Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And this week on Weird House Cinema, we're continuing some
Speaker 2: of our alien related explorations with a film that is
Speaker 2: frequently cited as one of the b movie influences on
Speaker 2: alienscribe Dan O'Bannon, along with the likes of Mario Bob
Speaker 2: as Planning the Vampires, which we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 2: but this week we're talking about it The Terror from
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yes, I think we could have fit a question mark
Speaker 2: in there as well, though, like it the Terror from
Speaker 2: 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 2: Actually, well, I guess you know. At this point, maybe
Speaker 2: people had seen enough movies where the terror is from
Speaker 2: space and they're like, well, can we get beyond that?
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yes. I really like some of the posters for this
Speaker 2: particular movie. One of them that I pulled up and
Speaker 2: included in our notes here is the nice horizontal poster
Speaker 2: we see some version of the monster holding a woman.
Speaker 2: Of course, one of the classic staples of the old
Speaker 2: Monster movie is one that I love, and I love
Speaker 2: some of the promises on this particular poster. It says
Speaker 2: it reaches through space. It scoops up men and women.
Speaker 2: It gorgeous 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 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess I'll reached through space. Is it
Speaker 2: reached through time? I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: But it scoops up men and women, It scoops them.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. It definitely scoops up men. Does it
Speaker 2: ever scoop up a woman?
Speaker 3: I don't recall it scooping. No, it's gonna get men
Speaker 3: multiple times.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another case where the monster holding a woman is
Speaker 2: a complete lie on the poster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was trying to think, what's the name of
Speaker 3: the wrestling move that it does with the guy where
Speaker 3: it just like fully like you know, presses a guy
Speaker 3: above above its head.
Speaker 2: That is fitting least, I believe, sometimes called a gorilla press,
Speaker 2: which is fitting because, as we'll discuss, we have a
Speaker 2: 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 2: Absolutely, and the silhouettes work really well. This is a
Speaker 2: movie that has a i think, especially for the time,
Speaker 2: a pretty great monster costume. There's some flaws, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: that weren't necessarily within the control of the monster suit maker,
Speaker 2: but more importantly, one of I mean, the most important
Speaker 2: thing about a monster suit is you've got to you
Speaker 2: got to shoot it right, you gotta light it correctly,
Speaker 2: you gotta know what to show and what not to show.
Speaker 2: And they don't do that perfectly in this film either,
Speaker 2: 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 L. Kahn, also directed another movie we did on
Speaker 3: Weird House, the Creature with the Adam Brain, and that
Speaker 3: that was a hoot. Of course, that one I think
Speaker 3: was much funnier than this movie. This one I think
Speaker 3: overall 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 2: Yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's obviously a lower budget
Speaker 2: late fifties affair, but still it's a fun and an
Speaker 2: effective ride. Like not everything is great, but everything comes
Speaker 2: together enough that it has this kind of structural integrity,
Speaker 2: the structural completeness that is very enjoyable, especially when you
Speaker 2: consider that this film was shot in well as many
Speaker 2: as two weeks. I've seen two weeks sighted, but I've
Speaker 2: also seen six days sided as the shooting period for
Speaker 2: this picture I.
Speaker 3: Think isn't that what John Carpenter said about it in
Speaker 3: the interview we watched.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Carpenter in let's see what was this? A twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen appearance on Turner Classic Movies. He says it was
Speaker 2: shot in six days, which does not seem unreasonable given
Speaker 2: what we know about the director and productions of this
Speaker 2: 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's stuck with him, like,
Speaker 3: you know, you can tell he's still even as an
Speaker 3: adult going back and watching it, sees it with a
Speaker 3: little kid brain and appreciates it in that way. And
Speaker 3: you know, that's something I always enjoy when I'm able
Speaker 3: to do it, when I'm able to like turn off
Speaker 3: adult brain and become a child again watching a movie
Speaker 3: 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 the how small the budget was, how fast
Speaker 3: it was made, it's actually a pretty impressively effective picture.
Speaker 3: He says, a quote about it, it's something like it
Speaker 3: has a great little engine that runs it or something
Speaker 3: like that, And I totally agree. There is a There
Speaker 3: is a strong sort of mechanical tactile feeling to the
Speaker 3: plot and a lot of the scenes, and it works
Speaker 3: really well. It just kind of pushes you through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of I guess it's like thinking
Speaker 2: about what is the car supposed to do? Is supposed
Speaker 2: to drive you from point A to point B. What's
Speaker 2: a movie's supposed to do? Well, answer is a little
Speaker 2: more complicated, but essentially entertain us and tell us a
Speaker 2: story and allow us to be immersed in that story.
Speaker 2: And this film does all of those things. Even if
Speaker 2: you were to be picky about it, you could be like, well,
Speaker 2: look at that hubcap, look at that tail light, you know,
Speaker 2: but hey, it all comes together and you make it
Speaker 2: to your destination.
Speaker 3: Look at that whatever chin or something poking out of
Speaker 3: the monster's mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in the end too, you know, it's like,
Speaker 2: we have some pretty pretty solid performances in here. We
Speaker 2: have some effective scenes, some that are I think actually
Speaker 2: quite scary, that still hold up and have a certain
Speaker 2: amount of tension and terror to them. Michael Weldon and
Speaker 2: the Psychotronic Film Guide praised it as a quote pretty
Speaker 2: scary space ar And you know, I think it depends
Speaker 2: what you compare it to. You know, obviously it's a
Speaker 2: very interesting exercise to compare this to Alien, but it's
Speaker 2: also a little unfair to hold it to that, to
Speaker 2: that level, you know. But on its own terms, it
Speaker 2: has some some scares, some jump scares, some creepy atmospheric moments.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we'll have more to say about all this
Speaker 2: as we proceed, but elevator pitcher this film, I think
Speaker 2: 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 question.
Speaker 2: Mok, that's true. I would say that's the beat plot
Speaker 2: that's sad, kind of gets shuffled aside. But it's a
Speaker 2: nice what if, like, what if they had really been
Speaker 2: able to deliver both in equal volumes, or if someone
Speaker 2: were to re explore it.
Speaker 3: Today intriguing idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, if you want to watch it The Terror
Speaker 2: from Beyond Space before proceeding here. This one is pretty
Speaker 2: widely available in digital and physical formats, including a twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three KL Studio Classics Blu Ray release that has
Speaker 2: a new HD master, a FEATURETTE, and I think three
Speaker 2: different commentary tracks. I ended up not being able to
Speaker 2: pick this one up. I think they do have it
Speaker 2: at Video Drone, but I ended up watching a quality
Speaker 2: stream of it that I think must be the HD master,
Speaker 2: and it looks it looks pretty darn good.
Speaker 3: The stream I watched also looked pretty sharp.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the people here. So we
Speaker 2: mentioned the director already, and again we have talked about
Speaker 2: this director before because it is the One Week Wonder.
