Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: It! The Terror from Beyond Space

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Lamb and today we have a fun episode for you.
This is our episode from seven, nineteen twenty twenty four
about the nineteen fifty eight space horror film it The
Terror from Beyond Space. This one's a lot of fun.
It's considered one of the key influences on the nineteen

(00:25):
seventy nine classic alien Let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
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 Planet the Vampires, which we've discussed in the show before,
but this week we're talking about it The Terror from

(01:07):
Beyond Space.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
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?

Speaker 3 (01:51):
It suggests some kind of like interdimensional love crafty and
sort of origin. It's not there. This is the Terror
is from Mars.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
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

(02:21):
some of the promises on this particular poster. It says
it reaches through space, it scoops up men and women,
it gorges on blood.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, yeah, I guess I'll reached through space. Is it's
reached through time, I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
But it scoops up men and women, It scoops them.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Here's the thing. It definitely scoops up men. Does it
ever scoop up a woman?

Speaker 3 (02:50):
I don't recall it scoop It's gonna get men multiple times.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, another case where the monster holding a woman is
a complete lie on the poster.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
It the Terror from Beyond Space aka Mars, has a
sort of a gorilla esque silhouette, especially in some shots.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
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

(03:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
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 el Kahn, also directed another movie we did on

(04:19):
Weird House, the Creature with the Adam Brain, and 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

(04:42):
of the creature.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
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

(05:04):
as two weeks. I've seen two weeks sighted, but I've
also seen six days sided as the shooting period for
this picture.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
I think. Isn't that what John Carpenter said about it
in the interview.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
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 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

(05:52):
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,

(06:12):
but considering how small the budget was, how fast it
was made, it's actually a pretty impressively effective picture. He says.
A quote about it is something like it has a
great little engine that runs it or something like that,
and I totally agree. There is a strong sort of

(06:33):
mechanical tactle feeling to the plot and a lot of
the scenes, and it works really well. It just kind
of pushes you through.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of I guess it's like thinking
about what is a car supposed to do? Is supposed
to drive you from point A to point B. What's
a movie 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,

(07:01):
but hey, it all comes together and you make it
to your destination.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Look at that whatever chin or something poking out of
the monster's mouth.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, and in the end too. You know, it's like,
we have some 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 horror, and uh, you know, I think

(07:31):
it depends what you compare it to. You know, obviously
it 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 some
creepy atmospheric moments. I really liked it.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
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.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
So we'll have more to say about all of this
as we proceed, but elevator picture of this film, I
think all you have to say is alien stow away.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Question monk, that's true, I would say that's the bet
plot that sadly 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.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
It today intriguing idea.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
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

(09:03):
at Video Drone, but I ended up watching a quality
stream of that I think must be the HD master,
and it looks pretty darn good.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
The stream I watched also looked pretty sharp.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
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.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
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.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah. Yeah, Creature with the Adam Brain had kind of
a serial energy to it, like 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 you can see why it
was such an influence.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Creature with the Adam Brain was the movie that had
the news broadcasts by Dick Cutting.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yes, Oh, good old Dick Cutting.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
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 in sci fi films such as fifty seven's
Invasion of the Saucermen and The Zombies of Mara Tau.
Nineteen fifty six is The She Creature, nineteen fifty nine
is Invisible Invaders, and The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.

(10:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
Even Roger Corman only did five movies in nineteen fifty eight,
Oh wow, but he did do eight in nineteen fifty seven.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
I mean there are some years where Corman was pumping
him out in such quantity that he's unequaled.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
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 in the title.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
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

(11:47):
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 corn field and so yeah, yeah, now it
the tearform. Beyond Space was only his second produced screenplay,
following CON's Curse of the Faceless Man from the same year.

(12:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
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?

Speaker 2 (12:32):
No? Is it?

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Is it super smart?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
No?

