It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

(On Cable TV, November 2021) Few films have been perceived so differently over the year as It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Upon release, it was a fairly ordinary Science Fiction film featuring astronauts battling a monster in a spacecraft — a hermetic, claustrophobic version of the typical 1950s monster movies, not executed with any kind of sophistication by director Edward L. Cahn, but good enough for drive-in thrills. By the early 1970s (if it was seen at all at an age prior to home video), it must have been a quaint relic at a time of New Hollywood, as movies became increasingly realistic and the rift between what audiences expected and the shoddy execution of the 1958 film became more apparent. But then something very strange happened: Alien, a film that pushed horror where it had never gone before by borrowing quite a lot from It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Consider the crew of a spaceship landing on a strange planet and carrying back a dangerous visitor within the confines of their ship. Attempts to kill it through conventional means fail, as it keeps killing crewmembers, forcing the survivors to flush it out of the airlock. Isn’t that Alien or what? After a few decades in which comparisons must not have been kind, watching It! The Terror from Beyond Space is surprisingly fun now because we’re probably approaching it from the other end: What if Alien had been made in the 1950s? Well, it’s not a thought experiment or a retro-pastiche: Here we have the real thing, an authentic vintage interpretation of one of the ur-stories of horror/SF cinema. It’s almost enough to make you want to send modern movies back in time to see what they would have done with the concept, the limited means and the self-censorship prevalent during the 1950s. Oh, I won’t qualify It! The Terror from Beyond Space as conventionally good: there’s a fair bit of ironic distancing going on while watching the film, and Alien really should be a prerequisite to watch. Our “blue collar” crew plays chess, really… But movie experiences are not always the ones intended by the filmmakers, and if a modern reading uses other sources to create enjoyment, well, that’s better than no enjoyment at all.