Speaker 2: It is Edward L. Cohn, who lived eighteen ninety nine
Speaker 2: through nineteen sixty three, who also directed The Creature with
Speaker 2: 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,
Speaker 3: goofy low budget monster movie, and this one being surprisingly
Speaker 3: tight by comparison.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Creature with the Adam Brain had kind of
Speaker 2: a serial energy to it, like an old old action
Speaker 2: serial kind of vibe, and this one is, you know,
Speaker 2: it's very identifiable as as space horror proto space horror
Speaker 2: in many ways, and you can see why it was
Speaker 2: such an influence.
Speaker 3: Creature with the Adam Brain was the movie that had
Speaker 3: the news broadcasts by Dick Cutting.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh, good old Dick Cutting. Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So. Con was a highly prolific low budget director for
Speaker 2: three decades, directing one hundred and twenty eight films. Many
Speaker 2: of you may be familiar with. Some of his nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties horror and sci fi films is fifty seven's Invasion
Speaker 2: of the Saucermen and the Zombies of Maritau nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 2: Is The She Creature, nineteen fifty nine's Invisible Invaders, and
Speaker 2: The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. He also did a
Speaker 2: lot of westerns action films, biker films, and various social
Speaker 2: exploitation films of the thirties, forties, fifties, and early sixties.
Speaker 2: So it just to give you an idea of like
Speaker 2: how fast he was pumping these out, how fast the
Speaker 2: one week wonder was getting these done. It. The Terror
Speaker 2: from Beyond Space is one of five con films released
Speaker 2: 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 2: I mean there are some years where Corman was pumping
Speaker 2: 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 and the title.
Speaker 2: Now getting to the screenplay. The screenplay is by Jerome Bixby,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty three through nineteen ninety eight American
Speaker 2: writer and composer, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music,
Speaker 2: who also wrote various short stories and two novels, Call
Speaker 2: for an Exorcist and Space by the Tale, both published
Speaker 2: in sixty four. His nineteen fifty three story It's a
Speaker 2: Good Life was adapted as an episode of the Twilight
Speaker 2: Zone in nineteen sixty one, and also revisited in Twilight Zone.
Speaker 2: The movie this is the one about the six year
Speaker 2: old boy with godlike powers that can wish you into
Speaker 2: the cornfield and so yeah, now it The Terraform Beyond
Speaker 2: Space was only his second produced screenplay, following CON's Curse
Speaker 2: of the Faceless Man from the same year. He also
Speaker 2: has a story credit on nineteen sixty six Is Fantastic Voyage.
Speaker 2: We often think about Isaac Asimov in relation to that picture,
Speaker 2: but we have to remember he only wrote the novelization,
Speaker 2: he was not involved in the screenplay, and also Bixby
Speaker 2: wrote four episodes of the original Star 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? No? 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 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's efficient, it's economic, there's
Speaker 2: not really a dull moment, and it's got some nice
Speaker 2: little splashes of dialogue here and there, which of course
Speaker 2: are helped along by a really solid cast of character
Speaker 2: actors and some leading act Yes, I agree. And speaking
Speaker 2: of starting at the top, we have Marshall Thompson playing
Speaker 2: the character Colonel Edward Carruthers. Thompson lived nineteen twenty five
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety two, all American actor who we've talked
Speaker 2: about on the show before because he was in a
Speaker 2: little 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. It's some or 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 2: Yeah. A film that's mostly notable for really incredible stop
Speaker 2: motion brain monsters and some very squishy sound effects to
Speaker 2: go along with them. Generally not notable for the acting.
Speaker 2: In fact, I remember it's just kind of commenting that
Speaker 2: Marshall Thompson was kind of like a square joed, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of boring actor like they're just you know, very
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, this film gives him a lot more to work with.
Speaker 2: He has a more complex character. So on one level,
Speaker 2: he is the square jod chick magnet hero per usual,
Speaker 2: but especially early on in the picture, he's also the
Speaker 2: lone survivor of a terrifying encounter on an alien world
Speaker 2: who has subsequently been condemned to the firing squad you know,
Speaker 2: all but officially for the murder of his crew. And
Speaker 2: so he is able to work with that, and you
Speaker 2: do see that in his performance. He has like kind
Speaker 2: of a nice haunted look, especially throughout the first you know,
Speaker 2: third of the.
Speaker 3: Picture, framed for homicide by a star beast.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an unusual type of character, but it's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I set out to be kind of again
Speaker 2: bored by his performance, as one often is I think
Speaker 2: with leading man performances from genre pictures of this time
Speaker 2: period for various reasons we've discussed in the show before.
Speaker 2: But I ended up enjoying his performance.
Speaker 3: Somewhat totally agree better than average.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna go through everything we said
Speaker 2: about him last time, but basically, he's a guy who
Speaker 2: kind of has like two prongs to his filmography. They're
Speaker 2: the cult films and then they're like the good natured
Speaker 2: animal films. So he did like a horse movie called
Speaker 2: Gallant Bess in forty six, and then sixty five's Clearance
Speaker 2: The Cross Eyed Lion, and so forth. His final film
Speaker 2: role was a supporting role in nineteen ninety one's mc bain,
Speaker 2: an action movie starring Christopher Walken, Michael Ironside and also
Speaker 2: featuring Louise Gouzman in a supporting role. But I don't
Speaker 2: think I was familiar with mc bain outside of the
Speaker 2: yelling McBain on The Simpsons and having the fictional action
Speaker 2: hero McBain, which when I looked into it a little
Speaker 2: bit more. Apparently this movie, the ninety one movie McBain,
Speaker 2: came out after the Simpsons jokes, and because of it,
Speaker 2: the Simpsons had to stop making McBain jokes. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's completely true, but that's the argument I've heard.
Speaker 3: I don't think they stopped doing mc bain jokes. I
Speaker 3: remember mc bain jokes going well into the last seasons
Speaker 3: I saw, at least like season seven and eight.
Speaker 2: Maybe they came back after a while and they had
Speaker 2: to like just hush it for a bit. I don't know.
Speaker 2: But then again I thought I was familiar with Christopher
Speaker 2: Walken's filmography, and then mc bain feels like one that
Speaker 2: just came out of nowhere, that did not previously exist,
Speaker 2: And just 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 2: I don't remember that one.
Speaker 3: He has to jump down and punch through the cockpit.
Speaker 2: Anyway, if anyone out there has seen mc bain from
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one, well right in and we would like
Speaker 2: to hear from you, all right, continuing on with the
Speaker 2: rest of the cast here, We're not going to do
Speaker 2: the whole cast because this is still one of those
Speaker 2: films where there are just a lot of at least
Speaker 2: on the surface, interchangeable guys.