Speaker 3 (12:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, yeah, 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

(13:12):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
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 at some more 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.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
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 us just kind of commenting that
Marshall Thompson was kind of like a square job, you know,
kind of boring actor. Like there's just you know, very
lukewarm performance.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
That is what I thought of him in that movie.
I'd say he's a good bit better in this actually.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
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 jot 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,

(14:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Framed for homicide by a star beast. Yeah, Yeah, it's
an unusual type of character, but it's it's good.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Somewhat totally agree better than average. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
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 are
the cult films and then there is like the good
natured animal films. So he did like a horse movie
called Gallant Bess in forty six, and then sixty five's
Clarence the Cross Eyed Line, and so forth. His final

(15:30):
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

(15:53):
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 McMain jokes.
I don't know if that's completely true, but that's the
argument ever heard.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
I don't think they stopped doing McBain jokes. I remember
McBain jokes going well into the last seasons I saw
at least like season seven and eight.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
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 McBain feels like one that just came
out of nowhere that did not previously exist, And just
suddenly I jumped onto a different timeline.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
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.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
I don't remember that one.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
He has to jump down and punch through the cockpit.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
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

(17:08):
films where they are just a lot of, at least
on the surface, interchangeable guys.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
But I really lost track of the guys multiple times
in this.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
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.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
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

(17:57):
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.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
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

(18:29):
Kim 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.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, he played. The character he plays in this movie
is relatively stoic. You can imagine he has used well
as kind of like a moderately threatening man with dark moods.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
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

(19:24):
the kind of range he had here. But in this
he's essentially one of the heroes. But there's some misunderstandings
that 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

(19:45):
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 wat because it's just it's boring. But
in this, yeah, she's a scientist, I think a geologist,

(20:06):
but she's also the captain's girlfriend.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
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.

(20:28):
So yeah, 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.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
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 ships, of course you
should get your own coffee. Yeah. The other female that
you just alluded to on the ship is the character
Mary Royce. She's essentially the mom of the ship. That's

(21:05):
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 on board of the spaceship.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Yeah, she sort of scolds them for making crass jokes
and stuff.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah. Played by Anne Doran, who have nineteen eleven through
the year two thousand, Doran appeared to be in more
than five hundred movies and one 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,

(21:42):
nineteen fifty five's Rebel Without a Cause, and nineteen thirty
nine's Mister Smith Goes to Washington.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
She was in two exclamation point movies.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
They don't do enough exclamation point movies anymore.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Wait, I just had to check. I thought them has
an exclamation point.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
It does, yeah, but I can't add that in the
notes exclamation points followed by commas. That's 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 who's the dad character of the ship. Well,
that's Eric Royce played by Dab's Greer, who was honestly,

(22:19):
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, a 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 gear comes in.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
He absolutely is the dad. Wait is this the guy
who's playing chess and is he smoking a pipe or something?

Speaker 1 (22:47):
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. 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, some of the risks,
and this movie is just completely alarming in light of

(23:09):
all of that, not only because of the smoking, but
because of other things as well.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
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 shooting firearms inside of a interplanetary spaceship,
they also just leave the door open on the surface
of Mars.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
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,
Dad's career 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

(23:52):
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.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
I don't remember what he was in either of those.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
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 eludes me it does have a
name of Why does it not have a basket hunt?

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Are you taking notes, Jerome Bixby, We're giving you good
notes here. All right.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
I'm gonna skip over the rest of the human crew here,
but we may refer back to one or two is
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, a solid cast. And then our monster suit.

(25:03):
I'm always interested who's inside the creature 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

(25:25):
gorilla costume, had his own suit, and war said suit
or I guess, sometimes supplied suits if there was 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

(25:46):
guy played a lot of gorillas.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
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
going to have to like change your the natural positioning
of your body move in different ways that can actually

(26:29):
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

(26:50):
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, art 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

(27:10):
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 love to hear from you.

(27:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
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 bat face.
Would you say, yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
I mean it's it's not a gorilla costume, but it's
a gorilla actor in a suit essentially doing gorilla costume stuff.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, it's like a like a muscly humanoid reptilian with
kind of a bat face.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Yeah. Yeah, though is girmental. Toros 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 hit 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

(28:41):
you can compare this monster to in the you know,
the fifties and sixties, and it's this is above average.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
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. There are like some scenes
where you say, the creature is reaching up through a
hole in a hatch that it has clawed, or is

(29:08):
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

(29:30):
of it, Like the material is kind of thin, and
it's less impressive that way.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
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 already alluded to this. But he's like
chin is sticking out of the mask a bit, and

(29:56):
they ultimately just you know, did what they could to
incorporate that into the to the design.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
But like I said, there there are some shots where
it looks quite good and is used very effectively, especially
the shadowy ones.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, I'm reminded a bit of 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
all 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 film filmmaking doesn't involve

(30:31):
just you know, putting a monster in front of a
camera and shooting it there. There are so many additional
elements that go into creating the illusion of terror.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
So still on its own, I would say pretty great
monster suit. You know that 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. And you know,
I don't want to get into the old movie dirt,

(31:03):
but there are some allegations that maybe he wasn't in
the best condition to perform for this one, and maybe
there was some communication breakdowns between cor Agan 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

(31:27):
fifty five's The Beast with a Million Eyes and The
Day the World Ended to nineteen fifty six Is It
Conquered the World?

