic supply of various tobacco products because there's also pipes being smoked on board very smoky spaceship.
So after the crew or after Geno disappears, the crew run around looking for him as well. Vans like, it doesn't make any sense. There's nowhere on this ship for a man to hide. But we see Corruthers walk past a metal grate in front of an opening that says air generation and moisture recovery section, so it's like an air duct access and he's standing there and then suddenly we see behind him a limp hand drops down on the other side of the grate. Another good jump scare, and they recover kind Holtz's body from the air duct and it has a very creepy appearance. It's zombie like with pale skin and dark sunken eyes. I love the makeup on the victims. The monster here.
Yeah, this has been some sort of unnatural death has occurred here. And I guess this is another area where I kind of wondered, like, why didn't they try and keep the heat on Carruthers by saying by casting some suspicion on him for this murder. But I guess at the end of the day, we have to remember this is a short film and it's it's it has deadline, so we don't have we don't have room for for too much more additional plot. Sinanigains we've got to we've got to get to the goods.
So they conclude that Geno may also be somewhere in the air ducks, so they move a bunch of crates out of the way and get to an access event and Lieutenant Calder crawls in with he's got a pistol on his on his belt. And here we got another big similarity with Alien, these scenes of a leader of the crew crawling into these large air ducks to look for uh, to look for a victim and look for a creature. And this scene I thought was also great because he crawls through the ducks and then finds Gino in there, also with this incredibly creepy makeup the war boy zombie look.
Yeah, yeah, this indeed a great sequel. You can definitely see this as having an influence on the duct scenes an Alien, and on deleted scenes that they ended up not using in the theatrical cut, involving finding like cocooned members of the Nostromo crew that are being slowly transformed into eggs. Again not a part of the theatrical cut of the picture, but you know, available and like an extended cut, they came out years later and in deleted sequences.
Yeah yeah, so there's a creature jump here the lieutenants trying to get Gino, but the like the alien pops out and it slashes at him with his claws and he ends up shooting at it, so he crawls back out. They seal up the entrance to the air duct and then in a hilarious move, they trap the air duct opening with a bunch of grenades. Why do they have grenades?
Oh my god. So this is, of course, is a huge difference between alien and you have the tear from beyond space because an alien they have very few, almost no weapons. It's basically improvised. Improvised, like they have to make their own flamers. You know, they have a harpoon gun. Course it gets used later, but for the most part they having to make it up as they go, make a like a cattle prod type device. Here they are armed to the teeth, and this is the you know, we saw the pistol earlier and you're like, okay, I guess they have one pistol on board. They were going to make an arrest, fair enough, But this is where we find out, Oh, they have an entire like you know, like small like wooden crate of grenades, like military grenades. And yeah, they have they like string up a bandolier of like eight of these things. For the entrance to the air ducks.
Why do they need that minial? We would would at that point would eight be any better than one?
And to say nothing of the whole of this ship. This, this ship's hull is just absolutely impregnable. There's and this is just the first sign of it. We will have even more evidence of this as we move forward.
So the humans fall back to the upper deck and begin to review their arsenal once again, talking about all the weapons they have. What we see this table with just its guns, guns, guns everywhere.
They have so many weapons, like it's pistols, it's high caliber rifles. Like why did they bring all this stuff?
I don't know, A bunch of Yeah, and they've got a Bazuka.
Also, they legit have a Bazuka. Like the Bazuka made me laugh out loud because I was already thinking this is too much. And then they have a Bazuka and they're gonna they're gonna load it up and potentially use it on board the spacecraft with computer equipment right behind it. Yeah, yeah, not that it matters at that point.