Speaker 3: But I really lost track of the guys multiple times
Speaker 3: in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though I did find it easier to keep track
Speaker 2: of them on the whole compared to a lot of movies,
Speaker 2: because on the whole, the cast is pretty good, and
Speaker 2: you know, we got some nice character actors in there,
Speaker 2: and the screenplay also seems to be doing a little
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, some sort of cast system in play here.
Speaker 3: Did not say present.
Speaker 2: All right. So Marshall Thompson is playing our doomed guy,
Speaker 2: or seemingly doomed guy who needs to be picked up
Speaker 2: from Mars because his mission to Mars ended in terror
Speaker 2: and death. Yeah, we have this rescue crew coming in
Speaker 2: to pick him up, and that's where we get into
Speaker 2: the rest of the cast, and this mission is headed
Speaker 2: up by Colonel Van Heusen played by him Spalding, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen fifteen through the year two thousand. American stage,
Speaker 2: screen and TV actor the forties, fifties, and sixties, I
Speaker 2: think best known for this film. He worked in various westerns.
Speaker 2: I think, sometimes played a villain, sometimes played a hero.
Speaker 2: He has that kind of gaunt, stern look that I
Speaker 2: think allowed him to jump back and forth between the two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he played The character he plays in this movie
Speaker 3: is relatively stoic. You can imagine he's used well as
Speaker 3: kind of like a moderately threatening man with dark moods.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I was reading on a classic film board
Speaker 2: about some of his roles, and apparently he played Doc
Speaker 2: Holiday in a nineteen fifty four TV western series called
Speaker 2: Stories of the Century, And apparently he played a villainous
Speaker 2: Doc Holiday in this. So Doc Holliday is like using
Speaker 2: his dentistry to torture people or something.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 2: So that's the kind of range he had here. But
Speaker 2: in this he's essentially one of the heroes. But there's
Speaker 2: there's some misunderstandings involved as well. All Right, we also
Speaker 2: have the character Anne Anderson, one of the scientists aboard
Speaker 2: the vessel, played by Shirley Patterson. I believe she's credited
Speaker 2: on this as Sean Smith. This is She lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty two through nineteen ninety five, Canadian actress of the
Speaker 2: forties and fifties, best known for her roles in fifty
Speaker 2: six is World Without End, fifty seven's The Land Unknown,
Speaker 2: and the nineteen forty three Batman serial, which I've seen
Speaker 2: parts of. It's very hard to watch because it's just
Speaker 2: it's boring. But in this yeah, she's a scientist, I
Speaker 2: think a geologist, 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 crew,
Speaker 3: and they are both scientists, but they are also the
Speaker 3: significant others of other crew members, and they have to
Speaker 3: do all the cooking and the serving of coffee.
Speaker 2: So yeah, multiple.
Speaker 3: Reviewers have pointed that out, and it's not the only
Speaker 3: movie of the time like that, by the way, where
Speaker 3: there's like, oh, you know, there's one woman on this crew.
Speaker 3: She is a scientist. We are going to the dinosaur planet.
Speaker 3: She's also the ship's cook.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's not one of the best aspects of
Speaker 2: the picture. There's no Ripley on this crew. Ripley would
Speaker 2: never Yeah, she would tell you to get your own
Speaker 2: darn coffee. And you know, even if it is and
Speaker 2: it's the best thing on the ship, so of course
Speaker 2: you should get your own coffee. The other female that
Speaker 2: you just alluded to on board the ship is the
Speaker 2: character Mary Royce. She's essentially the mom of the ship.
Speaker 2: That's the way. She's supposed to be a scientist as well,
Speaker 2: but she's everyone's mom. I guess she seems to fulfill
Speaker 2: that role for all of these these men that are
Speaker 2: serving aboard the spaceship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she sort of scolds them for making crass jokes
Speaker 3: and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Played by Anne Doran, who lived nineteen eleven through
Speaker 2: the year two thousand. Doran appeared to be in more
Speaker 2: than five hundred movies and a thousand TV shows from
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two through nineteen eighty eight. She apparently started
Speaker 2: as a child actress, which of course helps if you're
Speaker 2: going to rack up these kind of numbers. But her
Speaker 2: mini credits include the nineteen fifty four giant ant movie
Speaker 2: them nineteen fifty five's Rebel Without a Cause in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine's Mister Smith Goes to Washington.
Speaker 3: She was in two exclamation point movies.
Speaker 2: 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 2: It does, Yeah, but I can't have that in the
Speaker 2: notes exclamation points followed by commas that I just start
Speaker 2: feeling crazy if I do that, I do hold it
Speaker 2: against you, all right. So that's Mary Royce, that's grandma
Speaker 2: or mom. Who's the dad character of the ship, Well,
Speaker 2: that's Eric Royce played by Dabs Greer, who was honestly,
Speaker 2: like really good in this, Like he doesn't really have
Speaker 2: that much to do, but sometimes in the ensemble cast
Speaker 2: of a particular film, you know you have that you
Speaker 2: know obviously, you know, veteran character actor who can really
Speaker 2: just infuse anything he has to say or any scene
Speaker 2: where he's just present with a certain amount of dignity
Speaker 2: and seriousness. And that's where Dad's Greer 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 2: Oh? Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of smoking on from
Speaker 2: board the ship. That's something John Carpenter pointed out as well.
Speaker 2: It's like everybody's smoking like constantly. Yeah, if you listen
Speaker 2: to our most recent stuff to Blow your Mind Core episode,
Speaker 2: this is also funny because we were talking about like
Speaker 2: oxygen levels on actual space flights. Yeah, some of the risks,
Speaker 2: and this movie is just completely alarming in light of
Speaker 2: all of that, not only because of the smoking, but
Speaker 2: 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 and shooting firearms inside of a
Speaker 3: interplanetary spaceship, they also just leave the door open on
Speaker 3: the surface of Mars.
Speaker 2: I mean they didn't think anything would come in. That's
Speaker 2: the I mean, that's the fatal flaw. But they didn't
Speaker 2: think there was anything that could crawl aboard. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Dab's Greer here is terrific. I think Carpenter also singled
Speaker 2: him out as being a fine presence in the film.
Speaker 2: Longtime American character actor whose credits include everything from fifty
Speaker 2: three's House of Wax. I don't think we mentioned him
Speaker 2: in that one, he's somewhere in the supporting cast. He's
Speaker 2: in fifty six is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which
Speaker 2: is another film that absolutely holds up, and then you
Speaker 2: also find him in nineteen ninety seven's con Air in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine is The Green Mile.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what he was in either of those.
Speaker 2: Well, I think looking at his dates, I mean, think
Speaker 2: of the oldest person remember in either movie, and it
Speaker 2: 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 2: That would have been good. Yeah, every ship. I mean,
Speaker 2: if the Nostromo gets a cat, why shouldn't this ship
Speaker 2: the name of which he ludes me, it does have
Speaker 2: a name, but why does it not have a basset hunt?
Speaker 3: Are you taking notes, jer Own Bixby, We're giving you
Speaker 3: good notes here. All right.
