Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and today we have a fun episode for you.
Speaker 1: This is our episode from seven, nineteen twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: about the nineteen fifty eight space horror film it The
Speaker 1: Terror from Beyond Space. This one's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It's considered one of the key influences on the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine classic alien Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And this week on Weird House Cinema, we're continuing some
Speaker 1: of our alien related explorations with a film that is
Speaker 1: frequently cited as one of the b movie influences on
Speaker 1: alienscribe Dan O'Bannon, along with the likes of Mario Bob
Speaker 1: as Planet the Vampires, which we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 1: but this week we're talking about it The Terror from
Speaker 1: Beyond Space.
Speaker 3: If you couldn't tell from the way Rob said it,
Speaker 3: there is an exclamation point in the middle of the title.
Speaker 3: I love midline punctuation other than a colon in a
Speaker 3: title like it's this is two sentences.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think we could have fit a question mark
Speaker 1: in there as well, though, like it the Terror from
Speaker 1: beyond Space? We don't know.
Speaker 3: I really liked this movie, but I feel like the
Speaker 3: title is misleading. In what way is the Terror from
Speaker 3: beyond space? It's just like a thing somewhere out there
Speaker 3: in space. It's from another planet, a known planet.
Speaker 1: Actually, well, I guess you know, at this point, maybe
Speaker 1: people had seen enough movies where the terror is from
Speaker 1: space and they're like, well, can we get beyond that?
Speaker 1: What's the next logical step?
Speaker 3: It suggests some kind of like interdimensional love crafty and
Speaker 3: sort of origin. It's not there. This is the Terror
Speaker 3: is from Mars.
Speaker 1: Yes. I really like some of the posters for this
Speaker 1: particular movie. One of them that I pulled up and
Speaker 1: included in our notes here is the nice horizontal poster
Speaker 1: we see some version of the monster holding a woman.
Speaker 1: Of course, one of the classic staples of the old
Speaker 1: Monster movie is one that I love, and I love
Speaker 1: some of the promises on this particular poster. It says
Speaker 1: it reaches through space, it scoops up men and women,
Speaker 1: it gorges on blood.
Speaker 3: Now, is there any way to reach other than through space.
Speaker 3: I guess one could reach through time, possibly with one's
Speaker 3: mind or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess I'll reached through space. Is it's
Speaker 1: reached through time, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: But it scoops up men and women, It scoops them.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. It definitely scoops up men. Does it
Speaker 1: ever scoop up a woman?
Speaker 3: I don't recall it scoop It's gonna get men multiple times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, another case where the monster holding a woman is
Speaker 1: a complete lie on the poster.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think, what's the name of the
Speaker 3: wrestling move that it does with the guy where it
Speaker 3: just like fully like you know, presses a guy above
Speaker 3: above its head.
Speaker 1: That is fitting least, I believe, sometimes called a gorilla press,
Speaker 1: which is fitting because, as we'll discuss, we have a
Speaker 1: veteran gorilla suit actor playing our monster.
Speaker 3: It the Terror from Beyond Space aka Mars, has a
Speaker 3: sort of a gorilla esque silhouette, especially in some shots.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and the silhouettes work really well. This is a
Speaker 1: movie that has a, I think, especially for the time,
Speaker 1: a pretty great monster costume. There's some flaws, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: that weren't necessarily within the control of the monster suit maker,
Speaker 1: but more importantly one of I mean, the most important
Speaker 1: thing about a monster suit is you've got to you
Speaker 1: got to shoot it right, you gotta light it correctly,
Speaker 1: you gotta know what to show and what not to show.
Speaker 1: And they don't do that perfectly in this film either,
Speaker 1: but there are moments where it works really well.
Speaker 3: I agree. The movie has a pretty good understanding of
Speaker 3: how to use how to use shadows, and how to
Speaker 3: obscure the monster so as to heighten the suspense, and
Speaker 3: to use what looks good about the monster performance and
Speaker 3: try to avoid what doesn't look so good about it.
Speaker 3: And in fact, you may recall the director of this movie,
Speaker 3: Edward el Kahn, also directed another movie we did on
Speaker 3: Weird House, the Creature with the Adam Brain, and that
Speaker 3: was a hoot. Of course, that one I think was
Speaker 3: much funnier than this movie. This one, I think overall
Speaker 3: works better on its own terms when taken more seriously,
Speaker 3: But in both cases the director was good at using
Speaker 3: like shadows of the creature instead of a direct shot
Speaker 3: of the creature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's obviously a lower budget
Speaker 1: late fifties affair. But still it's a fun and an
Speaker 1: effective ride. Like not everything is great, but everything comes
Speaker 1: together enough that it has this kind of structural integrity,
Speaker 1: the structural completeness that is very enjoyable, especially when you
Speaker 1: consider that this film was shot in well as many
Speaker 1: as two weeks. I've seen two weeks sighted, but I've
Speaker 1: also seen six days sided as the shooting period for
Speaker 1: this picture.
Speaker 3: I think. Isn't that what John Carpenter said about it
Speaker 3: in the interview.
Speaker 1: We watched, Yeah, Carpenter in Let's see what was this?
Speaker 1: A twenty fifteen appearance on Turner Classic Movies, he says
Speaker 1: it was shot in six days, which does not seem
Speaker 1: unreasonable given what we know about the director and productions
Speaker 1: of this time period.
Speaker 3: It's a fun interview Carpenter does about the movie because
Speaker 3: he clearly has great affection for it. This is something
Speaker 3: he saw as a child and it stuck with him,
Speaker 3: Like you know, you can tell he's still even as
Speaker 3: an adult going back and watching it, sees it with
Speaker 3: a little kid brain and appreciates it in that way.
Speaker 3: And you know, that's something I always enjoy when I'm
Speaker 3: able to do it, when I'm able to like turn
Speaker 3: off adult brain and become a child again watching a
Speaker 3: movie maybe on the sillier end of the spectrum. And yeah,
Speaker 3: but he says another thing about the movie, which is that, Okay,
Speaker 3: it does have some pretty large technical flaws, and we
Speaker 3: can talk about some of those as we go on,
Speaker 3: but considering how small the budget was, how fast it
Speaker 3: was made, it's actually a pretty impressively effective picture. He says.
Speaker 3: A quote about it is something like it has a
Speaker 3: great little engine that runs it or something like that,
Speaker 3: and I totally agree. There is a strong sort of
Speaker 3: mechanical tactle feeling to the plot and a lot of
Speaker 3: the scenes, and it works really well. It just kind
Speaker 3: of pushes you through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of I guess it's like thinking
Speaker 1: about what is a car supposed to do? Is supposed
Speaker 1: to drive you from point A to point B. What's
Speaker 1: a movie supposed to do? Well, answer is a little
Speaker 1: more complicated, but essentially entertain us and tell us a
Speaker 1: story and allow us to be immersed in that story.
Speaker 1: And this film does all of those things. Even if
Speaker 1: you were to be picky about it, you could be like, well,
Speaker 1: look at that hubcap, look at that tail light, you know,
Speaker 1: but hey, it all comes together and you make it
Speaker 1: to your destination.
Speaker 3: Look at that whatever chin or something poking out of
Speaker 3: the monster's mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in the end too. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: we have some some pretty pretty solid performances in here.
Speaker 1: We have some effective scenes, some that are I think
Speaker 1: actually quite scary, that still hold up and have a
Speaker 1: certain amount of tension and terror to them. Michael Weldon
Speaker 1: and the Psychotronic Film Guide praised it as a quote
Speaker 1: pretty scary space horror, and uh, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it depends what you compare it to. You know, obviously
Speaker 1: it it's a very interesting exercise to compare this to Alien,
Speaker 1: but it's also a little unfair to hold it to that,
Speaker 1: to that level, you know. But on its own terms,
Speaker 1: it has some some scares, some jump scares, some some
Speaker 1: creepy atmospheric moments. I really liked it.
Speaker 3: I agree, And I also agree that as far as
Speaker 3: the sort of set pieces, the horror set pieces go,
Speaker 3: I think O'Bannon correctly selected the best elements to lift.
Speaker 3: Like some of the best stuff in the movie is
Speaker 3: the stuff that gets copied over into the alien plot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we'll have more to say about all of this
Speaker 1: as we proceed, but elevator picture of this film, I
Speaker 1: think all you have to say is alien stow away.
Speaker 3: I'd add another element. I'd say there's like two parallel
Speaker 3: elevator pitches. One is Alien stow Away, the other is
Speaker 3: murder on Mars.
Speaker 1: Question monk, that's true, I would say that's the bet
Speaker 1: plot that sadly kind of gets shuffled aside. But it's
Speaker 1: a nice what if, Like what if they had really
Speaker 1: been able to deliver both in equal volumes, or if
Speaker 1: someone were to re explore.
Speaker 3: It today intriguing idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, if you want to watch it the Terror
Speaker 1: from Beyond Space before proceeding here. This one is pretty
Speaker 1: widely available in digital and physical formats, including a twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three KL Studio Classics Blu ray release that has
Speaker 1: a new HD master, a FEATURETTE, and I think three
Speaker 1: different commentary tracks. I ended up not being able to
Speaker 1: pick this one up. I think they do have it
Speaker 1: at Video Drone, but I ended up watching a quality
Speaker 1: stream of that I think must be the HD master,
Speaker 1: and it looks pretty darn good.
Speaker 3: The stream I watched also looked pretty sharp.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into the people here. So we
Speaker 1: mentioned the director already. And again we have talked about
Speaker 1: this director before because it is the One Week Wonder.
Speaker 1: It is Edward L. Cohn who lived eighteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: through nineteen sixty three, who also directed the Creature with
Speaker 1: the Adam Brain that was released in fifty five.
Speaker 3: So I've really enjoyed both of the movies of his
Speaker 3: we watched, but I recall Creature with the Adam Brain
Speaker 3: being more silly, being more very fun, but a more ludicrous, goofy,
Speaker 3: low budget monster movie, and this one being surprisingly tight
Speaker 3: by comparison.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Creature with the Adam Brain had kind of
Speaker 1: a serial energy to it, like old old action serial
Speaker 1: kind of vibe, and this one is, you know, it's
Speaker 1: very identifiable as as space horror proto space horror in
Speaker 1: many ways, and you can you can see why it
Speaker 1: was such an influence.
Speaker 3: Creature with the Adam Brain was the movie that had
Speaker 3: the news broadcasts by Dick Cutting.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, good old Dick Cutting.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: So con was a highly prolific low budget director for
Speaker 1: three decades, directing one hundred and twenty eight films. Many
Speaker 1: of you may be familiar with some of his nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties horror in sci fi films such as fifty seven's
Speaker 1: Invasion of the Saucermen and The Zombies of Mara Tau.
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty six is The She Creature, nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 1: is Invisible Invaders, and The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.
Speaker 1: He also did a lot of westerns action films, biker films,
Speaker 1: and various social exploitation films of the thirties, forties, fifties
Speaker 1: and early sixties. So it just to give you an
Speaker 1: idea of like how fast he was pumping these out,
Speaker 1: how fast the one week wonder was getting these done? It.