Well perfect. Meanwhile, Mary and Anne are checking out the body of kind Holts. They're like, what happened to him. He looks very desiccated, he looks in bad shape. He looks shiny and chrome. Uh and uh. Mary says, every bone in his body must be broken, but I'm not sure that's what killed him. The shriveled up effect it it. I'll have to do an autopsy. So she's going to do an autopsy. Meanwhile, Van Houghton asks Carrothers, Okay, He's like, clearly you were right. Do you know what it is? And carr other says no, he may have faced it before, but he doesn't know how to beat it. And then Dad comes in with some thoughts. So Dad's like, you say, it's man shaped humanoid. Here's his explanation. He says, perhaps there was once a civilization on Mars. It ended disease war, something terrible. The Martians that were left went back to barbarism, savage murders. Maybe that's what we've got on board.
I mean, he delivers it perfectly here, though. I mean, it's like the performance is solid enough that I'm like, yeah, yeah, I think that might be it. And again this is Dad's greer, so you know, solid actor here. It makes you believe it.
They also reason out that the alien must be intelligent and not just an animal, because it's able to open doors and close and travel between compartments, and they a motive for the attacks. They say, it's hungry. It's eating us, all right. So some time passes and there's a scene where the monster trips the traps. It's crawling through the air ducts and it tries to crawl out and the grenades blow up in its face, but it is not killed. Instead, it seems just really annoyed and it starts running around smashing boxes in a rage. So at this point the crew go down to meet it with pistols drawn, and there it is, right there. It grabs a rifle from one of them and just bends it in half, basically ties it in a bow. That's a great scene. They retreat blasting the monster. There's a really well staged shot here that looks great where the monster is like clawing its way through a closed door from like it's lit very brightly from behind, but clawing its way into a darkened room with the smoke coming out as beautiful.
Yeah, this is a great shot. I love this one.
Yeah, really cool. And Carrothers shows bravery here as there. You know, he covers retreat. As they go back up the ladder and they close the hatch. It's like, okay, so that didn't work at all. Next, Mary suggests an idea. He says, we've got gas grenades. Gino made them. He says he made them in case they ran into any dinosaurs on Mars.
Time to bust out the chemical weapons aboard the spaceship.
So they put on gas masks and they open the hatch and chuck the gas grenades down. But the creature is like right there, and so when they open the hatch, it starts reaching through and it gets some good swipes in on Van Heusen's foot. It's like the claws up his boot really bad.
Yeah, this is one of those moments where it's not a bloody film obviously, like you know, but these moments where stuff does happen, Like I kind of felt like it like totally flate his foot even though you see nothing graphic, like your mind fills in the rest and it's it's horrifying.
Yeah, yeah, totally. But they do manage to get the door closed again. But the gas grenades obviously did not affect it. It did not subdue it. So we get all topsy results, and Mary Royce tells us there is not a molecule of oxygen or a drop of water left in kind Holtz This body. Every ounce of edible fluid in his body is gone, in which case I would think it would be more significantly reduced in volume than it appears.
Yeah, I think it would. It would look more like Yeah, it would look more like a zombie husk. It's what it would look like. Yeah, But limitations fair enough.
Yeah, so they they reason, They start thinking about this, all right, Mars is a world without oxygen or water. That's what they believe. So this creature's entire being is designed to feed on the oxygen and water contents of smaller creatures. So that's what it's doing. It's trying to get them so it can suck out all of their oxygen and water. Meanwhile, there's some stuff going on with the monster. It's like sort of laying siege to them, to the crew members that are hold up on the upper decks. It's trying to claw its way through the hatches, and we learn from Mary that the slashes on Van's foot are infected with an alien bacterium of some kind. And it's making him sick, and I gotta say there is something. The romantic subplot of this movie is shockingly cold and weird. Like, basically, the moment we find out Van Heuson is infected with the alien pathogen, his girlfriend Anderson starts moving in on Corruthers. She like goes up to him and she's like, you were right, we were wrong, and she's grabbing his hands right in front of Van on the cot.
Yeah, it's an it's an icky love triangle that I don't think we really needed.
I think it seems especially cold because it's like she turns to Carruthers as soon as Van becomes weakened. I don't know, it feels sad.