Speaker 2: I'm going to skip over the rest of the human
Speaker 2: crew here, but we may refer back to one or
Speaker 2: two as when we get into the plot later on.
Speaker 2: But again, like top to bottom. Everybody's good in this
Speaker 2: There's nobody that comes on screen and you're like, why
Speaker 2: did they cast this person? Where did this person just
Speaker 2: walk in off the street, Like, No, they all seem
Speaker 2: to be experienced actors, solid cast. And then our monster suit.
Speaker 2: I'm always interested who's inside the creature's suit. And this
Speaker 2: one's kind of a treat because we have Ray Crash Corrigan,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen oh two through nineteen seventy six playing
Speaker 2: The Beast. He was a Hollywood physical fitness trainer turned
Speaker 2: actor and creature suit specialist. So this is a guy who,
Speaker 2: like some of these other gorilla actors, had his own
Speaker 2: gorilla costume, had his own suit, and war said suit
Speaker 2: or I guess, sometimes supplied suits if there's something specific
Speaker 2: they were going for that he could not provide. And
Speaker 2: I believe more than thirty different films from nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: two through nineteen fifty eight just going through IMDb and
Speaker 2: looking for roles that he had that are called like
Speaker 2: gorilla or ape or something to that effect. This guy
Speaker 2: 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. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of those things where people don't
Speaker 2: necessarily realize how demanding such a performance is until they
Speaker 2: either try to do it, or they try and just
Speaker 2: get some rando to do it, and then they realize that, no,
Speaker 2: this is grueling. You know, it's gonna be hot work,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be sweaty work, and you're gonna have to
Speaker 2: like change your the natural positioning of your body, move
Speaker 2: in different ways that can act to actually actually just
Speaker 2: you know, carry you down if you're not ready for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you know, this is something that I'm always delighted
Speaker 2: to see that it still continues to this day. We
Speaker 2: still have actors active in film who have kind of
Speaker 2: made it there specialty to portray the physicality of gorillas
Speaker 2: and apes, even if they're not necessarily wearing a suit.
Speaker 2: They may just be doing mo cap, but they're still
Speaker 2: keeping the tradition alive. So anyway, Yeah, Crash Corgan did
Speaker 2: a lot of this. He also did some like westerns
Speaker 2: as well. He started, you know, playing cowboys, not gorillas.
Speaker 2: But he started the Corriganville movie ranch for Western films,
Speaker 2: and it was something that I think was open for
Speaker 2: tourism on the weekends and holidays for a long stretch
Speaker 2: as well. They would shoot westerns here. And then he
Speaker 2: eventually sold it to Bob Hope, I believe in sixty six,
Speaker 2: and you can still find it. It's out there. It's
Speaker 2: in California. It's called Corriganville Park and it's in Semi Valley, California.
Speaker 2: So if we have any Californians who want to check
Speaker 2: in on that location for us and report back, we
Speaker 2: would luck to hear from you. All Right, So that's
Speaker 2: the guy in the creature costume. But we also have
Speaker 2: to talk briefly about the guy who built the creature costume.
Speaker 2: This is Paul Blasdell born nineteen twenty seven died nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three, uncredited, but he is the suit designer and
Speaker 2: 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 batface.
Speaker 2: Would you say, yeah, I mean it's it's not a
Speaker 2: gorilla costume, but it's a gorilla actor in a suit
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah. Yeah, though is Girma del Toro. As has pointed
Speaker 2: out before, like the gorilla costume is a great place
Speaker 2: to start with any monster. You know, it's like it's
Speaker 2: it's it's a for a reason. Yeah, the creature, the
Speaker 2: claws look really good, the basic outline looks really good,
Speaker 2: and the face really isn't bad. I mean there's a
Speaker 2: lot you can compare this monsitor to in the you know,
Speaker 2: 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. They are like some scenes
Speaker 3: where you say the creature is reaching up through a
Speaker 3: you know, hole in a hatch that it has clawed,
Speaker 3: or is sort of busting through a door and you
Speaker 3: only see part of its body where the suit looks great.
Speaker 3: There are places where it looks less good, where like
Speaker 3: you're seeing the whole creature suit, the whole performer in
Speaker 3: the whole suit, moving around in a space that's fairly
Speaker 3: well lit, in which case my feeling was both the
Speaker 3: mask and the suit. Something looks kind of odd about
Speaker 3: the fit of it, Like the material is kind of thin,
Speaker 3: and it's less impressive that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is part of the story here. According
Speaker 2: to some of the sources I was looking at, is
Speaker 2: that they couldn't get Core again in for a proper
Speaker 2: fitting for the suit ahead of time for some various reasons,
Speaker 2: and so it doesn't quite fit him all the way.
Speaker 2: And most notably Alrea alluded to this, but he's like
Speaker 2: chin is sticking out of the mask a bit, and
Speaker 2: they ultimately just you know, did what they could to
Speaker 2: incorporate that end of the design.
Speaker 3: But like I said, there are some shots where it
Speaker 3: looks quite good and is used very effectively, especially the
Speaker 3: shadowy ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm reminded a bit of the Thing from Another World,
Speaker 2: a film that does not have I mean, it has
Speaker 2: a classic monster design, but it's not one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: But if you just look at stills of the monster,
Speaker 2: you're probably not going to be that impressed. But if
Speaker 2: you watch the film. There are some terrifying sequences with
Speaker 2: that monster. Again, the the filmmaking doesn't involve just you know,
Speaker 2: putting a monster in front of a camera and shooting it.
Speaker 2: There's so many additional elements that go into creating the
Speaker 2: illusion of terror.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: So still on its own, I would say, pretty great
Speaker 2: monster suit. You know that they they were working with
Speaker 2: a limited budget with some additional constraints such as getting
Speaker 2: the actor in for measurements. And there are also some
Speaker 2: alleged performance issues with Corgan for this one. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get into the old movie dirt,
Speaker 2: but there's some allegations that maybe he wasn't in the
Speaker 2: best condition to perform for this one, and maybe there
Speaker 2: was some communication breakdowns between Corgan and the director. So
Speaker 2: all that taken into account, looks pretty good. And yeah,
Speaker 2: Blasdell himself was responsible for a number of classic nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties monster costumes, everything from the creature effects from nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty five's The Beast with a Million Eyes and The
Speaker 2: Day the World Ended to nineteen fifty six Is It
Speaker 2: Conquered the World?
Speaker 3: Ah, that's a Roger Korman movie. That's the one where
Speaker 3: Earth is conquered by a psychic space or to choke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are not Those are maybe not believable looking monsters.
Speaker 2: They are very laughable, but they also are unique. They
Speaker 2: stand out.
Speaker 3: They're great.
Speaker 2: They're pretty great in that respect.
