IT: THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE: 1958 The Commander of an expedition to Mars has been apprehended as a murder suspect. This lone survivor(Marshall Thompson) can't say who murdered his crew.
	As the gigantic rocketship of the rescue mission turned police action prepares to lift off, the actual killer stows away among the lower decks. Thompson gains credibility when a crewman is found dying in the "U.S.S. Seaview" sized ventilation shaft. The monster attacks, revealing his spike-toothed, rubbery but scary face. No more coffee and cigarettes over bitter chess games for these astronauts: this means war!
Fortunately, the rescue rocket's hold is full of munitions. The mention of an artificial gravity system is intended to explain the jumbles of crates and drums never bouncing around the hold, and why fluids can be safely stored in unsecured glass jars on interplanetary jaunts. Finding a box of hand grenades lying about, they wire a trap for the beast in the airvent.
	Only angered by the blast, IT proceeds to smash through steel hatches up the ship's 5 levels. They empty clips on IT from M1 rifles and sidearms. They sneak around to a lower deck with a relatively well done spacewalk down the hull and electrocute IT, to no effect besides stranding a crewman below. They unsheild reactor #3 in his conveniently located face, but nothing can stop this terror from beyond space. IT corners the crew on the contol deck.
As IT tears through the final hatchway, they try to slow him with a standard issue Rocket to Mars bridge bazooka. Yes, a bazooka. Thompson orders the crew to put their bee keeper suits on. IT is half through the torn steel door when the airlock is blown, depressurizing the cabin thus finally killing IT.
	Does this sound familiar? It is widely acknowledged that 1979's ALIEN didn't MEAN to rip off this movie, and at least they only borrowed the cool parts. That is not the only borrowing going on, however. Present investigations don't tell why, but the rocket in IT: the Terror is exactly the same as the one from Monogram's Flight To Mars, 1951. The score by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter is re-used from Kurt Neumann's KRONOS, 1957, and that may have been a re-use as well. This pleasantly derivative piece is part of the Marshall Thompson collection.

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