Yeah, like yeah, like she like she can't exist without a strong man around her, and so she has to just jump ship to gorothers now like I don't know, it just did. Yeah, I guess it. It doesn't really work. It's not like completely believable and feels if it is believable, it's cold. So it's like, what how am I supposed to feel about this?
Yeah? So I think the romantic subplot, I mean I would say it's kind of unique for this sort of movie. But I don't know if it really works as like generating any like romantic feelings other than like, oh, that's weird and kind of kind of dark.
But yeah, the kids were making out to this apparently, like how did how they feel about it?
Yeah? Okay, next plot development, space Dad Dad has a plan again. They can get in behind the creature by putting on EVA suits and doing a space walk on the outside hull of the ship down to the deck below it. Uh, And I really like this set piece. So it's Corruthers and I think Lieutenant Oh, it's Lieutenant Calder also. So they suit up, they put their suits on, and they go out on the outside of the ship and walk down the hull. I thought this this scene looked great. It sounded great. I love the atmosphere. It's creepy, quiet and really compelling. Way very strong.
Yeah, firing on all cylinders, and we're really not even seeing the monster for the most part during this this sequence. I mean we get some we get some hints of them, because, as we'll discuss there's they're having to distract the monster in order to try and pull this off.
That's right. So the plan is that the people left inside the ship distracted the beast while making a They're making noise up above while the strike team gets in behind the beast to set a trap. They're going to electrocute it by rigging wires to the metal stairs. So this is basically the plan from the Thing from Another World. They're gonna You're gonna shock it from below.
Yeah. Yeah, They're gonna pull a thing from another world on it. Yeah. I was really concerned that it was gonna work because because I mean, they also did this in Creature, which we watched a couple of weeks ago.
Oh yeah, yeah, uh, and it's sort of worked in Creature, but only temporarily. It doesn't even doesn't even appear to work at all in this, like the crawls down under the stairs. They've got the wires rigged up, they zap it and it's just like, oh no, I'm I'm not happy, so it attacks them. Lieutenant Calder gets his leg broken and is trapped behind a large metal cylinder. He's got a blow torch in his hand that he can use to protect himself from the beast while Carruthers escapes to the outside and I think he makes it back up the outside of the ship hull to everybody else.
Yeah, I don't know how long he's supposed to be stuck down there, but it seems like he's probably down there for hours, the monster lunging at him like every few seconds, and having to like hold a blow torch up to protect himself. Yeah.
He's talking to the rest of the crew via radio and he's like, Yeah, I'm stuck down here. I can see it. It's looking at me, and every time it comes for me, I hold the blow torch in its eyes. It's a predicament. He's in a tight spot. He's in a pickle. Yeah. So later we learn that Van's infection is taking a turn for the worse. He is delirious and the bacteria are they're attacking his bone marrow. They say it gives him a condition similar to lukemia, and the romance between Anderson and Corruthers really picks up. But they the crew decide, okay, Van, he needs blood, so we got to go down to storage to get blood out of the blood blood box. He needs blood. So Calder witnesses the creature going into the reactor room, and here Carrother sees a chance to act so they remotely close the door to the reactor and seal the creature inside, and then a team of men goes down to get the blood. So they're blood jacking and they've only got a tight window to get the blood in. But in the middle of all this, a delirious Van gets the idea to open up the reactor core with the creature in the reactor room, saying, okay, the radiation will kill it. We couldn't kill it with grenades, with gunfire, with gas, grenades, with electricity, but we can try radiation, and so the he does this. Unfortunately, while the blood jacking team are there right next to it, and this of course just makes the beast furious. The radiation does not kill it, drives it out of the reactor room, where it meets the blood jacking team and kills a crew member named Bob. So the remaining the surviving crew members retreat to the upper deck. They're up in the command deck and here we're sort of approaching the final showdown. Somewhere around here, Van really catches on what's happening with Anderson and Cruthers. He's like, are you going to him now? Are you leaving me for him? And she's just like, let's talk about it later. And this goes up to a final showdown where they are sort of like they're dug in. They've all got their weapons aimed at the hatch coming up from the floor below where the creature is. And finally the creature starts busting through the hatch, tearing through the metal, coming up into the room, and they literally blast it with a bazooka.