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Ah, that's a Roger Corman movie. That's the one where
Earth is conquered by a psychic space or to choke.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, those are not Those are maybe not believable looking monsters.
They are very laughable, but they also are unique. They
stand out.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, they're great.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
They're pretty great in that respect.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
I've got a big poster of it Conquered the World
up on my wall here.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
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

(32:18):
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, it's worth it.
Paul also wore the Monstro 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

(32:40):
of the Saucermen. He also helped make that giant typodermic
needle in nineteen fifty sevens 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
little people in a big word world gimmicks and props.

(33:02):
So I'm not sure what he worked on there, but
but I'm sure it was something spectacular.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Okay, So we have crossed paths many times.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yes, yeah, and we'll and we'll undoubtedly come back to
him now on the music end of the spectrum. They're like,
there are three different individuals. I'm not going to spend
a lot of time on them. We have Paul Sattel
or Sawtel, I'm entirely sure on that one. And then

(33:31):
we also have bert A Schefter. Sautel was born nineteen
oh six died in nineteen seventy one. Schefter nineteen oh
fourth through nineteen ninety nine, the former Polish born films
core 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

(33:54):
did various other genres, westerns and so forth. In fact,
Sautel worked on 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

(34:14):
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 Cookerly was a pioneering electronic musician who
contributed electronic sci fi sounds to various pictures. He often

(34:37):
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
from 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

(34:57):
did some work on the original Twilight Zone in Star Trek's.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
This movie didn't really have amazing music themes that stood
out to me, but there are some nice sort of
ambient 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,

(35:22):
and what was there was minimal but effective.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah. Yeah, we have a wonderfully tense, atmospheric and 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,

(35:47):
let's get into the beginning of the picture. Let's jump
into the plot.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
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

(36:11):
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 a crashed spaceship of some kind.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
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. In the space hor the red
planet looks great in black and white. Here. You know,
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.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
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.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
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 going to be big.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
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

(37:37):
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

(38:01):
kind of death.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Oh Man, Absolutely solid, just a great start.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
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

(38:50):
setting for the opening sequence of the nineteen ninety three
Super Mario Brothers film.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
What what was the opening sequence?

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (38:57):
Is that like there were many dyingas wars or something.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, when the eggs and the dinosaurs the cross dimensional
cross crossing there.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Oh, Yeah, that's when the lady leaves the egg at
the convent or whatever.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
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 invasions.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
I remember that opening sequence. It tugs at the heart strings.
There's like a single overhead light and he's out shooting hoops.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, yeah, to protect the planet. So that's that's seventy three.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
I think he talks to his dad or something.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, but in this nineteen seventy three everybody still has
that same flat top haircut then yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, everything is still fifties to the max.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Yeah. 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

(40:13):
future is imagined by the fifties is super fifties and
the future as imagined by the seventies is super seventies.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, like you know, it's if shoulder pads are in well,
future is going to be such shoulder pads you've never seen.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
So anyway, we're here on the surface of Mars 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?

Speaker 1 (40:50):
I don't know, maybe they got like a central stem
in the middle or something that's pumping it down.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
We don't really get a good handle on that, and
we but we otherwise do get a good handle of
the layout of the ship, just not maybe where all
the propulsion is handled.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah, we'll come back to that. And then I love
they cut straight from this spaceship to the US Capitol Building.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
An alarmingly mundane cut after such a nice opening, but
thank goodness they teased us with all this fun and
off world stuff before we go to what like, it's
like a press briefing at the White House.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yeah, but I'm sorry, it's at the Capitol. Yeah, it's
like the Science Advisory Committee, Division of Interplanetary Exploration. 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

(41:43):
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, The spokes guy says,
ladies and gentlemen of the press, As you know, the
first attempt to send a spaceship to the planet Mars
was made six months ago. We knew that that ship,
the Challenge one for one, had reached its destination, but

(42:04):
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.

(42:25):
Two months ago, we sent a second ship to Mars
to learn the fate of Colonel Carruthers 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 Carruthers was the sole survivor of this

(42:45):
first expedition. One hour ago, we received a teleradio communication
from Colonel Van Hewsen, the commander of the second spaceship.
This ship is now ready to take off for its
return trip to Earth from Mars, and Colonel Others is
being brought back for a court martial to face trial
for the murders of the rest of the crew. That's

(43:07):
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

(43:27):
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 what is what is Mary supposed to be?
She like a doctor, basically physician of some kind.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
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
plot points.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
I can't remember. Did they give us any newspaper shots,
any clipping song?

