A scary monster movie is in order on Halloween for this episode of Your Stupid Minds. Recommended by friend and listener of the podcast Brendan McNamara (who also guest hosts on this episode), it’s It! The Terror from Beyond Space. This 1958 space horror flick bears a striking resemblance to Ridley Scott’s Alien, and some comparison to Scott’s most recent film The Martian (in that it involves Mars and that’s about it).
When Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson) is the sole survivor of his Mars mission, the rescue crew must decide if he murdered the others or if it was some mysterious monster he keeps yapping on about. In the meantime Carruthers is free to wander around the cavernous spaceship, smoking heavily and playing poker while the womenfolk clear the dishes and crew members lob insults related to his mass murderer status.
As it turns out, an actual monster wanders onto the ship while they’re dumping some space garbage on his home planet and the crew implements a series of absurd and progressively more violent means of disposing of it, including but not limited to: World War II surplus firearms, grenades, poison gas, electrocution, and a bazooka. What they were doing in space with all of these things is anyone’s guess.
Some Notes:
- As alluded to in the description, women are on the crew (including one who's a medical examiner), but frequently assigns them into less than progressive duties such as: clearing the table, refilling coffee, and making sandwiches.
- The monster mask was too small for the actor and his chin jutted out of the mouth. Rather than redesign it, his chin simply became the monster's tongue.
- The Martian would have been better with a pesky monster neighbor terrorizing Matt Damon and his potato plants.
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