Speaker 3: I've got a big poster if It Conquered the World
Speaker 3: up on my wall here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fun film. We may have to come
Speaker 2: back to that one. He also worked on the little
Speaker 2: alien flying creatures in Not of This Earth from nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty seven that we talked about on the show. He
Speaker 2: worked on Invasion of the Saucermen from the same year,
Speaker 2: and he also worked on nineteen fifty nine Teenagers from
Speaker 2: Outer Space, which I don't know if that one has
Speaker 2: creatures or not, but if I'm remembering correctly, that one
Speaker 2: is the one that has a great dog zapping scene
Speaker 2: where somebody shoots a dog with a ray gun and
Speaker 2: turns it into a pile of smoking bones. I know
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't like it when the dog dies,
Speaker 2: but the dog dies well in this picture worth it.
Speaker 2: Paul also wore the Monstra suit in several films, including
Speaker 2: The Day the World Ended It Conquered the World nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty six is the She Creature and fifty seven's Invasion
Speaker 2: of the Saucer Men. He also helped make that giant
Speaker 2: hypodermic needle in nineteen fifty seven's The Amazing Colossal Man,
Speaker 2: which I hope will come back to on the show
Speaker 2: if they ever put it out on a proper Blu
Speaker 2: Ray release. And he was a special designer on Attack
Speaker 2: of the Puppet People from fifty eight, which we also
Speaker 2: talked about on Weird House. That one did have a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, little people in a big world
Speaker 2: gimmicks and props. So I'm not sure what he worked
Speaker 2: on there, but that I'm sure it was something spectacular.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we have crossed paths many times.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and we'll and we'll undoubtedly come back to him.
Speaker 2: Now on the music end of the spectrum, there are
Speaker 2: three different individuals. I'm not going to spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time on them. We have Paul Sautel or Sawtel
Speaker 2: entirely sure on that one, and then we also have
Speaker 2: bert A. Schefter. Sautel was born nineteen oh six died
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one. Schefter nineteen oh four through nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: The former Polish born film score composer, the latter Russian
Speaker 2: born pianist and film composer. They worked together on a
Speaker 2: lot of different pictures, especially a string of low budget
Speaker 2: sci fi films. They also did various other genres, westerns
Speaker 2: and so forth. In fact, Sautel worked on the at
Speaker 2: least via stock music. His music was used, shall we say,
Speaker 2: in the US release of nineteen sixty three's King Kong
Speaker 2: Versus Godzilla, And he actually has a composer music themes
Speaker 2: credit on nineteen sixty five's Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, which
Speaker 2: I don't think we mentioned in our episode on that movie.
Speaker 2: So we have those two, and then we also have
Speaker 2: Jack Cookerly who lived nineteen twenty six through twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: uncredited composer electronic music on this one. So. Cokerley was
Speaker 2: a pioneering electronic musician who contributed electronic sci fi sounds
Speaker 2: to various pictures. He often worked with the aforementioned gentlemen
Speaker 2: on their scores and their sound work. He developed many
Speaker 2: of his own instruments and contributed sound effects to such
Speaker 2: titles as The Black Scorpion for fifty seven Space Children
Speaker 2: in fifty eight, The Colossus of New York in fifty eight,
Speaker 2: Invisible Invaders in fifty nine, and Robinson Crusoe and Mars
Speaker 2: in sixty four. He also did some work on the
Speaker 2: original Twilight Zone and Star Trek series.
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: ambience 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 2: Yeah. Yeah, we have a wonderfully tense, atmospheric, believable space
Speaker 2: walk sequence like that, you know, totally suspended my disbelief.
Speaker 2: And it has this wonderful, yeah, ambient, electronic, minimalist score
Speaker 2: going on that sounds nice and spacey, and I think
Speaker 2: we get a little splash of that towards the beginning
Speaker 2: of the picture as well. Yeah, and speaking of that,
Speaker 2: let's get into the beginning of the picture. Let's jump
Speaker 2: 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 crashed spaceship of some kind.
Speaker 2: Now, this is a black and white movie. I don't
Speaker 2: think we mentioned that up front, but yeah, it's black
Speaker 2: and white, but it looks great, and really, given the
Speaker 2: tone of the picture and the space hor the red
Speaker 2: planet looks great in black and white. Here, you know
Speaker 2: it is it is a planet that is supposed to
Speaker 2: be full of terror and death, and so this very
Speaker 2: inky black appearance to it looks.
Speaker 3: Nice and it hits you right with the title. It's
Speaker 3: it exclamation point in these giant animated block letters that
Speaker 3: are I don't know, they're supposed to look like the
Speaker 3: wall outside, you know, the fortifications of a medieval city
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like made out of little blocks or something.
Speaker 2: It looks great. I do love it, and it's right
Speaker 2: in your face. Whatever it is, it's gonna 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 2: 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 2: Yeah, Like, I'm just I'm not at all going to
Speaker 2: be the same person I was, and so forth. Now,
Speaker 2: this is again a film from the late fifties set
Speaker 2: in the future of nineteen seventy three. I just want
Speaker 2: to remind everybody about this cinematic setting. This is the
Speaker 2: same setting year for the events of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Speaker 2: We get that in the intro. This is also the
Speaker 2: setting for the opening sequence of the nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: Super Mario Brothers film.
Speaker 3: What what was the opening sequence? Oh that there were
Speaker 3: many dinosaurs or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when the eggs and the dinosaurs the cross dimensional
Speaker 2: cross crossing there.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's when the lady leaves the egg at
Speaker 3: the convent or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's seventy three, So that's taking place in the
Speaker 2: same world. This is in the same world, same cinematic universe.
Speaker 2: Perfect also nineteen seventy three, this is the year of
Speaker 2: the opening flashback sequence. In nineteen ninety six is space Jam,
Speaker 2: in which a young Michael Jordan decides to take up
Speaker 2: basketball to prevent alien invasion.
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 2: 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 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but in this nineteen seventy three everybody still has
Speaker 3: that same flat top haircut then yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything is still fifties to the max. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, 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 and it's imagined by the fifties is super fifties,
Speaker 3: and the future as imagined by the seventies is super seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you know, it's if shoulder pads are in well,
Speaker 2: future is going to be such shoulder pads you've never seen.
Speaker 3: So anyway, we're here on the surface of and we
Speaker 3: see the second ship, the ship that came that came
Speaker 3: to get cor others here, and it's one of these
Speaker 3: fifties movie rocket ships that's got the fin the three
Speaker 3: fins on the bottom and it's got we see basically
Speaker 3: 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 2: I don't know. Maybe they got like a central stem
Speaker 2: in the middle or something that's pumping it down.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: We don't really get a good handle on that, and
Speaker 2: we but but we otherwise do get a good handle
Speaker 2: of the layout of the ship, just not maybe where
Speaker 2: all 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 2: An alarmingly mundane cut after such a nice opening. But
Speaker 2: thank goodness they teased us with all this this fun
Speaker 2: and off world stuff before we go to what like
Speaker 2: it's like a press briefing at the White House.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm sorry, build it's at the Capitol. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like the Science Advisory Committee, Division of Interplanetary Exploration
Speaker 3: of Fortunately, we will spend very little time here on Earth.