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Oh we don't see any of the kerning.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yeah, murder on Mars, I can see it.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
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

(44:43):
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. The airlock in C
compartment has been left open, and he's mad about this.

(45:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Langton, by the way, lived nineteen thirteen 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.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Yeah, he looks like a man who would be dumping crates.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Well, they brought a lot of crates. This is a
cargo heavy craft.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Man they've got so many crates you wouldn't believe.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
If you normally tell me it's a movie set entirely
within a nineteen fifty space ship 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.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah, I never got a hint of cardboard off of anything.
Everything feels like it is. It is just hard steel.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
But the other thing about this plot moment is like,
wait a minute, he left the airlock open.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
Now.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
At first I was thinking, Okay, maybe he only meant
one of the two doors, but nope. Then we see
it and both the inner and outer doors of the
airlock are hanging wide open to the surface of the
planet Mars. So Colonel Vinhugheson 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

(46:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
My brain was extremely forgiving of this moment, I think,
because it's like they're talking about what's happening with the
air lock, 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.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
So we pan away from the doors as they close
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 humanoid figure, not quite human but close
to human, just bulky, big, threatening, imposing, And then we

(47:37):
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.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
The feet are not the best feature of the costume.
The claws are great because of course the claws are
fully arelated the feet or 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 they're sparsing
it out a little bit.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
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 much the dad. Yeah, this is the guy who
we said she'd have like a high back chair and
a dog. We meet Mary.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Royce yep ship mom.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
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 for dirty jokes and and brings you coffee. There
is Anne Anderson.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yep ship wife.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
Yes, uh, there is Major John Purdue.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yeah, I don't know, ship uncle.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
I guess ship Uncle, I think is very correct. Yeah,
this guy needs a he needs a COR's light in
his hand, and we got Bob Finelli. He's I don't
know ship something.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
So yeah, I don't he doesn't really last long enough
to get proper classification.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
And Lieutenant James Calder 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 Gino and we got kind Holts,
and we'll meet them later.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
They're both Red Shirts though, right.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
Yeah, they are the first two to get killed.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah. 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

(50:01):
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 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,

(50:23):
the basic layout of the ship is a vertical stack
of different decks that are accessed by these ladders, 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.

(50:44):
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

(51:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
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 I've seen Alien so many times over
the years, but I don't know if that I've ever

(51:36):
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

(51:59):
where everything is a bit more.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
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

(52:23):
contributes to what John Carpenter said about that feeling that
there's really just this little engine driving the movie. Something
about the movie works in a very tactile physical sense,
and the good understanding of the space I think helps
with that.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Yeah, I would agree.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Anyway. Carrothers is sitting here looking melancholy as they drive
into space, and then Colonel van Husen, the commander of
the mission, he comes down the ladder from the deck above.
He comes up to him and he says, what do
you think thinking about? He says, then you think about
those nine bodies you left down there, and carother says, yes,

(53:08):
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

(53:29):
convict him. Van Heuston 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, Carrothers realized
that their limited food rations would not allow them all
to survive until rescue showed up, so he killed all

(53:49):
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 by something not me.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
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 Corruthers
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

(54:23):
performance is such that we could read that into it,
we could read guilt into it and so forth, So
that 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 then,
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

(54:46):
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

(55:07):
the ship.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
Yeah. I agree with all that, but I think a
very strong setup. Yeah. So then Van Heusen 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. Now, at first he

(55:30):
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 a wound inflicted
by a human.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
It down the stew that night was so good.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
It's a harsh plan.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
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. Is there they got a lot of pockets.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
It's a great point. I didn't give this film a
lot of a lot of points for its space suits
and its jumpsuits, but those zippers are really shiny.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
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 that the thing that many reviewers

(56:44):
have noticed, which is that the two women of the
crew are just going around serving everyone coffee and almost
like taking their orders.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Yeah. Yeah, so if it is comparable to the mess
all scene and Alien, it's like eighty percent more sexist.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Yeah. The crew members are commenting on how every time
Van Houston 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