Speaker 1: The Terror from Beyond Space is one of five con
Speaker 1: films released in the year nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3: Even Roger Corman only did five movies in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: Oh wow, but he did do eight in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: I mean there are some years where Corman was pumping
Speaker 1: him out in such quantity that he's unequaled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, whenever you're feeling a little too proud of yourself,
Speaker 3: you think, have I made eight movies this year, three
Speaker 3: of which are about atomic radiation and two of which
Speaker 3: have the word naked in the title.
Speaker 1: Now getting to the screenplay, the screenplay is by Jerome Bixby,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty three through nineteen ninety eight American
Speaker 1: writer and composer, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music,
Speaker 1: who also wrote various short stories and two novels, Call
Speaker 1: for an Exorcist and Space by the Tale, both published
Speaker 1: in sixty four. His nineteen fifty three story It's a
Speaker 1: Good Life was adapted as an episode of the Twilight
Speaker 1: Zone in nineteen sixty one, and also revisited in Twilight
Speaker 1: Zone the movie. This is the one about the six
Speaker 1: year old boy with godlike powers that can wish you
Speaker 1: into the corn field and so yeah, yeah, now it
Speaker 1: the tearform. Beyond Space was only his second produced screenplay,
Speaker 1: following CON's Curse of the Faceless Man from the same year.
Speaker 1: He also has a story credit on nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: Is Fantastic Voyage. We often think about Isaac Asimov in
Speaker 1: relation to that picture, but we have to remember he
Speaker 1: only wrote the novelization, he was not involved in the screenplay,
Speaker 1: and also Bixby wrote four episodes of the original Star
Speaker 1: Trek series.
Speaker 3: I'd say the screenplay, like some of the other things
Speaker 3: we've been talking about, you could look at from multiple angles.
Speaker 3: Is it high art?
Speaker 2: No? Is it?
Speaker 3: Is it super smart?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's got some kind of gaps and
Speaker 3: flaws in it and some failed characterization, but it's for
Speaker 3: what it is, and for the level of movie this is.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's a pretty tight plot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's efficient, it's economic, there's not
Speaker 1: really a dull moment, and it's got some nice little
Speaker 1: splashes of dialogue here and there, which of course are
Speaker 1: helped along by a really solid cast of character actors
Speaker 1: and some leading act Yes, I agree. And speaking of
Speaker 1: starting at the top, we have Marshall Thompson playing the
Speaker 1: character Colonel Edward Carruthers. Thompson lived nineteen twenty five through
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, All American actor, who we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before because he was in a little
Speaker 1: film from nineteen fifty eight titled Fiend Without a Face.
Speaker 3: Ah. This is the Brain Attack movie, the one that
Speaker 3: takes place at I think it's a research installation up
Speaker 3: in Canada or in Alaska at some more sort of
Speaker 3: arctic location. And the idea is that a remote military
Speaker 3: base that's doing experimental I don't know whether something or
Speaker 3: other gets attacked by invisible brains and spinal columns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a film that's mostly notable for really incredible stop
Speaker 1: motion brain monsters and some very squishy sound effects to
Speaker 1: go along with them, generally not notable for the acting.
Speaker 1: In fact, I remember us just kind of commenting that
Speaker 1: Marshall Thompson was kind of like a square job, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of boring actor. Like there's just you know, very
Speaker 1: lukewarm performance.
Speaker 3: That is what I thought of him in that movie.
Speaker 3: I'd say he's a good bit better in this actually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this film gives him a lot more to work with.
Speaker 1: He has a more complex character. So on one level,
Speaker 1: he is the square jot chick magnet hero per usual,
Speaker 1: but especially early on in the picture, he's also the
Speaker 1: lone survivor of a terrifying encounter on an alien world
Speaker 1: who has subsequently been condemned to the firing squad you know,
Speaker 1: all but officially for the murder of his crew. And
Speaker 1: so he is able to work with that, and you
Speaker 1: do see that in his performance. He has like kind
Speaker 1: of a nice haunted look, especially throughout the first you know,
Speaker 1: third of the picture.
Speaker 3: Framed for homicide by a star beast. Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: an unusual type of character, but it's it's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I set out to be kind of again
Speaker 1: bored by his performance, as one often is, I think
Speaker 1: with leading man performances from genre pictures of this time
Speaker 1: period for various reasons we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 1: but I ended up enjoying his performance.
Speaker 3: Somewhat totally agree better than average. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not gonna go through everything we said about
Speaker 1: him last time, but basically he's a guy who kind
Speaker 1: of has like two prongs to his filmography. They are
Speaker 1: the cult films and then there is like the good
Speaker 1: natured animal films. So he did like a horse movie
Speaker 1: called Gallant Bess in forty six, and then sixty five's
Speaker 1: Clarence the Cross Eyed Line, and so forth. His final
Speaker 1: film role was a supporting role in nineteen ninety one's
Speaker 1: mc bain, an action movie starring Christopher Walken, Michael Ironside
Speaker 1: and also featuring Louise Gouzman in a supporting role. But
Speaker 1: I don't think I was familiar with mc bain outside
Speaker 1: of the yelling McBain on the Simpsons and having the
Speaker 1: fictional action hero McBain, which when I looked into it
Speaker 1: a little bit more. Apparently this movie, the ninety one
Speaker 1: movie McBain, came out after the Simpsons jokes, and because
Speaker 1: of it, the Simpsons had to stop making McMain jokes.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's completely true, but that's the
Speaker 1: argument ever heard.
Speaker 3: I don't think they stopped doing McBain jokes. I remember
Speaker 3: McBain jokes going well into the last seasons I saw
Speaker 3: at least like season seven and eight.
Speaker 1: Maybe they came back after a while and they had
Speaker 1: to like just hush it for a bit. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But then again, I thought I was familiar with Christopher
Speaker 1: Walken's filmography, and McBain feels like one that just came
Speaker 1: out of nowhere that did not previously exist, And just
Speaker 1: suddenly I jumped onto a different timeline.
Speaker 3: Which episode is it where McBain is delivering a palette
Speaker 3: of UNICEF pennies out of an airplane and then he
Speaker 3: gets attacked by COMMI Nazi fighter jets.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that one.
Speaker 3: He has to jump down and punch through the cockpit.
Speaker 1: Anyway, if anyone out there has seen mc bain from
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, well right in and we would like
Speaker 1: to hear from you, all right, continuing on with the
Speaker 1: rest of the cast here, We're not going to do
Speaker 1: the whole cast because this is still one of those
Speaker 1: films where they are just a lot of, at least
Speaker 1: on the surface, interchangeable guys.
Speaker 3: But I really lost track of the guys multiple times
Speaker 3: in this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though I did find it easier to keep track
Speaker 1: of them on the whole compared to a lot of movies,
Speaker 1: because on the whole, the cast is pretty good, and
Speaker 1: you know, we got some nice character actors in there,
Speaker 1: and the screenplay also seems to be doing a little
Speaker 1: extra work to keep us from getting too confused.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, but I am going to ding it for
Speaker 3: one thing, which is that they do a role call
Speaker 3: of the cast early on, where you're like, oh great, Fortunately,
Speaker 3: like all the cast members sound off, they call in
Speaker 3: on the radio, they say their name and it shows
Speaker 3: you their face. I'm like, this is a good way
Speaker 3: to just familiarize you quickly with all the characters and
Speaker 3: what their names are. But there are characters who don't
Speaker 3: participate in the role call. Later you think you know
Speaker 3: them all, and then just random other people are in
Speaker 3: the mix. It's like, wait, I don't remember that guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some sort of cast system in play here did
Speaker 1: not say present. All right, So Marshall Thompson is playing
Speaker 1: our doomed guy, or seemingly doomed guy who needs to
Speaker 1: be picked up from Mars because his mission to Mars
Speaker 1: ended in terror and death. Yeah, we have this rescue
Speaker 1: crew coming in to pick him up, and that's where
Speaker 1: we get into the rest of the cast. And this
Speaker 1: mission is headed up by Colonel van Heusen, played by
Speaker 1: Kim Spalding, who lived nineteen fifteen through the year two thousand.
Speaker 1: American stage, screen and TV actor the forties, fifties, and sixties,
Speaker 1: I think best known for this film. He worked in
Speaker 1: various westerns. I think, sometimes played a villain, sometimes played
Speaker 1: a hero. He has that kind of gaunt, stern look
Speaker 1: that I think allowed him to jump back and forth
Speaker 1: between the two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he played. The character he plays in this movie
Speaker 3: is relatively stoic. You can imagine he has used well
Speaker 3: as kind of like a moderately threatening man with dark moods.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I was reading on a classic film board
Speaker 1: about some of his roles, and apparently he played Doc
Speaker 1: Holiday in a nineteen fifty four TV western series called
Speaker 1: Stories of the Century, and apparently he played a villainous
Speaker 1: Doc Holiday in this. So Doc Holliday is like using
Speaker 1: his dentistry to torture people or something. Whoa. So that's
Speaker 1: the kind of range he had here. But in this
Speaker 1: he's essentially one of the heroes. But there's some misunderstandings
Speaker 1: that involved as well. All Right, we also have the
Speaker 1: character Anne Anderson, one of the scientists aboard the vessel,
Speaker 1: played by Shirley Patterson. I believe she's credited on this
Speaker 1: as Sean Smith. This is She lived nineteen twenty two
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety five, Canadian actress of the forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: best known for her roles in fifty six is World
Speaker 1: Without End, fifty seven's The Land Unknown, and the nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three Batman serial, which I've seen parts of. It's
Speaker 1: very hard to wat because it's just it's boring. But
Speaker 1: in this, yeah, she's a scientist, I think a geologist,
Speaker 1: but she's also the captain's girlfriend.
Speaker 3: Apparently this movie's approach to gender is not one of
Speaker 3: its most sort of future anticipating moves. So like, there
Speaker 3: are two women aboard the ship as members of the
Speaker 3: crew and they are both scientists, but they are also
Speaker 3: the significant others of other crew members, and they have
Speaker 3: to do all the cooking and the serving of coffee.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, multiple reviewers have pointed that out. And
Speaker 3: it's not the only movie of the time like that,
Speaker 3: by the way, where there's like, oh, you know, there's
Speaker 3: one woman on this crew. She is a scientist. We
Speaker 3: are going to the dinosaur planet. She's also the ship's cook.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's not one of the best aspects of
Speaker 1: the picture. There's no Ripley on this crew. Ripley would
Speaker 1: never Yeah, she would tell you to get your own
Speaker 1: darn coffee. And you know, even if it is and
Speaker 1: it's the best thing on the ships, of course you
Speaker 1: should get your own coffee. Yeah. The other female that
Speaker 1: you just alluded to on the ship is the character
Speaker 1: Mary Royce. She's essentially the mom of the ship. That's
Speaker 1: the way. She's supposed to be a scientist as well,
Speaker 1: but she's everyone's mom. I guess. She seems to fulfill
Speaker 1: that role for all of these these men that are
Speaker 1: serving on board of the spaceship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she sort of scolds them for making crass jokes
Speaker 3: and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Played by Anne Doran, who have nineteen eleven through
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, Doran appeared to be in more
Speaker 1: than five hundred movies and one thousand TV shows from
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two through nineteen eighty eight. She apparently started
Speaker 1: as a child actress, which of course helps if you're
Speaker 1: going to rack up these kind of numbers. But her
Speaker 1: mini credits include the nineteen fifty four giant ant movie Them,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five's Rebel Without a Cause, and nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: nine's Mister Smith Goes to Washington.