Speaker 3: It's just an exposition thing. A guy comes in, a
Speaker 3: guy who looks rather grizzled. Actually he's kind of like
Speaker 3: mad to be there, and he gives an opening narration
Speaker 3: that sort of sets everything up for the plot, so
Speaker 3: I might as well read a transcription of it, so
Speaker 3: you know what we're dealing with here, spokes guy says,
Speaker 3: ladies and gentlemen of the press. As you know, the
Speaker 3: first attempt to send a space ship to the planet
Speaker 3: Mars 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 Correthers 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 Caruthers was the sole survivor of this
Speaker 3: first expedition. One hour ago, we received a teleradio communication
Speaker 3: from Colonel Van Hewson, 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 Carrethers 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.
Speaker 2: A great setup. Now, presumably the second mission here is
Speaker 2: also doing some science, right, I mean, they take scientists
Speaker 2: with them. It surely is not just a rescue slash
Speaker 2: arrest mission. But we don't really see any of the
Speaker 2: science that's going on.
Speaker 3: I mean, the only science that's really done is once
Speaker 3: the creature 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 is what is Mary supposed to be?
Speaker 3: She like a doctor, basically physician of some kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, some sort of doctor. So, I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess they have all these scientists in case they need
Speaker 2: to tackle some problems on the way or you know,
Speaker 2: on the way back, or on the surface of Mars.
Speaker 2: But presumably I'm just gonna assume there were some other
Speaker 2: science projects that also were handled in addition to our
Speaker 2: main 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 2: I can't remember did they give us any newspaper shots,
Speaker 2: any clipping song?
Speaker 3: Oh we don't see any of the kerning.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 3: He's sitting at sort of a command seat and he
Speaker 3: sees a flashing light on the wall and sends an
Speaker 3: intercom announcement that the emergency air lock in sea compartment
Speaker 3: has been left open, and he's mad about this. He's like,
Speaker 3: who left it open? And then another character comes in.
Speaker 3: This is Paul Langton as Lieutenant James Calder. He's sort
Speaker 3: 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 2: Langton, by the way, lived nineteen thirteenth through nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: another solid American character actor in this picture, whose credits
Speaker 2: include a couple of classic Twilight Zone episodes in addition
Speaker 2: to some other stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he looks like a man would be dumping crates.
Speaker 2: Well, they brought a lot of crates. This is a
Speaker 2: cargo heavy craft man.
Speaker 3: They've got so many crates you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 2: I will say that. On the whole though, the sets
Speaker 2: look really good, like it's it's definitely of the time,
Speaker 2: you know. That's you know, all of the all of
Speaker 2: the electronics and dials and all. It looks very archaic
Speaker 2: and all, but in that lovable way, like you want
Speaker 2: to see this in a nineteen fifties sci fi and
Speaker 2: 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 spaceship set, I'm like, oh, this
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah, I never got a hint of cardboard off of anything.
Speaker 2: 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 air lock open. Now.
Speaker 3: At first I was thinking, Okay, maybe he only meant
Speaker 3: one of the two doors. Nope. Then we see it
Speaker 3: and both the inner and outer doors of the air
Speaker 3: lock are hanging wide open to the surface of the
Speaker 3: planet Mars. So Colonel Vin Hugheson presses a button and
Speaker 3: then they both begin to swing closed. And this is
Speaker 3: one of many things in the movie that you know,
Speaker 3: doesn't really detract from enjoyment at all, but it's just
Speaker 3: kind of amusing, like how far off of the scientific
Speaker 3: reality it is you can just leave the door open
Speaker 3: to Mars.
Speaker 2: My brain was extremely forgiving of this moment, I think
Speaker 2: because it's like they're talking about what's happening with the airlock,
Speaker 2: and not only did I assume that only one door
Speaker 2: was opened, but my brain just went in and filled it,
Speaker 2: filled in the rest and just made it be so
Speaker 2: I didn't even really notice.
Speaker 3: This air anyway. So we pan away from the doors
Speaker 3: as they closed to see a dark storage room filled
Speaker 3: with crates and steel drums, and in the background, a
Speaker 3: shadow falls over the wall, and it's a shadow of
Speaker 3: a very broad shouldered, very muscly looking human annoid figure,
Speaker 3: not quite human but close to human, just bulky, big, threatening, imposing.
Speaker 3: And then we see a foot fall across the floor.
Speaker 3: It's a close up of this three toed reptilian foot,
Speaker 3: and these feet move along as something is stalking through
Speaker 3: the cargo hold, and we hear a deep, rasping breath,
Speaker 3: almost like the growl of a crocodilian.
Speaker 2: The feet are not the best feature of the costumes.
Speaker 2: The claws are great, because of course the claws are
Speaker 2: fully articulated. The feet are not so they the feet
Speaker 2: kind of feel like big rubber monster feet. But I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's not too bad. At least, they're not
Speaker 2: showing the whole monster yet. They're they're they're sparsing it
Speaker 2: 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 very much the dad. Yeah, this is the guy
Speaker 3: who we said she'd have like a high backed chair
Speaker 3: and a dog. We meet Mary 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 dirty jokes and uh and brings you coffee. There
Speaker 3: is Anne Anderson yep, ship wife. Yes there is Major
Speaker 3: John Purdue.
Speaker 2: 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 Coors light in
Speaker 3: his hand. Then we got Bob Finelli. He's I don't
Speaker 3: know ship something.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I don't he doesn't really last long enough
Speaker 2: to get proper classification.
Speaker 3: And Lieutenant James called her Yeah, other uncle. I guess
Speaker 3: it is a ship of many uncles. But as I
Speaker 3: said earlier, for some reason, it's not the entire crew.
Speaker 3: There are at least two guys who do not sign
Speaker 3: off on this role call. We got Geno and we
Speaker 3: got kind Holts, and we'll meet them later.
Speaker 2: They're both Red Shirts though, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are the first two to get killed.
Speaker 2: Yeaheah.
Speaker 3: 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 it's that there is a sort
Speaker 3: of comprehensible geography to the ship that you don't get
Speaker 3: in a lot of sci fi movies from any period.
