CATCH A CLASSIC
Space Stowaways TCM, Beginning at 7 p.m.
Picking up a hitchhiker carries its risks, but can be especially deadly if it’s one of the extraterrestrial monstrosities featured in tonight’s TCM double feature that is looking for a free ride. To be fair, the crews of the spaceships in these films did not bring the beasts on board knowingly, but they still had to deal with the horrific fallout from these space stowaways.
First up tonight is 1958’s
a nice blending of sci-fi and horror. Despite the era in which it was made, and its cheesy-sounding title, low budget and brief runtime (68 minutes), this film delivers a suspenseful viewing experience. Set in the far-off future of 1973, and not actually “beyond space,” the story follows an American space crew sent to retrieve the
sole survivor of a Mars mission, who claims that a hostile humanoid being has killed the rest of the expedition. An escape hatch is unwittingly left open while the crew is on Mars, and once the crew starts heading home and people start getting picked off one-by-one, they begin realizing the survivor may be right
It! The Terror From Beyond Space (pictured),
as it becomes apparent that the ruthless Martian thing has come onboard. It! is kind of unique for its time in creating a tense buildup before fully revealing the creature (played by actor/stuntman Ray “Crash” Corrigan in his final film). The creature costume isn’t completely terrible considering the budget and the era, but the film really shines in its first part, where we only get glimpses of the creature, or hear its eerie growl echoing as a hapless crew member explores a ship’s lower level or some other dark hiding place. Those initial scenes have a creepily restrained and ominous atmosphere courtesy of director Edward L. Cahn, the man who also brought you such fun and wonderfully titled quickie horror films as Creature With the Atom Brain, Invasion of the Saucer Men and Curse of the Faceless Man.
If the plot for It! sounds quite similar to tonight’s second film, the 1979 sci-fi/horror classic Alien, you aren’t the only one thinking that: Representatives for the 1958 film tried suing the producers of Alien for plagiarism, and It! screenwriter Jerome Bixby once chuckled as he said in an interview, “Frankly, I feel like the grandfather of Alien.” Alien, like It! itself, clearly drew from other sci-fi works before it, but also became transformative and influential in its own right, thanks to the superior talent of its cast and crew (and their superior budget). The movie, in which the relentlessly and remorselessly deadly “xenomorph” comes onboard the deep-space salvage ship Nostromo — literally exploding onto the
scene out of poor John Hurt in the infamous “chestburster” sequence — is the ultimate “haunted house movie in space.” The gothic design of the ship, the truly otherworldly look of the creature designed by H.R. Giger, the atmospheric direction by Ridley Scott in just his second feature film and the exceptional cast led by Sigourney Weaver in her iconic role as Ripley — the most kick-ass “final girl” in any horror film — along with Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, Ian Holm and Hurt, made this an instant classic and launched an eventual franchise with ensuing films of varying quality. While it may be that in space no one can hear you scream, the screams coming from your living room if you tune in to Alien this evening are another matter.