Speaker 3: She was in two exclamation point movies.
Speaker 1: They don't do enough exclamation point movies anymore.
Speaker 3: Wait, I just had to check. I thought them has
Speaker 3: an exclamation point.
Speaker 1: It does, yeah, but I can't add that in the
Speaker 1: notes exclamation points followed by commas. That's I just start
Speaker 1: feeling crazy. If I do that, I do hold it
Speaker 1: against you, all right. So that's Mary Royce, that's grandma
Speaker 1: or mom. Who's who's the dad character of the ship. Well,
Speaker 1: that's Eric Royce played by Dab's Greer, who was honestly,
Speaker 1: like really good in this, Like he doesn't really have
Speaker 1: that much to do. But sometimes in the ensemble cast
Speaker 1: of a particular film. You know you have that you
Speaker 1: know obviously, you know, a veteran character actor who can
Speaker 1: really just infuse anything he has to say or any
Speaker 1: scene where he's just present with a certain amount of
Speaker 1: dignity and seriousness. And that's where Dad's gear comes in.
Speaker 3: He absolutely is the dad. Wait is this the guy
Speaker 3: who's playing chess and is he smoking a pipe or something?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of smoking on from
Speaker 1: board the ship. That's something John Carpenter pointed out as well.
Speaker 1: It's like everybody's smoking like constantly. If you listen to
Speaker 1: our most recent stuff to Blow your Mind Core episode.
Speaker 1: This is also funny because we were talking about like
Speaker 1: oxygen levels on actual space flights, some of the risks,
Speaker 1: and this movie is just completely alarming in light of
Speaker 1: all of that, not only because of the smoking, but
Speaker 1: because of other things as well.
Speaker 3: I would say this movie's general understanding of like pressurized
Speaker 3: exploration environments is a little fuzzy. So not only is
Speaker 3: everybody constantly smoking and shooting firearms inside of a interplanetary spaceship,
Speaker 3: they also just leave the door open on the surface
Speaker 3: of Mars.
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't think anything would come in that's
Speaker 1: the I mean, that's the fatal flaw. But they didn't
Speaker 1: think there was anything that could crawl aboard. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Dad's career here is terrific. I think Carpenter also singled
Speaker 1: him out as being a fine presence in the film.
Speaker 1: Longtime American character actor whose credits include everything from fifty
Speaker 1: three's House of Wax. I don't think we mentioned him
Speaker 1: in that one. He's somewhere in the supporting cast. He's
Speaker 1: in fifty six is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which
Speaker 1: is another film that absolutely holds up, and then you
Speaker 1: also find him in nineteen ninety seven's con Air in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine is The Green Mile.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what he was in either of those.
Speaker 1: Well, I think looking at his dates, I mean, think
Speaker 1: of the oldest person remember in either movie, and it
Speaker 1: might have been Dab's greer.
Speaker 3: He should have. Okay, so he's like smoking a pipe
Speaker 3: or whatever. Playing chess got extreme Dad vibes, But they
Speaker 3: should have gone all in. They should have given him
Speaker 3: like a high backed chair to sit in and give
Speaker 3: him a basset hound.
Speaker 1: That would have been good. Yeah, every ship, I mean,
Speaker 1: if the Nostromo gets a cat. Why shouldn't this ship
Speaker 1: the name of which eludes me it does have a
Speaker 1: name of Why does it not have a basket hunt?
Speaker 3: Are you taking notes, Jerome Bixby, We're giving you good
Speaker 3: notes here. All right.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna skip over the rest of the human crew here,
Speaker 1: but we may refer back to one or two is
Speaker 1: when we get into the plot later on. But again,
Speaker 1: like top to bottom, everybody's good in this There's nobody
Speaker 1: that comes on screen and you're like, why did they
Speaker 1: cast this person? Where did this person just walk in
Speaker 1: off the street? Like No, they all seem to be
Speaker 1: experienced actors, a solid cast. And then our monster suit.
Speaker 1: I'm always interested who's inside the creature suit? And this
Speaker 1: one's kind of a treat because we have Ray Crash Corrigan,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen oh two through nineteen seventy six playing
Speaker 1: The Beast. He was a Hollywood physical fitness trainer turned
Speaker 1: actor and creature suit specialist. So this is a guy who,
Speaker 1: like some of these other Gorilla actors, had his own
Speaker 1: gorilla costume, had his own suit, and war said suit
Speaker 1: or I guess, sometimes supplied suits if there was something
Speaker 1: specific they were going for that he could not provide
Speaker 1: and I believe more than thirty different films from nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two through nineteen fifty eight, just going through IMDb
Speaker 1: and looking for roles that he had that are called
Speaker 1: like gorilla or ape or something to that effect. This
Speaker 1: guy played a lot of gorillas.
Speaker 3: We've talked before on the show about like ape suit specialists,
Speaker 3: these creature performers who just do gorilla roles over and over.
Speaker 3: Like I guess they formed a relationship with a particular
Speaker 3: suit or style of performance and they're like, does your
Speaker 3: movie need a large ape and I will play it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's one of those things where people
Speaker 1: don't necessarily realize how demanding such a performance is until
Speaker 1: they either try to do it or they try and
Speaker 1: just get some rando to do it, and then they
Speaker 1: realize that, no, this is grueling. You know, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be hot work, it's gonna be sweaty work, and you're
Speaker 1: going to have to like change your the natural positioning
Speaker 1: of your body move in different ways that can actually
Speaker 1: actually actually just you know, carry you down if you're
Speaker 1: not ready for it. Yeah. So you know, this is
Speaker 1: something that I'm always delighted to see that it still
Speaker 1: continues to this day. We still have actors active in
Speaker 1: film who have kind of made it there specialty to
Speaker 1: portray the physicality of gorillas and apes, even if they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily wearing a suit. They may just be doing
Speaker 1: mo cap, but they're still keeping the tradition alive. So anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: Crash Corgan did a lot of this. He also did
Speaker 1: some like westerns as well, art you know, playing cowboys
Speaker 1: not gorillas. But he started the Corriganville movie Ranch for
Speaker 1: Western films and it was something that I think was
Speaker 1: open for tourism on the weekends and holidays for a
Speaker 1: long stretch as well. They would shoot westerns here and
Speaker 1: then he eventually sold it to Bob Hope, I believe
Speaker 1: in sixty six, and you can still find it. It's
Speaker 1: out there. It's in California. It's called Corriganville Park and
Speaker 1: it's in Semi Valley, California. So if we have any
Speaker 1: Californians who want to check in on that location for
Speaker 1: us and report back, we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: All Right, So that's the guy in the creature costume.
Speaker 1: But we also have to talk briefly about the guy
Speaker 1: who built the creature costume. This is Paul Blasdell born
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven died nineteen eighty three, uncredited, but he
Speaker 1: is the suit designer and builder here.
Speaker 3: So this alien design is not morphologically all that interesting.
Speaker 3: It is basically humanoid in shape. It's like a big
Speaker 3: sort of reptilian humanoid with a scary kind of bat face.
Speaker 3: Would you say, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's not a gorilla costume, but it's
Speaker 1: a gorilla actor in a suit essentially doing gorilla costume stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a like a muscly humanoid reptilian with
Speaker 3: kind of a bat face.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, though is girmental. Toros has pointed out before,
Speaker 1: like the gorilla costume is a great place to start
Speaker 1: with any monster. You know, it's like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a hit for a reason. Yeah, the creature, the claws
Speaker 1: look really good, the basic outline looks really good, and
Speaker 1: the face really isn't bad. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: you can compare this monster to in the you know,
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties, and it's this is above average.
Speaker 3: I would say, yeah. I think how good the costume
Speaker 3: is depends on the shot. In some shots, it looks
Speaker 3: quite good. Especially in shots where you're not seeing the
Speaker 3: whole suit moving at once. There are like some scenes
Speaker 3: where you say, the creature is reaching up through a
Speaker 3: hole in a hatch that it has clawed, or is
Speaker 3: sort of busting through a door and you only see
Speaker 3: part of its body. Where the suit looks great, there
Speaker 3: are places where it looks less good, where like you're
Speaker 3: seeing the whole creature suit, the whole performer in the
Speaker 3: whole suit, moving around in a space that's fairly well lit.
Speaker 3: In which case my feeling was both the mask and
Speaker 3: the suit. Something looks kind of odd about the fit
Speaker 3: of it, Like the material is kind of thin, and
Speaker 3: it's less impressive that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is part of the story here, according
Speaker 1: to some of the sources I was looking at, is
Speaker 1: that they couldn't get Core again in for a proper
Speaker 1: fitting for the suit ahead of time for some various reasons,
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't quite fit him all the way.
Speaker 1: And most notably already alluded to this. But he's like
Speaker 1: chin is sticking out of the mask a bit, and
Speaker 1: they ultimately just you know, did what they could to
Speaker 1: incorporate that into the to the design.
Speaker 3: But like I said, there there are some shots where
Speaker 3: it looks quite good and is used very effectively, especially
Speaker 3: the shadowy ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm reminded a bit of of the Thing from
Speaker 1: Another World, a film that does not have I mean,
Speaker 1: it has a classic monster design, but it's not one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. But if you just look at stills
Speaker 1: all the monster, you're probably not going to be that impressed.
Speaker 1: But if you watch the film, there are some terrifying
Speaker 1: sequences with that monster. Again, the film filmmaking doesn't involve
Speaker 1: just you know, putting a monster in front of a
Speaker 1: camera and shooting it there. There are so many additional
Speaker 1: elements that go into creating the illusion of terror.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So still on its own, I would say pretty great
Speaker 1: monster suit. You know that they were working with a
Speaker 1: limited budget with some additional constraints such as getting the
Speaker 1: actor in for measurements, And there are also some alleged
Speaker 1: performance issues with Corgan for this one. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into the old movie dirt,
Speaker 1: but there are some allegations that maybe he wasn't in
Speaker 1: the best condition to perform for this one, and maybe
Speaker 1: there was some communication breakdowns between cor Agan and the director.
Speaker 1: So all that taken into account, looks pretty good. And yeah.
Speaker 1: Blasdell himself was responsible for a number of classic nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties monster costumes, everything from the creature effects from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five's The Beast with a Million Eyes and The
Speaker 1: Day the World Ended to nineteen fifty six Is It
Speaker 1: Conquered the World?
Speaker 3: Ah, that's a Roger Corman movie. That's the one where
Speaker 3: Earth is conquered by a psychic space or to choke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are not Those are maybe not believable looking monsters.
Speaker 1: They are very laughable, but they also are unique. They
Speaker 1: stand out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're great.
Speaker 1: They're pretty great in that respect.