Speaker 3: Really basical lay out of the ship is a vertical
Speaker 3: stack of different decks that are accessed by the these ladders,
Speaker 3: the steep staircase ladders. So you have a command deck
Speaker 3: on top, and then below that you have living quarters,
Speaker 3: and then you have a laboratory, and then you have
Speaker 3: a couple of storage decks, and then you have the
Speaker 3: engine down below. And something about the arrangement of these
Speaker 3: decks in a way that feels like you can really
Speaker 3: understand where things are happening in the film. It's kind
Speaker 3: of unique. Spaceship layout is often vague in movies. It
Speaker 3: feels like it changes to serve the needs of the
Speaker 3: plot or for convenience of shooting, and this is a
Speaker 3: rare exception. It feels like you can understand where things
Speaker 3: are and what's going on. I think in part because
Speaker 3: of the linear vertical arrangement of the decks as opposed
Speaker 3: to the normal horizontal arrangement of like hallways and doors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is a great point because you do
Speaker 2: have a good sense of where everything is in this ship.
Speaker 2: We get to see some maps, and yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: the case in other examples. We can turn to. The
Speaker 2: one of course that I instantly thought about was Alien
Speaker 2: and then Nostromo. And you know, I've seen Alien so
Speaker 2: many times over the years, but I don't know if
Speaker 2: that I've ever had a great understanding of the Nostromo's
Speaker 2: inner layout. But then again, the Nostromo is supposed to
Speaker 2: essentially be a haunted house, right, So as long as
Speaker 2: you have some vague idea of the house, the basement
Speaker 2: and the attic and classify those however you will within Nostromo,
Speaker 2: you're good to go. I guess you know there are
Speaker 2: going to be other sci fi films where it pays
Speaker 2: to understand 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 this this little engine driving the movie. Some
Speaker 3: think about the movie works in a very tactle physical sense,
Speaker 3: and the good understanding of the space I think helps
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Carruthers is sitting here looking melancholy as they drive
Speaker 3: into space, and then Colonel van Heusen, 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 are
Speaker 3: you thinking about? He says, then you thinking about those
Speaker 3: nine bodies you left down there, and Carrother 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 Houston 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, Carruthers 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 killed by some thing,
Speaker 3: not me.
Speaker 2: I love this conflict. I think it's it's it's a
Speaker 2: minor tragedy that they don't do as much with it,
Speaker 2: and that we know from the get go that Caruthers
Speaker 2: is probably correct. You know that we've seen the monster.
Speaker 2: We know there's a monster, so we we believe him.
Speaker 2: We're never we never really doubt him, even though the
Speaker 2: performance is such that we could read that into it,
Speaker 2: we could read guilt into it and so forth. So
Speaker 2: they don't. They don't really explore this possibility as much
Speaker 2: as they could, and they don't really explore another possibility
Speaker 2: that came to mind while I was watching it, and
Speaker 2: that is that you could have both, right, You could
Speaker 2: have a situation where it's at least some members of
Speaker 2: the crew were killed by a creature, and perhaps you decide, well,
Speaker 2: my chances to survival were better if there are fewer
Speaker 2: people to consume the remaining rations, and so forth. Like
Speaker 2: I feel like I wanted more of I wanted this
Speaker 2: to be milked more, and the film ultimately has to
Speaker 2: move past it and get to the main plot concerning
Speaker 2: what to do about the monster on the ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with all that, but I think a
Speaker 3: very strong setup. Yeah. So then Van Houston 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. At first he says
Speaker 3: they didn't find any bodies, but he did find a
Speaker 3: human skull. I guess that's part of a body. And
Speaker 3: it's like, look, you know, we know you did it,
Speaker 3: not some monster, because look this is this is a
Speaker 3: wound inflicted by a human.
Speaker 2: I mean, I assume they found a head and they
Speaker 2: had Mary boil it down to that skull. That was
Speaker 2: some of the science that was taking place before they
Speaker 2: left Mars. Can't bring a whole head back boil it down.
Speaker 3: The stew that night was so good.
Speaker 2: It's a harsh planet.
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 there. They got a lot of pockets.
Speaker 2: It's a great point. I didn't give this film a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of points for its spacesuits and
Speaker 2: its jumpsuits, but those 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, the thing that many reviewers have noticed,
Speaker 3: which is that the two women of the crew are
Speaker 3: just going around serving everyone coffee and almost like taking
Speaker 3: their orders.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so if it is comparable to the messof
Speaker 2: scene an Alien, it's like eighty percent more sexist.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The crew members are commenting on how every time
Speaker 3: Van Heuston 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 2: You know. Speaking of artificial gravity, though, one thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to mention about the layout of the ship is
Speaker 2: that this is a case where the artificial gravity is
Speaker 2: somewhat believable because I guess given the way it's laid
Speaker 2: out with the decks, it would be propulsion based.
Speaker 3: Yeah, linear acceleration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Now it doesn't work throughout the entire picture
Speaker 2: because they also walk on the sides of the ship,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure how they're doing that, but at
Speaker 2: 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 cop mission. So Eric
Speaker 3: and Mary Royce are married again. Eric is the ship
Speaker 3: dad and Mary is the ship mom. And then Van
Speaker 3: Heuson and Anderson are I guess dating, but possibly their
Speaker 3: relationship is on the rocks because Van Heuston cares more
Speaker 3: about murder on Mars than he does about romance.
Speaker 2: 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 2: Den Carruthers come down the stairs, like right, After that,
Speaker 2: he's kind of he's still looking for Lauren, and he's
Speaker 2: 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 and
Speaker 3: a relationship, just not this kind of work. Anyway, we
Speaker 3: see Anderson showing some tenderness for Carrothers, 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.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: We're going to get a monologue that explains what happened
Speaker 3: from Carother's point of view. He says, we were all
Speaker 3: outside the ship exploring the southern tip of Curtis Major.
Speaker 3: Suddenly a sandstorm came up and we started back. I
Speaker 3: was driving the jeep, so it was a jeep. Sand
Speaker 3: was so thick we could barely see. We were almost
Speaker 3: back to the ship when Cartwright just disappeared. One minute
Speaker 3: he was there, and the next minute he was gone,
Speaker 3: as if something had plucked him out of the jeep
Speaker 3: like candy out of a box. We heard a weird
Speaker 3: sort of sound. We thought we saw a dark shape
Speaker 3: running near the jeep and started shooting at it. A
Speaker 3: few moments later, Kinner and the rest were all gone.
Speaker 3: By 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 2: Curtis Major, by the way, is indeed a massive shield
Speaker 2: volcano in the eastern hemisphere of Mars. It was first
Speaker 2: the first documented surface feature of another planet, discovered by
Speaker 2: 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 2: You know, I mean, it's not out of keeping with
Speaker 2: what we know of natural world organisms. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like like a fox in the hen house. What's called
Speaker 2: 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 eat, I'm gonna I'm gonna get them all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Anderson, she listens to the story and she's like,
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 is a he's a hardliner and he wants to
Speaker 3: crack him, and Anderson thinks it is not for them
Speaker 3: to judge his guilt. Oh and then after this he
Speaker 3: Van calls Anderson chicken, and he goes, okay, Chicken, I'll
Speaker 3: let up on the third degree. And then they ask
Speaker 3: what about everybody else? Do they believe her others? And
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Calder says, Mars is almost as big as Texas.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's got monsters.