(57:20):
Ann Anderson replies, these days, he seems more concerned with
a man hunt than a woman hunt.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
Based yeah, linear acceleration.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah yeah. Now it doesn't work throughout the entire picture
because they also walk in 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.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Now, there are at least two established couples within the
crew of this Mars Rescue Slash 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

(58:15):
is on the rocks because Van Heuston cares more about
murder on Mars than he does about romance.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
It is his job.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
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.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Den Caruthers come down the stairs, like right after that,
he's kind of he's still looking for Luren, and he's
kind of like, oh man, I'm right here.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
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 in
a relationship, just not this kind of work. Anyway, we
see Anderson showing some tenderness for Corrother the prisoner, like

(59:01):
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
Crother's point of view. He says, we were all outside

(59:22):
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

(59:44):
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, Kenner 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

(01:00:04):
it back to the ship. When the sandstorm quit, I
went out and searched all over. There wasn't a sign
of them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
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 eatma, I'm gonna get them all.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
So Anderson, she listens to the story and she's like, yeah,
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 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, Van calls Anderson chicken,

(01:01:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
This is a great line and the actor delivers it perfectly.
I really liked it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
So time passes, the 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 it 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

(01:02:00):
from behind something and scrape across the top of a
table and good looking clause as you mentioned earlier, Rob,
but kind Holts goes down to investigate the strange sounds
in the cargo deck and here begins a sedate, slow, quiet,
suspenseful investigation process as kind Holts goes down the decks

(01:02:22):
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 effective. We have
a good idea of what's going to happen. But I
just like watching the investigation. It's kind of calm but
suspenseful at the same time, and it reminds me of
scenes in Alien, like when Harry Dean Stanton is looking

(01:02:42):
for the cat in the cargo area.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
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 going
to 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.

(01:03:05):
And then when it finally occurs, it's it's satisfying.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
It ends with a really good jump scare. I thought,
where there 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.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yep, yeap, smashes him down, breaks him. Yeah, very well done.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
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 there, you 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

(01:03:47):
the other crew they're very skeptical of Corrothers looking into this,
but things do start to appear. It starts to appear
that something is wrong. Kind of Holts is not at
his post. They look for him in his he's not
there either. Corrothers 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,

(01:04:09):
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 Gino Finelli is
attacked and the cigarette drops right out of his mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
And he's he going in to get more cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
That's what it looks like.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Yeah, and there, you know, there's there their strategic supply
of various tobacco products because there's also pipes being smoked
on board very smoky spaceship.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
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 Corrothers 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

(01:05:04):
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 his 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.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
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 too

(01:05:46):
much more additional plot shenanigans. We've got to we've got
to get to the goods.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
So they conclude that Geno may also be somewhere in
the air ducts. 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 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 to

(01:06:13):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Yeah, yeah, this indeed a great sequence. 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

(01:06:48):
of the picture, but you know, available and like an
extended cut. They came out years later and in deleted sequences.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Yeah. Yeah, So there's a creature jump here, the lieutenants
trying to get Geno, but the like the the alien
pops out and it slashes that in 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

(01:07:17):
they have grenades?

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
Oh my god. So this is, of course, is a
huge difference between alien and you have the terarform beyond
space because an alien they have very few, almost no weapons.
It's basically improvised, improvised weapons, like they have to make
their own flamers. You know, they have a harpoon gun
of course that gets used later, but for the most
part they're having to make it up as they go,
make a like a cattle prode type device. Here they

(01:07:41):
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

(01:08:03):
the air ducks.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
Why do they need that manial? We would would at
that point would eight be any better than one?

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
And to say nothing of the whole of this ship. This,
this ship's hull is just absolutely impregnable. And this is
just the first sign of it. We will have even
more evidence of this as we move forward.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
They have so many weapons, like its pistols, it's high
caliber rifles. Like why did they bring all this stuck.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
I don't know, A bunch of Yeah, and they've got
a bazuka.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
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 with computer equipment right
behind it. Yeah. Yeah, not that it matters at that point.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
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. And 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. I'll have

(01:09:27):
to do an autopsy. So she's going to do an autopsy. Meanwhile,
Van Hughson asks Carrothers, Okay, He's like, clearly you were right.
Do you know what it is? And Carrother 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.

(01:09:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
I mean, he delivers it perfectly here though. I mean
it's like the performance is solid enough, and I'm like, yeah, yeah,
I think that might be it. And again this is
Dab's Greer, so you know, solid actor here. It makes
you believe it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
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 deduce
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

(01:10:40):
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

(01:11:01):
it in half, basically ties it in a bow. That's
a great scene.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
M hm.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
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
very it's lit very brightly from behind, but clowing its
way into a darkened room with the smoke coming out
as beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Yeah, this is a great shot. I love this one.