Speaker 3: I've got a big poster of it Conquered the World
Speaker 3: up on my wall here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a fun film. We may have to come
Speaker 1: back to that one. He also worked on the little
Speaker 1: alien flying creatures in Not of This Earth from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven that we talked about on the show. He
Speaker 1: worked on Invasion of the Saucermen from the same year,
Speaker 1: and he also worked on nineteen fifty nine Teenagers from
Speaker 1: Outer Space, which I don't know if that one has
Speaker 1: creatures or not, but if I'm remembering correctly, that one
Speaker 1: is the one that has a great dog zapping scene
Speaker 1: where somebody shoots a dog with a ray gun and
Speaker 1: turns it into a pile of smoking bones. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't like it when the dog dies,
Speaker 1: but the dog dies well in this picture, it's worth it.
Speaker 1: Paul also wore the Monstro suit in several films, including
Speaker 1: The Day the World Ended, It Conquered the World, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, is the She Creature, and fifty seven's Invasion
Speaker 1: of the Saucermen. He also helped make that giant typodermic
Speaker 1: needle in nineteen fifty sevens The Amazing Colossal Man, which
Speaker 1: I hope will come back to on the show if
Speaker 1: they ever put it out on a proper Blu Ray release.
Speaker 1: And he was a special designer on Attack of the
Speaker 1: Puppet People from fifty eight, which we also talked about
Speaker 1: on Weird House. That one did have a lot of
Speaker 1: little people in a big word world gimmicks and props.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure what he worked on there, but
Speaker 1: but I'm sure it was something spectacular.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we have crossed paths many times.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and we'll and we'll undoubtedly come back to
Speaker 1: him now on the music end of the spectrum. They're like,
Speaker 1: there are three different individuals. I'm not going to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time on them. We have Paul Sattel
Speaker 1: or Sawtel, I'm entirely sure on that one. And then
Speaker 1: we also have bert A Schefter. Sautel was born nineteen
Speaker 1: oh six died in nineteen seventy one. Schefter nineteen oh
Speaker 1: fourth through nineteen ninety nine, the former Polish born films
Speaker 1: core composer, the latter Russian born pianist and film composer.
Speaker 1: They worked together on a lot of different pictures, especially
Speaker 1: a string of low budget sci fi films. They also
Speaker 1: did various other genres, westerns and so forth. In fact,
Speaker 1: Sautel worked on at least via stock music. His music
Speaker 1: was used, shall we say, in the US release of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three's King Kong Versus Godzilla, and he actually
Speaker 1: has a composer music themes credit on nineteen sixty five's
Speaker 1: Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, which I don't think we mentioned
Speaker 1: in our episode on that movie. So we have those two,
Speaker 1: and then we also have Jack Cookerly who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six through twenty seventeen, uncredited composer electronic music on
Speaker 1: this one. So Cookerly was a pioneering electronic musician who
Speaker 1: contributed electronic sci fi sounds to various pictures. He often
Speaker 1: worked with the aforementioned gentlemen on their scores and their
Speaker 1: sound work. He developed many of his own instruments and
Speaker 1: contributed sound effects to such titles as The Black Scorpion
Speaker 1: from fifty seven, Space Children in fifty eight, The Colossus
Speaker 1: of New York in fifty eight, Invisible Invaders in fifty nine,
Speaker 1: and Robinson, Crusoe and Mars in sixty four. He also
Speaker 1: did some work on the original Twilight Zone in Star Trek's.
Speaker 3: This movie didn't really have amazing music themes that stood
Speaker 3: out to me, but there are some nice sort of
Speaker 3: ambient score moments that are very on the quiet side,
Speaker 3: but they're effective, Like when there's the spacewalk scene. I
Speaker 3: remember thinking the sound in that scene mostly by actually
Speaker 3: by having a lack of sound in a very compelling way,
Speaker 3: and what was there was minimal but effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we have a wonderfully tense, atmospheric and believable
Speaker 1: space walk sequence like that, you know, totally suspended my
Speaker 1: disbelief and it has this wonderful. Yeah, ambient electronic, minimalist
Speaker 1: score going on. That sounds nice and spacey, and I
Speaker 1: think we get a little splash of that towards the
Speaker 1: beginning of the picture as well. Yeah, and speaking of that,
Speaker 1: let's get into the beginning of the picture. Let's jump
Speaker 1: into the plot.
Speaker 3: They hit you right at the beginning with something that
Speaker 3: looks great, which is a I don't know exactly how
Speaker 3: they composed this shot. I think what we're looking at
Speaker 3: is a is a miniature model set in the foreground
Speaker 3: with a painting in the background, but it is supposed
Speaker 3: to be a I guess the surface of Mars, but
Speaker 3: it has these very steep, jagged knife like mountains reaching
Speaker 3: up above a desert plain. And then the sky in
Speaker 3: the background is a night sky, deep black, with a
Speaker 3: transparent view of the stars and the constellations, and it
Speaker 3: looks quite beautiful. It's a great opening shot. And in
Speaker 3: the foreground we see a crashed spaceship of some kind.
Speaker 1: Now, this is a black and white movie. I don't
Speaker 1: think we mentioned that up front, but yeah, it's black
Speaker 1: and white. But it looks great and really, given the
Speaker 1: tone of the picture. In the space hor the red
Speaker 1: planet looks great in black and white. Here. You know,
Speaker 1: it is a planet that is supposed to be full
Speaker 1: of terror and death, and so this very inky black
Speaker 1: appearance to it looks nice.
Speaker 3: And it hits you right with the title. It's it
Speaker 3: exclamation point in these giant animated block letters that are
Speaker 3: I don't know, they're supposed to look like the wall outside,
Speaker 3: you know, the fortifications of a medieval city or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like made out of little blocks or something.
Speaker 1: It looks great. I do love it, and it's right
Speaker 1: in your face. Whatever it is, it's going to be big.
Speaker 3: So while looking at this, we get an opening voiceover
Speaker 3: which says, this was the planet Mars as my crew
Speaker 3: and I first saw it, dangerous, treacherous, alive with something
Speaker 3: we came to know only as death. This was what
Speaker 3: we faced when our spaceship cracked up in landing just
Speaker 3: six months ago, in January of this year, nineteen hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy three. Woo, but it seems as if six
Speaker 3: centuries passed before a rescue ship arrived. For today, of
Speaker 3: all my crew, I, Colonel Edward Carruthers of the United
Speaker 3: States Space Command, have the only one alive. Now I
Speaker 3: will be going back to face my superiors on Earth
Speaker 3: in Washington, and perhaps there too, I will find another
Speaker 3: kind of death.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, Absolutely solid, just a great start.
Speaker 3: And I don't know how metaphorical he's being there, because
Speaker 3: they do end up talking about how he's going to
Speaker 3: face a court martial and potentially a firing squad because
Speaker 3: he's suspected of murdering his crew. But you could could
Speaker 3: also read that as just like, oh Man, going back
Speaker 3: to Earth after what I have seen is is like
Speaker 3: a metaphorical kind of death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I'm just I'm not at all going to
Speaker 1: be the same person I was, and so forth. Now,
Speaker 1: this is again a film from the late fifties set
Speaker 1: in the future of nineteen seventy three. I just want
Speaker 1: to remind everybody about this cinematic setting. This is the
Speaker 1: same setting year for the events of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Speaker 1: We get that in the intro. This is also the
Speaker 1: setting for the opening sequence of the nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers film.
Speaker 3: What what was the opening sequence?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Is that like there were many dyingas wars or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when the eggs and the dinosaurs the cross dimensional
Speaker 1: cross crossing there.
Speaker 3: Oh, Yeah, that's when the lady leaves the egg at
Speaker 3: the convent or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's seventy three, So that's taking place in the
Speaker 1: same world. This is in the same world, same cinematic universe.
Speaker 1: Perfect also nineteen seventy three. This is the year of
Speaker 1: the opening flashback sequence in nineteen ninety six is space Jam,
Speaker 1: in which a young Michael Jordan decides to take up
Speaker 1: basketball to prevent alien invasions.
Speaker 3: I remember that opening sequence. It tugs at the heart strings.
Speaker 3: There's like a single overhead light and he's out shooting hoops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to protect the planet. So that's that's seventy three.
Speaker 3: I think he talks to his dad or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but in this nineteen seventy three everybody still has
Speaker 3: that same flat top haircut then yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything is still fifties to the max.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This is a principle we've talked about on the
Speaker 3: show before, about how every every time period's science fiction
Speaker 3: just imagines that the future will take whatever fashion trends
Speaker 3: are currently hot at the time the movie was made
Speaker 3: and exaggerate them. So just like more like so the
Speaker 3: future is imagined by the fifties is super fifties and
Speaker 3: the future as imagined by the seventies is super seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you know, it's if shoulder pads are in well,
Speaker 1: future is going to be such shoulder pads you've never seen.
Speaker 3: So anyway, we're here on the surface of Mars and
Speaker 3: we see the second ship, the ship that came that
Speaker 3: came to get cor others here, and it's one of
Speaker 3: these fifties movie rocket ships that's got the fin the
Speaker 3: three fins on the bottom, and it's got we see
Speaker 3: basically the whole length of it is inhabited. So it's like,
Speaker 3: where for movie rockets like this, where is the fuel stored?
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe they got like a central stem
Speaker 1: in the middle or something that's pumping it down.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't really get a good handle on that, and
Speaker 1: we but we otherwise do get a good handle of
Speaker 1: the layout of the ship, just not maybe where all
Speaker 1: the propulsion is handled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll come back to that. And then I love
Speaker 3: they cut straight from this spaceship to the US Capitol Building.
Speaker 1: An alarmingly mundane cut after such a nice opening, but
Speaker 1: thank goodness they teased us with all this fun and
Speaker 1: off world stuff before we go to what like, it's
Speaker 1: like a press briefing at the White House.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm sorry, it's at the Capitol. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: like the Science Advisory Committee, Division of Interplanetary Exploration. Fortunately,
Speaker 3: we will spend very little time here on Earth. It's
Speaker 3: just an exposition thing. A guy comes in, a guy
Speaker 3: who looks rather grizzled. Actually, he's kind of like mad
Speaker 3: to be there, and he gives an opening narration that
Speaker 3: sort of sets everything up for the plot. So I
Speaker 3: might as well read a transcription of it, so you
Speaker 3: know what we're dealing with here, The spokes guy says,
Speaker 3: ladies and gentlemen of the press, As you know, the
Speaker 3: first attempt to send a spaceship to the planet Mars
Speaker 3: was made six months ago. We knew that that ship,
Speaker 3: the Challenge one for one, had reached its destination, but
Speaker 3: that's all we knew. Teleradio communication with Mars ceased immediately,
Speaker 3: and we were forced to assume that the ship and
Speaker 3: crew had been lost. The man in charge of this
Speaker 3: expedition was a man who had become known to the
Speaker 3: world as the first man to be shot into space,
Speaker 3: the man who pioneered interplanetary space travel. Colonel Edward Carruthers.
Speaker 3: Two months ago, we sent a second ship to Mars
Speaker 3: to learn the fate of Colonel Carruthers and his crew.
Speaker 3: The President has asked me to pass on to you
Speaker 3: this significant news. Colonel Edward Carruthers has been found alive
Speaker 3: on Mars. But there's a tragic side to this history
Speaker 3: making event. Colonel Carruthers was the sole survivor of this
Speaker 3: first expedition. One hour ago, we received a teleradio communication
Speaker 3: from Colonel Van Hewsen, the commander of the second spaceship.