They even fire the bazuki and I think Mary fires it right, Like that sounds right. Yeah, she may have to fetch coffee for everyone else, but she gets to fire the Bazuka's right, and it doesn't kill everyone, yeah, or even the monster or the.
Monster, but they've already tried explosives, why would this work. But finally they get the idea, Hey, everybody, put on your EVA suits. We're gonna vent the air out the air lock. And here we have another comparison with alien. Right, how do they defeat the alien? How does Ripley, the only one left, defeat the alien? At the end, she vents the atmosphere in the escape pod to the to the outside and the creature is blown out of the airlock. Now, in this case, the alien is not blown out of the airlock, but venting the atmosphere out of the command deck causes the creature to not have the air it needs to breathe, and it dies by I guess suffocation.
Yeah, it's it's still satisfying in a way. It's even more satisfying because I thought, oh, they're gonna blast it out the airlock. I've seen this before, granted from a film that comes decades, but it was still it was refreshing that it wasn't quite that solution. It was this alternate solution, even if it's also a solution that if you think about it too much, you might ask, well, why didn't they try this earlier? But that can often be the case with films where they try multiple solutions to a given problem. It's always the last one you try anyway.
So finally we go back to Earth to the spokesman at the you know, he's doing a press conference of the Capitol building, and he says, you've been called here again to receive further information about the story, which you didn't hear last night. I will read you the text of a teleradio message received from the challenge one forty two less than an hour ago. This is Eric Royce talking of the nineteen men and women who have set foot on the planet Mars six will return. There's no longer a question of murder, but of an alien, an elemental life force, a planet so cruel, so hostile, that man may find it necessary to bypass it in his endeavor to explore an understand the universe. Another name for Mars is death. And then it just goes straight to the end. I love that the last the words the movie has to say, or not about like the the indomitable spirit of humankind, or or about the courage of the you know, the people who gave their lives fighting against this beast. It's like, Mars is terrible. Don't ever go there. It's just trash.
Mars is death. Mars is dead to us. We're just gonna skip over that. What's next, what's the next one, because we're gonna go there instead. Nothing on Mars for us.
Jupiter is life.
Maybe maybe, but yeah, but you know, it is kind of a hint of some of the I don't know, partially cosmic horror inspired stuff to come, including alien like this idea that, yeah, humans should never have left Earth, and of course they're going to encounter, you know, unspeakable horrors out there because we were not meant to know of it. Mm hmm.
So, as we said earlier, it the Terror from Beyond Space. I feel like a pretty strong thumb for what it is. It is a modest science fiction movie. It's kind of it has bottle episode vibes, but given all that, quite strong.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I was really impressed with it. I think this one would have scared me a bit if I'd seen it when I was when I was a lot younger, and I would love to hear from folks out there who saw it in on the big screen at some point in a drive in in environment. That would have been neat. Again, the performances are solid. The monster costume, for the most part, looks really good. I neglected to mention that there are some shots where, at least in silhouette, it reminds me a bit of the aliens from Earth. Girls are easy, but you know, because something about the head shape kind of reminds me of the helmets that those aliens have. But again, for the most part, I love the monster here all right. There you have it, it the Terror from Beyond Space. We're going to remind everybody here that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a full list of the films we've watched over the years, go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E R B o x D dot com. Our username there is weird House and that's where you'll find the list. Hey, and if you're on Instagram, follow Stuff to Blow your Mind at st b ym podcast. That's our handle. And you know, even if you're only in it for the Weird House, we've got some We generally have some little videos that go out to give you just like a taste of the trailers on there, as well as well as reminders of what the core episodes are as they're coming out.
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