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
Yeah, really cool. And Carruthers shows bravery here as there,
you know, he covers the 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.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Time to bust out the chemical weapons aboard the space ship.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
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 wipes
in on Van Heusen's foot. It's like claws up his
boot really bad.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
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 flat his foot even though you see
nothing graphic, like your mind fills in the rest and
it's it's horrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
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
autopsy 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

(01:12:42):
think it would be more significantly reduced in volume than
it appears.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:12:55):
Yeah, so they they reason, they start thinking about this,
They're all right, Mars is 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

(01:13:15):
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

(01:13:38):
is something. The romantic subplot of this movie is shockingly
cold and weird. Like, basically, the moment we find out
Van Huson is infected with the alien pathogen, his girlfriend
Anderson starts moving in on Carruthers. She 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

(01:14:00):
on the cot.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Yeah, it's an it's an icky love triangle that I
don't think we really need it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
I think it seems especially cold because it's like she
turns to her others as soon as Van becomes weakened.
I don't know, it feels sad.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
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 Grothers 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 just feels if it
is believable, it's cold. So it's like, what how am
I supposed to feel about this?

Speaker 3 (01:14:34):
Yeah? So I think the romantic subplot, I mean I
would saying 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.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
But yeah, the kids were making out to this apparently,
like how did how they feel about it?

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
Yeah? Okay, next plot development Space Dad Dad has a
plan again. Uh, the can get in behind the creature
by putting on EVA suits and doing a spacewalk on
the outside hull of the ship down to the deck
below it. And I really like this set piece. So
it's Corruthers and I think Lieutenant Oh, it's Lieutenant Calder also.

(01:15:16):
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 scene looked great,
it sounded great. I love the atmosphere. It's creepy. Quiet
and a really compelling way, very strong.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Yeah, firing on all cylinders, and we're really not even
seeing the monster for the most part during this sequence.
I mean, we get some we get some hints of them, because,
as we'll discuss, they're having to distract the monster in
order to try and pull this off.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
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. This
is basically the plan from the Thing from Another World.
They're gonna they're gonna shock it from below. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Yeah, they're gonna pull a thing from another world on it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
Oh yeah, yeah uh, And it's sort of worked in Creature,
but only temporarily. He doesn't even doesn't even appear to
work at all in this, Like the crawls down onder
the stairs. They've got the wires rigged up, they zap
it and it's just like, oh no, I'm I'm I'm
not happy, so it attacks them. Lieutenant Calder gets his
leg broken and is trapped behind a large metal cylinder.

(01:16:38):
He's got a blow torch in his hand that he
can use to protect himself from the beast while Carrothers
escapes to the outside and I think he think he
makes it back up the outside of the ship hull
to everybody else.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
Yeah, I don't know how long he's supposed to be
stuck down there, but like it's 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.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
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.

(01:17:27):
They say it gives him a condition similar to leukemia,
and the romance between Anderson and Coruthers 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,

(01:17:49):
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. 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

(01:18:11):
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 he does this. Unfortunately, while the blood jacking
team are down there right next to it, and this

(01:18:32):
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

(01:18:53):
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 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,

(01:19:16):
tearing through the metal, coming up into the room, and
they literally blast it with a bazooka.

Speaker 1 (01:19:22):
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, that's right. And it doesn't kill everyone, yeah,
or even the monster.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
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

(01:19:55):
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
to not have the air it needs to breathe, and

(01:20:15):
it dies by I guess suffocation.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
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 from
a film that comes decades later, 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,

(01:20:39):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
So finally we go back to Earth to the spokes
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 see 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

(01:21:11):
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 and understand the universe. Another name

(01:21:32):
for Mars is death. And then it just goes straight
to the end. I love that the last words the
movie has to say, or not about like 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.

(01:21:52):
It's just trash.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
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 in steay nothing on Mars
for us.

Speaker 4 (01:22:01):
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

(01:22:22):
meant to know of it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:23):
Mm hm. So, as we said earlier, it the terror
from beyond space. I feel like a pretty strong thumbs
up 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.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
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 environment. That would
have been neat Again, the performances are solid. The monster
costume for the most part, looks really good, like to

(01:23:00):
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

(01:23:22):
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

(01:23:43):
E R bo 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

(01:24:05):
as reminders of what the core episodes are as they're
coming out.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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