Speaker 3: This ship is now ready to take off for its
Speaker 3: return trip to Earth from Mars, and Colonel Others is
Speaker 3: being brought back for a court martial to face trial
Speaker 3: for the murders of the rest of the crew. That's
Speaker 3: a good setup. I think it is a great setup. Now,
Speaker 3: presumably the second mission here is also doing some science, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, they take scientists with them. It surely is
Speaker 3: not just a rescue slash arrest mission. But we don't
Speaker 3: really see any of the science that's going on. I mean,
Speaker 3: the only science that's really done is once the creature
Speaker 3: pops up, they do science about it. But yeah, well
Speaker 3: I don't know what their original research project is. There
Speaker 3: is a geologist, there is a they specify, a cold
Speaker 3: temperature physicist. And what is what is Mary supposed to be?
Speaker 3: She like a doctor, basically physician of some kind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, some sort of doctor. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess they have all these scientists in case they need
Speaker 1: to tackle some problems on the way or you know,
Speaker 1: on the way back, or on the surface of Mars.
Speaker 1: But presumably I'm just gonna assume there were some other
Speaker 1: science projects that also were handled in addition to our
Speaker 1: plot points.
Speaker 3: So after this monologue, the press corps immediately bolt for
Speaker 3: the exit. They're practically climbing over each other to get
Speaker 3: out and file their stories because in reality, I think
Speaker 3: this would be a really big news story. Murder on Mars,
Speaker 3: suspect apprehended.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. Did they give us any newspaper shots,
Speaker 1: any clipping song?
Speaker 3: Oh we don't see any of the kerning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, murder on Mars, I can see it.
Speaker 3: So we go back to Mars and the voiceover by
Speaker 3: Colonel Carruthers continues as we zoom in on the rocket ship.
Speaker 3: He tells us basically, you know, they're making preparations to
Speaker 3: return to Earth. The return journey is going to be
Speaker 3: four months long, and the crew of the ship are
Speaker 3: dedicated to making him face a court martial and a
Speaker 3: military firing squad. And then we go inside the ship
Speaker 3: and meet the crew. Now, the first person we meet,
Speaker 3: I believe is Kim Spaulding as Colonel Van Heusen. He
Speaker 3: is He's sitting at sort of a command seat and
Speaker 3: he sees a flashing light on the wall and sends
Speaker 3: an intercom announcement that the emergency. The airlock in C
Speaker 3: compartment has been left open, and he's mad about this.
Speaker 3: He's like, who left it open? And then another character
Speaker 3: comes in. This is Paul Langton as Lieutenant James Calder.
Speaker 3: He's sort of the number two around here. He says, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I left it open. Sorry, I was dumping trash outside
Speaker 3: on Mars.
Speaker 1: Langton, by the way, lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: another solid American character actor in this picture, whose credits
Speaker 1: include a couple of classic Twilight Zone episodes in addition
Speaker 1: to some other stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he looks like a man who would be dumping crates.
Speaker 1: Well, they brought a lot of crates. This is a
Speaker 1: cargo heavy craft.
Speaker 3: Man they've got so many crates you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 1: I will say that on the whole though, the sets
Speaker 1: look really good, like it's it's definitely of the time,
Speaker 1: you know. That's you know, all of the all of
Speaker 1: the electronics and dials and all. It looks very archaic
Speaker 1: and all, but in that lovable way, like you want
Speaker 1: to see this in a nineteen fifties sci fi and
Speaker 1: I feel like they put together a very believable set.
Speaker 3: If you normally tell me it's a movie set entirely
Speaker 3: within a nineteen fifty space ship set, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is going to look boring, but no, it's it. Actually,
Speaker 3: it's it's relatively interesting to the eyes for a bottle
Speaker 3: episode of this sort.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I never got a hint of cardboard off of anything.
Speaker 1: Everything feels like it is. It is just hard steel.
Speaker 3: But the other thing about this plot moment is like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, he left the airlock open.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: At first I was thinking, Okay, maybe he only meant
Speaker 3: one of the two doors, but nope. Then we see
Speaker 3: it and both the inner and outer doors of the
Speaker 3: airlock are hanging wide open to the surface of the
Speaker 3: planet Mars. So Colonel Vinhugheson presses a button and then
Speaker 3: they both begin to swing closed. And this is one
Speaker 3: of many things in the movie that you know, doesn't
Speaker 3: really detract from enjoyment at all, but it's just kind
Speaker 3: of amusing, like how far off of the scientific reality
Speaker 3: it is you can just leave the door open to mars.
Speaker 1: My brain was extremely forgiving of this moment, I think,
Speaker 1: because it's like they're talking about what's happening with the
Speaker 1: air lock, and not only did I assume that only
Speaker 1: one door was opened, but my brain just went in
Speaker 1: and filled it, filled in the rest and just made
Speaker 1: it be so I didn't even really notice this air anyway.
Speaker 3: So we pan away from the doors as they close
Speaker 3: to see a dark storage room filled with crates and
Speaker 3: steel drums, and in the background, a shadow falls over
Speaker 3: the wall, and it's a shadow of a very broad shouldered,
Speaker 3: very muscly looking humanoid figure, not quite human but close
Speaker 3: to human, just bulky, big, threatening, imposing, And then we
Speaker 3: see a foot fall across the floor. It's a close
Speaker 3: up of this three toed reptilian foot, and these feet
Speaker 3: move along as something is stalking through the cargo hold,
Speaker 3: and we hear a deep rasping breath, almost like the
Speaker 3: growl of a crocodilian.
Speaker 1: The feet are not the best feature of the costume.
Speaker 1: The claws are great because of course the claws are
Speaker 1: fully arelated the feet or not, so they the feet
Speaker 1: kind of feel like big rubber monster feet. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's not too bad. At least they're not
Speaker 1: showing the whole monster yet. They're they're they're they're sparsing
Speaker 1: it out a little bit.
Speaker 3: So the colonel calls up for a name check on
Speaker 3: the radio. This is the thing I was talking about.
Speaker 3: It's like a convenient way for all of the characters
Speaker 3: to announce their names as it shows their face to
Speaker 3: the audience. So we meet Eric Royce ship dad, very
Speaker 3: very much the dad. Yeah, this is the guy who
Speaker 3: we said she'd have like a high back chair and
Speaker 3: a dog. We meet Mary.
Speaker 1: Royce yep ship mom.
Speaker 3: She is the I think we're saying physician she does
Speaker 3: later in the movie. She does medical research and autopsies,
Speaker 3: but she's also the mom. Yeah, she like scolds you
Speaker 3: for for dirty jokes and and brings you coffee. There
Speaker 3: is Anne Anderson.
Speaker 1: Yep ship wife.
Speaker 3: Yes, uh, there is Major John Purdue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, ship uncle.
Speaker 3: I guess ship Uncle, I think is very correct. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this guy needs a he needs a COR's light in
Speaker 3: his hand, and we got Bob Finelli. He's I don't
Speaker 3: know ship something.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't he doesn't really last long enough
Speaker 1: to get proper classification.
Speaker 3: And Lieutenant James Calder Yeah, other uncle. I guess it
Speaker 3: is a ship of many uncles. But as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: for some reason, it's not the entire crew. There are
Speaker 3: at least two guys who do not sign off on
Speaker 3: this role call. We got Gino and we got kind Holts,
Speaker 3: and we'll meet them later.
Speaker 1: They're both Red Shirts though, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are the first two to get killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there's a takeoff and they leave the planet Mars.
Speaker 3: The ship leaves the atmosphere, and we see the planet
Speaker 3: retreating into space on a view screen. And then finally
Speaker 3: we meet Carruthers, our main character, the prisoner and murder suspect,
Speaker 3: on one of the middle decks of the ship. Now,
Speaker 3: I want to talk for a minute here about the
Speaker 3: set of the movie. We've already talked about how as
Speaker 3: far as nineteen fifties spaceship sets go it looks pretty good.
Speaker 3: But there's another thing about the setting that I think
Speaker 3: works quite well, and that there is a sort of
Speaker 3: comprehensible geography to the ship that you don't get in
Speaker 3: a lot of sci fi movies from any period. Really,
Speaker 3: the basic layout of the ship is a vertical stack
Speaker 3: of different decks that are accessed by these ladders, steep
Speaker 3: staircase ladders. So you have a command deck on top,
Speaker 3: and then below that you have living quarters, and then
Speaker 3: you have a laboratory, and then you have a couple
Speaker 3: of storage decks, and then you have the engine down below.
Speaker 3: And something about the arrangement of these decks in a
Speaker 3: way that feels like you can really understand where things
Speaker 3: are happening in the film. It's kind of unique. Spaceship
Speaker 3: layout is often vague in movies. It feels like it
Speaker 3: changes to serve the needs of the plot or for
Speaker 3: convenience of shooting, and this is a rare exception. It
Speaker 3: feels like you can understand where things are and what's
Speaker 3: going on. I think in part because of the linear
Speaker 3: vertical arrangement of the decks as opposed to the normal
Speaker 3: horizontal arrangement of like hallways and doors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this is a great point, because you do
Speaker 1: have a good sense of where everything is in this ship.
Speaker 1: We get to see some maps, and yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: the case in other examples. We can turn to. The one,
Speaker 1: of course, that I instantly thought about was Alien and
Speaker 1: then Nostromo. And I've seen Alien so many times over
Speaker 1: the years, but I don't know if that I've ever
Speaker 1: had a great understanding of the Nostromo's inner layout. But
Speaker 1: then again, the Nostromo is supposed to essentially be a
Speaker 1: haunted house, right, So as long as you have some
Speaker 1: vague idea of the house, the basement and the attic
Speaker 1: and classify those however you will within Nostromo, you're good
Speaker 1: to go. I guess you know there are going to
Speaker 1: be other sci fi films where it pays to understand
Speaker 1: where everything is a bit more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree that it's not always a drawback. I
Speaker 3: think that the confusing, maze like nature of the Nostromo
Speaker 3: makes the movie more effective because it's, you know it
Speaker 3: to the audience. At least, it's it's confusing where you are.
Speaker 3: It feels it feels more claustrophobic that way. But in
Speaker 3: this movie, I think it works really well that you
Speaker 3: have such a grounded sense of place. I think it
Speaker 3: contributes to what John Carpenter said about that feeling that
Speaker 3: there's really just this little engine driving the movie. Something
Speaker 3: about the movie works in a very tactile physical sense,
Speaker 3: and the good understanding of the space I think helps
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree.
Speaker 3: Anyway. Carrothers is sitting here looking melancholy as they drive
Speaker 3: into space, and then Colonel van Husen, the commander of
Speaker 3: the mission, he comes down the ladder from the deck above.
Speaker 3: He comes up to him and he says, what do
Speaker 3: you think thinking about? He says, then you think about
Speaker 3: those nine bodies you left down there, and carother says, yes,
Speaker 3: that is what he's thinking about. But he protests again.
Speaker 3: He says, I didn't kill them, and then Van Heusen,
Speaker 3: shaking his head, says, still sticking to your story about
Speaker 3: a mysterious creature. And from this conversation we learned that
Speaker 3: they never found the bodies of the rest of Carrether's crew,
Speaker 3: but Van Heuson thinks there is still enough evidence to
Speaker 3: convict him. Van Heuston starts acting like a prosecutor. He's
Speaker 3: articulating a theory of motive, he says, okay. When the
Speaker 3: challenge one for one broke up. Upon landing, Carrothers realized
Speaker 3: that their limited food rations would not allow them all
Speaker 3: to survive until rescue showed up, so he killed all
Speaker 3: of his crew in order to extend his chances of
Speaker 3: survival until rescue to make more rations for himself and Carrothers,
Speaker 3: of course, maintains that his crew was by something not me.
Speaker 1: I love this conflict. I think it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: minor tragedy that they don't do as much with it,
Speaker 1: and that we know from the get go that Corruthers
Speaker 1: is probably correct. You know that we've seen the monster.
Speaker 1: We know there's a monster, so we we believe him.
Speaker 1: We're never we never really doubt him, even though the
Speaker 1: performance is such that we could read that into it,
Speaker 1: we could read guilt into it and so forth, So
Speaker 1: that they don't. They don't really explore this possibility as
Speaker 1: much as they could, and they don't really explore another
Speaker 1: possibility that came to mind while I was watching it then,
Speaker 1: and that is that you could have both right, You
Speaker 1: could have a situation where it's at least some members
Speaker 1: of the crew were killed by a creature, and perhaps
Speaker 1: you decide, well, my chances to survival were better if
Speaker 1: there are fewer people to consume the remaining rations and
Speaker 1: so forth. Like I feel like I wanted more of
Speaker 1: I wanted this to be milked more. And the film
Speaker 1: ultimately has to move past it and get to the
Speaker 1: main plot concerning what to do about the monster on
Speaker 1: the ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I agree with all that, but I think a
Speaker 3: very strong setup. Yeah. So then Van Heusen takes Carrothers
Speaker 3: to his cabin to show him something which is a
Speaker 3: human skull, clean and polished with a hole in the
Speaker 3: top of the head, and he says, there's only one
Speaker 3: kind of monster that uses bullets. So he says, you know,
Speaker 3: we found this near the ship. Now, at first he
Speaker 3: says they didn't find any bodies, but he did find
Speaker 3: a human skull. I guess that's part of a body.
Speaker 3: And it's like, look, you know, we know you did it,
Speaker 3: not some monster, because look, this is a wound inflicted
Speaker 3: by a human.
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume they found a head and they
Speaker 1: had Mary boil it down to that skull. That was
Speaker 1: some of the science that was taking place before they
Speaker 1: left Mars can't bring a whole head back, boil.
Speaker 3: It down the stew that night was so good.
Speaker 1: It's a harsh plan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by the way, I just we started noticing I
Speaker 3: think around the scene. I watched it with Rachel and
Speaker 3: she was really struck by all of the shiny zippers
Speaker 3: on their jumpsuits. Is there they got a lot of pockets.
Speaker 1: It's a great point. I didn't give this film a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of points for its space suits
Speaker 1: and its jumpsuits, but those zippers are really shiny.
Speaker 3: So then we got another thing that's a little bit
Speaker 3: similar to Alien. There's like a mess hall dinner scene
Speaker 3: where everybody's sort of ribbing each other and having little
Speaker 3: bits of banter and jokes. They're talking about being excited
Speaker 3: to get back to Earth. One guy's like, I'm going
Speaker 3: to jump out of the airlock and roll around in
Speaker 3: the grass. Now this is where we get to the
Speaker 3: thing we mentioned earlier that the thing that many reviewers
Speaker 3: have noticed, which is that the two women of the
Speaker 3: crew are just going around serving everyone coffee and almost
Speaker 3: like taking their orders.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so if it is comparable to the mess
Speaker 1: all scene and Alien, it's like eighty percent more sexist.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The crew members are commenting on how every time
Speaker 3: Van Houston sees Ann Anderson, the geologist, which must be
Speaker 3: often because they're occupying a small spaceship together. They say,
Speaker 3: every time he sees her, he floats, even though this
Speaker 3: ship is equipped with artificial gravity. Yuck, yuck. And then
Speaker 3: Ann Anderson replies, these days, he seems more concerned with
Speaker 3: a man hunt than a woman hunt.
Speaker 1: You know. Speaking of artificial gravity, though, one thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention about the layout of the ship is
Speaker 1: that this is a case where the artificial gravity is
Speaker 1: somewhat believable because I guess, given the way it's laid
Speaker 1: out with the decks, it would be propulsion.
Speaker 3: Based yeah, linear acceleration.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Now it doesn't work throughout the entire picture
Speaker 1: because they also walk in the sides of the ship,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure how they're doing that, but at
Speaker 1: least in small doses you can say this works.
Speaker 3: Now, there are at least two established couples within the
Speaker 3: crew of this Mars Rescue Slash mission, so Eric and
Speaker 3: Mary Royce are married again. Eric is the ship dad
Speaker 3: and Mary is the ship mom. And then Van Heuson
Speaker 3: and Anderson are I guess dating, but possibly their relationship
Speaker 3: is on the rocks because Van Heuston cares more about
Speaker 3: murder on Mars than he does about romance.
Speaker 1: It is his job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he does seem extremely focused, like he announces at
Speaker 3: dinner quote by the time we reach Earth, I'll have
Speaker 3: his confession on tape, and.
Speaker 1: Den Caruthers come down the stairs, like right after that,
Speaker 1: he's kind of he's still looking for Luren, and he's
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh man, I'm right here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I guess this is an unusual circumstance
Speaker 3: for relationship troubles in storytelling. I mean, I guess in
Speaker 3: one in the generic sense. It's not because people often
Speaker 3: have the issue of like work coming between them in
Speaker 3: a relationship, just not this kind of work. Anyway, we
Speaker 3: see Anderson showing some tenderness for Corrother the prisoner, like
Speaker 3: she brings him a sandwich and she says, such a cold,
Speaker 3: desolate world, we saw so little of it. I guess
Speaker 3: she's talking about Mars. And they start kind of chatting,
Speaker 3: and she makes clear that she wants to hear his
Speaker 3: side of the story, so he tells it here we're
Speaker 3: going to get a monologue that explains what happened from
Speaker 3: Crother's point of view. He says, we were all outside
Speaker 3: the ship exploring the southern tip of Curtis Major. Suddenly
Speaker 3: a sandstorm came up and we started back. I was
Speaker 3: driving the jeep, so it was a jeep. Sand was
Speaker 3: so thick we could barely see. We were almost back
Speaker 3: to the ship when Cartwright just disappeared. One minute he
Speaker 3: was there, and the next minute he was gone, as
Speaker 3: if something had plucked him out of the jeep like
Speaker 3: candy out of a box. We heard a weird sort
Speaker 3: of sound. We thought we saw a dark shape running
Speaker 3: near the jeep and started shooting at it. A few
Speaker 3: moments later, Kenner and the rest were all gone. By
Speaker 3: the way, Kenner was the guy the skull belonged to.
Speaker 3: We learned that I was the only one who made
Speaker 3: it back to the ship. When the sandstorm quit, I
Speaker 3: went out and searched all over. There wasn't a sign
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 1: Curtis Major, by the way, is indeed a massive shield
Speaker 1: volcano in the eastern hemisphere of Mars. It was first
Speaker 1: the first documented surface feature of another planet, discovered by
Speaker 1: Christian Hugens in sixteen fifty nine.
Speaker 3: Ah, so that part is very real. But wait, I
Speaker 3: would have assumed that this creature was picking them off
Speaker 3: one at a time. And it sounds like his entire
Speaker 3: crew was killed all in one event, right at the
Speaker 3: very beginning of the time he was there.
Speaker 1: You know. I mean, it's not out of keeping with
Speaker 1: what we know of natural world organisms. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like like a fox in the hen house. What's called
Speaker 1: surplus killing or I think in house syndrome sometimes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So the Mars beast got excited in the
Speaker 3: presence of all this food, this human biomass, and was like, yum, yum,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna eatma, I'm gonna get them all.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Anderson, she listens to the story and she's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't believe you, but I also
Speaker 3: don't disbelieve you. And we can see she's softening on
Speaker 3: him because she and Van have an argument about it.
Speaker 3: Van he's a hardliner and he wants to crack him,
Speaker 3: and Anderson thinks it is not for them to judge
Speaker 3: his guilt. Oh and then after this, Van calls Anderson chicken,
Speaker 3: and he goes, Okay, Chicken, I'll let up on the
Speaker 3: third degree, and then they ask what about everybody else?
Speaker 3: Do they believe her others? And Lieutenant Calder says, Mars
Speaker 3: is almost as big as Texas. Maybe it's got monsters.
Speaker 1: This is a great line and the actor delivers it perfectly.
Speaker 1: I really liked it.
Speaker 3: So time passes, the ship drifts through space, but eventually
Speaker 3: we get to the first attack, and it occurs late
Speaker 3: at night when a crew member named Kine Holtz is
Speaker 3: sitting up he's looking at what it looks like architectural
Speaker 3: drafts or something. He's sitting at a table looking at
Speaker 3: these big sheets, and we hear some crashing and growling
Speaker 3: in the lower decks and see a claw reach out
Speaker 3: from behind something and scrape across the top of a
Speaker 3: table and good looking clause as you mentioned earlier, Rob,
Speaker 3: but kind Holts goes down to investigate the strange sounds
Speaker 3: in the cargo deck and here begins a sedate, slow, quiet,
Speaker 3: suspenseful investigation process as kind Holts goes down the decks
Speaker 3: one by one looking for the source of the sound.
Speaker 3: And I really like the pace here. This is one
Speaker 3: of these scenes that's just mechanically quite effective. We have
Speaker 3: a good idea of what's going to happen. But I
Speaker 3: just like watching the investigation. It's kind of calm but
Speaker 3: suspenseful at the same time, and it reminds me of
Speaker 3: scenes in Alien, like when Harry Dean Stanton is looking
Speaker 3: for the cat in the cargo area.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, solid reference point. Yeah, because it's it is.
Speaker 1: It is laid back. This guy's not like super concerned,
Speaker 1: he's not expecting to find anything, but we know what's
Speaker 1: down there for him. We know that this guy's going
Speaker 1: to get it any moment, but that moment is delayed,
Speaker 1: and so there are several moments where we think it's
Speaker 1: going to jump out and get him and it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And then when it finally occurs, it's it's satisfying.
Speaker 3: It ends with a really good jump scare. I thought,
Speaker 3: where there is like there's a scream and we don't
Speaker 3: see it. We see the shadow of the creature grabbing
Speaker 3: him and doing that wrestling move you called it a
Speaker 3: gorilla press where he lifts the guy up above his head.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeap, smashes him down, breaks him. Yeah, very well done.
Speaker 3: Now. Meanwhile, Carruthers is playing a game of chess with
Speaker 3: ship Dad Royce and he hears the scream and the
Speaker 3: crash when no one else in the room does, and
Speaker 3: he there, you know, he's like, did you hear that?
Speaker 3: And they're all like no, and he says, I learned
Speaker 3: to hear all over again on Mars, so he gave
Speaker 3: him superhering and the men go to investigate. Initially, all
Speaker 3: the other crew they're very skeptical of Corrothers looking into this,
Speaker 3: but things do start to appear. It starts to appear
Speaker 3: that something is wrong. Kind of Holts is not at
Speaker 3: his post. They look for him in his he's not
Speaker 3: there either. Corrothers checks for him across the intercom and
Speaker 3: there's no response. After a while, I think it becomes
Speaker 3: clear to all the characters that really something is wrong,
Speaker 3: and the whole crew wakes up and as symbols to
Speaker 3: look for kind Holts, they're like, let's split up, so they,
Speaker 3: you know, look in different places. And while isolated in
Speaker 3: the cargo area, another crew member named Gino Finelli is
Speaker 3: attacked and the cigarette drops right out of his mouth.
Speaker 1: And he's he going in to get more cigarettes.
Speaker 3: That's what it looks like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there, you know, there's there their strategic supply
Speaker 1: of various tobacco products because there's also pipes being smoked
Speaker 1: on board very smoky spaceship.
Speaker 3: So after the crew or after Geno disappears, the crew
Speaker 3: run around looking for him as well. Vans like, it
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense, there's nowhere on this ship for
Speaker 3: a man to hide. But we see Corrothers walk past
Speaker 3: a metal grate in front of an opening that says
Speaker 3: air generation and Moisture Recovery section, so it's like an
Speaker 3: air duct access and he's standing there and then suddenly
Speaker 3: we see behind him a limp hand drops down on
Speaker 3: the other side of the grate. Another good jump scare,
Speaker 3: and they recover kind Holtz his body from the air
Speaker 3: duct and it has a very creepy appearance. It's zombie
Speaker 3: like with pale skin and dark sunken eyes. I love
Speaker 3: the makeup on the victims the monster here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this has been some sort of unnatural death has
Speaker 1: occurred here, And I guess this is another area where
Speaker 1: I kind of wondered, like, why didn't they try and
Speaker 1: keep the heat on Carruthers by saying by casting some
Speaker 1: suspicion on him for this murder. But I guess at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. We have to remember this
Speaker 1: is a short film and it's it's it has deadline,
Speaker 1: so we don't have we don't have room for too
Speaker 1: much more additional plot shenanigans. We've got to we've got
Speaker 1: to get to the goods.
Speaker 3: So they conclude that Geno may also be somewhere in
Speaker 3: the air ducts. So they move a bunch of crates
Speaker 3: out of the way and get to an access event
Speaker 3: and Lieutenant Calder crawls in with he's got a pistol
Speaker 3: on his belt. And here we got another big similarity
Speaker 3: with Alien, these scenes of a leader of the crew
Speaker 3: crawling into these large air ducks to look for to
Speaker 3: look for a victim and look for a creature. And
Speaker 3: this scene I thought was also great because he crawls
Speaker 3: through the ducks and then finds Gino in there, also
Speaker 3: with this incredibly creepy makeup the war boy zombie look.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this indeed a great sequence. You can definitely
Speaker 1: see this as having an influence on the duct scenes
Speaker 1: an Alien, and on deleted scenes that they ended up
Speaker 1: not using in the theatrical cut, involving finding like cocooned
Speaker 1: members of the Nostromo crew that are being slowly transformed
Speaker 1: into eggs. Again not a part of the theatrical cut
Speaker 1: of the picture, but you know, available and like an
Speaker 1: extended cut. They came out years later and in deleted sequences.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So there's a creature jump here, the lieutenants
Speaker 3: trying to get Geno, but the like the the alien
Speaker 3: pops out and it slashes that in with his claws
Speaker 3: and he ends up shooting at it, so he crawls
Speaker 3: back out. They seal up the entrance to the air
Speaker 3: duct and then in a hilarious move, they trap the
Speaker 3: air duct opening with a bunch of grenades. Why do
Speaker 3: they have grenades?
Speaker 1: Oh my god. So this is, of course, is a
Speaker 1: huge difference between alien and you have the terarform beyond
Speaker 1: space because an alien they have very few, almost no weapons.
Speaker 1: It's basically improvised, improvised weapons, like they have to make
Speaker 1: their own flamers. You know, they have a harpoon gun
Speaker 1: of course that gets used later, but for the most
Speaker 1: part they're having to make it up as they go,
Speaker 1: make a like a cattle prode type device. Here they
Speaker 1: are armed to the teeth and this is the you know,
Speaker 1: we saw the pistol earlier and you're like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: guess they have one pistol on board. They were going
Speaker 1: to make an arrest, fair enough. But this is where
Speaker 1: we find out, Oh, they have an entire like you know,
Speaker 1: like small like wooden crate of grenades like military grenades.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they have they like string up a bandolier
Speaker 1: of like eight of these things for the entrance to
Speaker 1: the air ducks.
Speaker 3: Why do they need that manial? We would would at
Speaker 3: that point would eight be any better than one?
Speaker 1: And to say nothing of the whole of this ship. This,
Speaker 1: this ship's hull is just absolutely impregnable. And this is
Speaker 1: just the first sign of it. We will have even
Speaker 1: more evidence of this as we move forward.
Speaker 3: So the humans fall back to the upper deck and
Speaker 3: begin to review their arsenal, once again, talking about all
Speaker 3: the weapons they have. What we see this table with
Speaker 3: just its guns, guns, guns everywhere.
Speaker 1: They have so many weapons, like its pistols, it's high
Speaker 1: caliber rifles. Like why did they bring all this stuck.
Speaker 3: I don't know, A bunch of Yeah, and they've got
Speaker 3: a bazuka.
Speaker 1: Also, they legit have a bazuka. Like the bazuka made
Speaker 1: me laugh out loud because I was already thinking this
Speaker 1: is too much. And then they have a Bazuka and
Speaker 1: they're gonna They're gonna load it up and potentially use
Speaker 1: it on board the spacecraft with with computer equipment right
Speaker 1: behind it. Yeah. Yeah, not that it matters at that point.
Speaker 3: Well perfect. Meanwhile, Mary and Anne are checking out the
Speaker 3: body of kind Holts. They're like, what happened to him?
Speaker 3: He looks very desiccated, he looks in bad shape. He
Speaker 3: looks shiny and chrome. And Mary says, every bone in
Speaker 3: his body must be broken, but I'm not sure that's
Speaker 3: what killed him. The shriveled up effect it. I'll have
Speaker 3: to do an autopsy. So she's going to do an autopsy. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Van Hughson asks Carrothers, Okay, He's like, clearly you were right.
Speaker 3: Do you know what it is? And Carrother says no,
Speaker 3: he may have faced it before, but he doesn't know
Speaker 3: how to beat it. And then Dad comes in with
Speaker 3: some thoughts. So Dad's like, you say, it's man shaped humanoid.
Speaker 3: Here's his explanation. He says, perhaps there was once a
Speaker 3: civilization on Mars. It ended disease war, something terrible. The
Speaker 3: Martians that were left went back to barbarism. Savage murders.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's what we've got on board.
Speaker 1: I mean, he delivers it perfectly here though. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like the performance is solid enough, and I'm like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that might be it. And again this is
Speaker 1: Dab's Greer, so you know, solid actor here. It makes
Speaker 1: you believe it.
Speaker 3: They also reason out that the alien must be intelligent
Speaker 3: and not just an animal, because it's able to open
Speaker 3: doors and close and travel between compartments. And they deduce
Speaker 3: a motive for the attacks. They say, it's hungry. It's
Speaker 3: eating us, all right. So some time passes and there's
Speaker 3: a scene where the monster trips the traps. It's crawling
Speaker 3: through the air ducts and it tries to crawl out
Speaker 3: and the grenades blow up in its face, but it
Speaker 3: is not killed. Instead, it seems just really annoyed and
Speaker 3: it starts running around smashing boxes in a rage. So
Speaker 3: at this point the crew go down to meet it
Speaker 3: with pistols drawn, and there it is, right there. It
Speaker 3: grabs a rifle from one of them and just bends
Speaker 3: it in half, basically ties it in a bow. That's
Speaker 3: a great scene.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 3: They retreat blasting the monster. There's a really well staged
Speaker 3: shot here that looks great where the monster is like
Speaker 3: clawing its way through a closed door from like it's
Speaker 3: very it's lit very brightly from behind, but clowing its
Speaker 3: way into a darkened room with the smoke coming out
Speaker 3: as beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a great shot. I love this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really cool. And Carruthers shows bravery here as there,
Speaker 3: you know, he covers the retreat as they go back
Speaker 3: up the ladder and they close the hatch. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: so that didn't work at all. Next, Mary suggests an idea.
Speaker 3: He says, we've got gas grenades. Gino made them. He
Speaker 3: says he made them in case they ran into any
Speaker 3: dinosaurs on Mars.
Speaker 1: Time to bust out the chemical weapons aboard the space ship.
Speaker 3: So they put on gas masks and they open the
Speaker 3: hatch and chuck the gas grenades down. But the creature
Speaker 3: is like right there, and so when they open the hatch,
Speaker 3: it starts reaching through and it gets some good wipes
Speaker 3: in on Van Heusen's foot. It's like claws up his
Speaker 3: boot really bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those moments where it's not
Speaker 1: a bloody film obviously, like you know, but these moments
Speaker 1: where stuff does happen, Like I kind of felt like
Speaker 1: it like totally flat his foot even though you see
Speaker 1: nothing graphic, like your mind fills in the rest and
Speaker 1: it's it's horrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally. But they do manage to get the
Speaker 3: door closed again. But the gas grenades obviously did not
Speaker 3: affect it, it did not subdue it. So we get
Speaker 3: autopsy results and Mary Royce tells us there is not
Speaker 3: a molecule of oxygen or a drop of water left
Speaker 3: in kind Holtz this body. Every ounce of edible fluid
Speaker 3: in his body is gone, in which case I would
Speaker 3: think it would be more significantly reduced in volume than
Speaker 3: it appears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it would. It would look more like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would look more like a zombie husk. It's what
Speaker 1: it would look like. Yeah, but limitations fair enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they they reason, they start thinking about this,
Speaker 3: They're all right, Mars is world without oxygen or water.
Speaker 3: That's what they believe. So this creature's entire being is
Speaker 3: designed to feed on the oxygen and water contents of
Speaker 3: smaller creatures. So that's what it's doing. It's trying to
Speaker 3: get them so it can suck out all of their
Speaker 3: oxygen and water. Meanwhile, there's some stuff going on with
Speaker 3: the monster. It's like sort of laying siege to them,
Speaker 3: to the crew members that are hold up on the
Speaker 3: upper decks. It's trying to claw its way through the hatches,
Speaker 3: and we learn from Mary that the slashes on Van's
Speaker 3: foot are infected with an alien bacterium of some kind
Speaker 3: and it's making him sick. And I gotta say, there
Speaker 3: is something. The romantic subplot of this movie is shockingly
Speaker 3: cold and weird. Like, basically, the moment we find out
Speaker 3: Van Huson is infected with the alien pathogen, his girlfriend
Speaker 3: Anderson starts moving in on Carruthers. She goes up to
Speaker 3: him and she's like, you were right, we were wrong,
Speaker 3: and she's grabbing his hands right in front of Van
Speaker 3: on the cot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an it's an icky love triangle that I
Speaker 1: don't think we really need it.
Speaker 3: I think it seems especially cold because it's like she
Speaker 3: turns to her others as soon as Van becomes weakened.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it feels sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like yeah, like she like she can't exist without
Speaker 1: a strong man around her, and so she has to
Speaker 1: just jump ship to Grothers now like I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just did. Yeah, I guess it. It doesn't really work.
Speaker 1: It's not like completely believable and just feels if it
Speaker 1: is believable, it's cold. So it's like, what how am
Speaker 1: I supposed to feel about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So I think the romantic subplot, I mean I
Speaker 3: would saying it's kind of unique for this sort of movie,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if it really works as like
Speaker 3: generating any like romantic feelings other than like, oh that's
Speaker 3: weird and kind of kind of dark.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the kids were making out to this apparently,
Speaker 1: like how did how they feel about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Okay, next plot development Space Dad Dad has a
Speaker 3: plan again. Uh, the can get in behind the creature
Speaker 3: by putting on EVA suits and doing a spacewalk on
Speaker 3: the outside hull of the ship down to the deck
Speaker 3: below it. And I really like this set piece. So
Speaker 3: it's Corruthers and I think Lieutenant Oh, it's Lieutenant Calder also.
Speaker 3: So they suit up, they put their suits on, and
Speaker 3: they go out on the outside of the ship and
Speaker 3: walk down the hull. I thought this scene looked great,
Speaker 3: it sounded great. I love the atmosphere. It's creepy. Quiet
Speaker 3: and a really compelling way, very strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, firing on all cylinders, and we're really not even
Speaker 1: seeing the monster for the most part during this sequence.
Speaker 1: I mean, we get some we get some hints of them, because,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss, they're having to distract the monster in
Speaker 1: order to try and pull this off.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the plan is that the people left
Speaker 3: inside the ship distracted the beast while making a They're
Speaker 3: making noise up above while the strike team gets in
Speaker 3: behind the beast to set a trap. They're going to
Speaker 3: electrocute it by rigging wires to the metal stairs. This
Speaker 3: is basically the plan from the Thing from Another World.
Speaker 3: They're gonna they're gonna shock it from below. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're gonna pull a thing from another world on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was really concerned that it was gonna work because
Speaker 1: because I mean, they also did this in Creature, which
Speaker 1: we watched a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah uh, And it's sort of worked in Creature,
Speaker 3: but only temporarily. He doesn't even doesn't even appear to
Speaker 3: work at all in this, Like the crawls down onder
Speaker 3: the stairs. They've got the wires rigged up, they zap
Speaker 3: it and it's just like, oh no, I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 3: not happy, so it attacks them. Lieutenant Calder gets his
Speaker 3: leg broken and is trapped behind a large metal cylinder.
Speaker 3: He's got a blow torch in his hand that he
Speaker 3: can use to protect himself from the beast while Carrothers
Speaker 3: escapes to the outside and I think he think he
Speaker 3: makes it back up the outside of the ship hull
Speaker 3: to everybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know how long he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: stuck down there, but like it's it seems like he's
Speaker 1: probably down there for hours, the monster lunging at him
Speaker 1: like every few seconds, and having to like hold a
Speaker 1: blow torch up to protect himself.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He's talking to the rest of the crew via
Speaker 3: radio and he's like, yeah, I'm stuck down here. I
Speaker 3: can see it. It's looking at me, and every time
Speaker 3: it comes for me, I hold the blow torch in
Speaker 3: its eyes. It's a predicament. He's in a tight spot.
Speaker 3: He's in a pickle. Yeah. So later we learn that
Speaker 3: Van's infection is taking a turn for the worse. He
Speaker 3: is delirious and the bacteria are they're attacking his bone marrow.
Speaker 3: They say it gives him a condition similar to leukemia,
Speaker 3: and the romance between Anderson and Coruthers really picks up.
Speaker 3: But they the crew decide, okay, Van, he needs blood,
Speaker 3: so we got to go down to storage to get
Speaker 3: blood out of the blood blood box. He needs blood.
Speaker 3: So Calder witnesses the creature going into the reactor room,
Speaker 3: and here Carrother sees a chance to act, so they
Speaker 3: remotely close the door to the reactor and seal the
Speaker 3: creature inside, and then a team of men goes down
Speaker 3: to get the blood. They're blood jacking, and they've only
Speaker 3: got a tight window to get the blood in. But
Speaker 3: in the middle of all this, a delirious Van gets
Speaker 3: the idea to open up the reactor core with the
Speaker 3: creature in the reactor room, saying, okay, the radiation will
Speaker 3: kill it. We couldn't kill it with grenades, with gunfire,
Speaker 3: with gas, grenades, with electricity, but we can try radiation,
Speaker 3: and so he does this. Unfortunately, while the blood jacking
Speaker 3: team are down there right next to it, and this
Speaker 3: of course just makes the beast furious. The radiation does
Speaker 3: not kill it, drives it out of the reactor room
Speaker 3: where it meets the blood jacking team and kills a
Speaker 3: crew member named Bob. So the remaining the surviving crew
Speaker 3: members retreat to the upper deck. They're up in the
Speaker 3: command deck and here we're sort of approaching the final showdown.
Speaker 3: Somewhere around here, Van really catches on what's happening with
Speaker 3: Anderson and Cruthers. He's like, are you going to him now?
Speaker 3: Are you leaving me for him? And she's just like,
Speaker 3: let's talk about it later. And this this goes up
Speaker 3: to a final showdown where they are sort of like
Speaker 3: they're dug in. They've all got their weapons aimed at
Speaker 3: the hatch coming up from the floor below where the
Speaker 3: creature is. And finally the creature starts busting through the hatch,
Speaker 3: tearing through the metal, coming up into the room, and
Speaker 3: they literally blast it with a bazooka.
Speaker 1: They even fire the bazuki, and I think Mary fires
Speaker 1: it right, like that sounds right. Yeah, she may have
Speaker 1: to fetch coffee for everyone else, but she gets to
Speaker 1: fire the bazuka, that's right. And it doesn't kill everyone, yeah,
Speaker 1: or even the monster.
Speaker 3: Or the monster but they've already tried explosives, why would
Speaker 3: this work? But finally they get the idea, Hey, everybody,
Speaker 3: put on your eva suits we're gonna vent the air
Speaker 3: out the air lock. And here we have another comparison
Speaker 3: with alien, Right, how do they defeat the alien? How
Speaker 3: does Ripley, the only one left, defeat the alien? At
Speaker 3: the end, she vents the atmosphere in the escape pod
Speaker 3: to the to the outside, and the creature is blown
Speaker 3: out of the airlock. Now, in this case, the alien
Speaker 3: is not blown out of the airlock, but venting the
Speaker 3: atmosphere out of the command deck causes the creature to
Speaker 3: to not have the air it needs to breathe, and
Speaker 3: it dies by I guess suffocation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's still satisfying in a way. It's even
Speaker 1: more satisfying because I thought, oh, they're gonna blast it
Speaker 1: out the airlock. I've seen this before, granted from from
Speaker 1: a film that comes decades later, but it was still
Speaker 1: it was refreshing that it wasn't quite that solution. It
Speaker 1: was this alternate solution, even if it's also a solution
Speaker 1: that if you think about it too much, you might ask, well,
Speaker 1: why didn't they try this earlier? But that can often
Speaker 1: be the case with films where they try multiple solutions
Speaker 1: to a given problem, it's always the last one. You
Speaker 1: try anyway.
Speaker 3: So finally we go back to Earth to the spokes
Speaker 3: the spokesman at the you know, he's doing a press
Speaker 3: conference of the Capitol Building, and he says, you've been
Speaker 3: called here again to see further information about the story
Speaker 3: which you didn't hear last night. I will read you
Speaker 3: the text of a teleradio message received from the Challenge
Speaker 3: one forty two, less than an hour ago. This is
Speaker 3: Eric Royce talking of the nineteen men and women who
Speaker 3: have set foot on the planet Mars six will return.
Speaker 3: There's no longer a question of murder, but of an alien,
Speaker 3: an elemental life force, a planet so cruel, so hostile,
Speaker 3: that man may find it necessary to bypass it in
Speaker 3: his endeavor to explore and understand the universe. Another name
Speaker 3: for Mars is death. And then it just goes straight
Speaker 3: to the end. I love that the last words the
Speaker 3: movie has to say, or not about like the indomitable
Speaker 3: spirit of humankind, or or about the courage of the
Speaker 3: you know, the people who gave their lives fighting against
Speaker 3: this beast. It's like, Mars is terrible. Don't ever go there.
Speaker 3: It's just trash.
Speaker 1: Mars is death. Mars is dead to us. We're just
Speaker 1: gonna skip over that. What's next, what's the next one,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna go there in steay nothing on Mars
Speaker 1: for us.
Speaker 4: Jupiter is life maybe maybe, but yeah, but you know,
Speaker 4: it is kind of a hint of some of the
Speaker 4: I don't know, partially cosmic horror inspired stuff to come,
Speaker 4: including alien like this idea that yeah, humans should never
Speaker 4: have left Earth and of course they're going to encounter,
Speaker 4: you know, unspeakable horrors out there because we were not
Speaker 4: meant to know of it.
Speaker 3: Mm hm. So, as we said earlier, it the terror
Speaker 3: from beyond space. I feel like a pretty strong thumbs
Speaker 3: up for what it is. It is a modest science
Speaker 3: fiction movie. It's kind of it has bottle episode vibes,
Speaker 3: but given all that, quite strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I was really impressed with it. I
Speaker 1: think this one would have scared me a bit if
Speaker 1: i'd seen it when I was when I was a
Speaker 1: lot younger, and I would love to hear from folks
Speaker 1: out there who saw it in on the big screen
Speaker 1: at some point in a drive in environment. That would
Speaker 1: have been neat Again, the performances are solid. The monster
Speaker 1: costume for the most part, looks really good, like to
Speaker 1: mention that there are some shots where, at least in silhouette,
Speaker 1: it reminds me a bit of the aliens from Earth.
Speaker 1: Girls are easy, but you know, because something about the
Speaker 1: head shape kind of reminds me of the helmets that
Speaker 1: those aliens have. But again, for the most part, I
Speaker 1: love the monster here. All right. There you have it,
Speaker 1: it the terror from beyond Space. We're going to remind
Speaker 1: everybody here that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 1: a science podcast with core episodes and the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short
Speaker 1: form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a
Speaker 1: full list of the films we've watched over the years,
Speaker 1: go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T
Speaker 1: E R bo x D dot com. Our username there
Speaker 1: is weird House and that's where you'll find the list. Hey,
Speaker 1: and if you're on Instagram, follow Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind at st b ym podcast. That's our handle. And
Speaker 1: you know, even if you're only in it for the
Speaker 1: Weird House, We've got some. We generally have some little
Speaker 1: videos that go out to give you just like a
Speaker 1: taste of the trailers on there as well as well
Speaker 1: as reminders of what the core episodes are as they're
Speaker 1: coming out.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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