Speaker 2: This is a great line and the actor delivers it perfectly.
Speaker 2: I really liked it.
Speaker 3: So time passes, ship drifts through space, but eventually we
Speaker 3: get to the first attack and it occurs late at
Speaker 3: night when a crew member named Kine Holtz is sitting
Speaker 3: up he's looking at what looks like architectural drafts or something.
Speaker 3: He's sitting at a table looking at these big sheets,
Speaker 3: and we hear some crashing and growling in the lower
Speaker 3: decks and see a claw reach out from behind something
Speaker 3: and scrape across the top of a table and good
Speaker 3: looking clause as you mentioned earlier, Rob, but kind Holtz
Speaker 3: goes down to investigate the strange sounds in the cargo
Speaker 3: deck and here begins a sedate, slow, quiet, suspenseful investigation
Speaker 3: process as kind Holtz goes down the decks one by
Speaker 3: one looking for the source of the sound. And I
Speaker 3: really like the pace here. This is one of these
Speaker 3: scenes that's just mechanically quite a fit. We have a
Speaker 3: good idea of what's going to happen, but I just
Speaker 3: like watching the investigation. It's it's kind of calm but
Speaker 3: suspenseful at the same time, and it reminds me of
Speaker 3: scenes an Alien like when Harry Dean Stanton is looking
Speaker 3: for the cat in the cargo area.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, solid reference point. Yeah, because it's it is
Speaker 2: it is laid back. This guy's not like super concerned.
Speaker 2: He's not expecting to find anything, but we know what's
Speaker 2: down there for him. We know that this guy's gonna
Speaker 2: get it any moment, but that moment is delayed, and
Speaker 2: so there are several moments where we think it's going
Speaker 2: to jump out and get him and it doesn't. And
Speaker 2: 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 the cree is like, there's a scream, and we
Speaker 3: don't see it. We see the shadow of the creature
Speaker 3: grabbing him and doing that wrestling move you called it
Speaker 3: a gorilla press where he lifts the guy up above
Speaker 3: his head.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeap, smashes him down, breaks him. Yeah, very well done. Now.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Carruthers is playing a game of chess with ship
Speaker 3: Dad Royce and he hears the scream and the crash
Speaker 3: when no one else in the room does, and he
Speaker 3: know He's like, did you hear that? And they're all
Speaker 3: like no, and he says, I learned to hear all
Speaker 3: over again on Mars. So he gave him superhering and
Speaker 3: the men go to investigate. Initially, all the other crew,
Speaker 3: they're very skeptical of Correthers looking into this, but things
Speaker 3: do start to appear. It starts to appear that something
Speaker 3: is wrong. Kind of Holtz is not at his post.
Speaker 3: They look for him in his cabin. He's not there either.
Speaker 3: Coro others checks for him across the intercom and there's
Speaker 3: no response. After a while, I think it becomes clear
Speaker 3: to all the characters that really something is wrong, and
Speaker 3: the whole crew wakes up and as symbols to look
Speaker 3: 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 it Gino Finelli
Speaker 3: is attacked and the cigarette drops right out of his mouth.
Speaker 2: And he's he going in to get more cigarettes.
Speaker 3: That's what it looks like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there you know their their strategic supply of
Speaker 2: various tobacco products because there's also pipes being smoked on
Speaker 2: 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 Corruthers 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's body from the air duct
Speaker 3: and it has a very creepy appearance. It's zombie like
Speaker 3: with pale skin and dark sunken eyes. I love the
Speaker 3: makeup on the victims. The monster here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been some sort of unnatural death has
Speaker 2: occurred here. And I guess this is another area where
Speaker 2: I kind of wondered, like, why didn't they try and
Speaker 2: keep the heat on Carruthers by saying by casting some
Speaker 2: suspicion on him for this murder. But I guess at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, we have to remember this
Speaker 2: is a short film and it's it's it has deadline,
Speaker 2: so we don't have we don't have room for for
Speaker 2: too much more additional plot. Sinanigains we've got to we've
Speaker 2: got to get to the goods.
Speaker 3: So they conclude that Geno may also be somewhere in
Speaker 3: the air ducks, 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 on his belt. And here we got another
Speaker 3: big similarity with Alien, these scenes of a leader of
Speaker 3: the crew crawling into these large air ducks to look
Speaker 3: for uh, to look for a victim and look for
Speaker 3: a creature. And this scene I thought was also great
Speaker 3: because he crawls through the ducks and then finds Gino
Speaker 3: in there, also with this incredibly creepy makeup the war
Speaker 3: boy zombie look.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this indeed a great sequel. You can definitely
Speaker 2: see this as having an influence on the duct scenes
Speaker 2: an Alien, and on deleted scenes that they ended up
Speaker 2: not using in the theatrical cut, involving finding like cocooned
Speaker 2: members of the Nostromo crew that are being slowly transformed
Speaker 2: into eggs. Again not a part of the theatrical cut
Speaker 2: of the picture, but you know, available and like an
Speaker 2: 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 Gino, but the like the alien pops
Speaker 3: out and it slashes at him with his claws and
Speaker 3: he ends up shooting at it, so he crawls back out.
Speaker 3: They seal up the entrance to the air duct and
Speaker 3: then in a hilarious move, they trap the air duct
Speaker 3: opening with a bunch of grenades. Why do they have grenades?
Speaker 2: Oh my god. So this is, of course, is a
Speaker 2: huge difference between alien and you have the tear from
Speaker 2: beyond space because an alien they have very few, almost
Speaker 2: no weapons. It's basically improvised. Improvised, like they have to
Speaker 2: make their own flamers. You know, they have a harpoon gun.
Speaker 2: Course it gets used later, but for the most part
Speaker 2: they having to make it up as they go, make
Speaker 2: a like a cattle prod type device. Here they are
Speaker 2: armed to the teeth, and this is the you know,
Speaker 2: we saw the pistol earlier and you're like, okay, I
Speaker 2: guess they have one pistol on board. They were going
Speaker 2: to make an arrest, fair enough, But this is where
Speaker 2: we find out, Oh, they have an entire like you know,
Speaker 2: like small like wooden crate of grenades, like military grenades.
Speaker 2: And yeah, they have they like string up a bandolier
Speaker 2: of like eight of these things. For the entrance to
Speaker 2: the air ducks.
Speaker 3: Why do they need that minial? We would would at
Speaker 3: that point would eight be any better than one?
Speaker 2: And to say nothing of the whole of this ship. This,
Speaker 2: this ship's hull is just absolutely impregnable. There's and this
Speaker 2: is just the first sign of it. We will have
Speaker 2: even 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 2: They have so many weapons, like it's pistols, it's high
Speaker 2: caliber rifles. Like why did they bring all this stuff?
Speaker 3: I don't know, A bunch of Yeah, and they've got
Speaker 3: a Bazuka.
Speaker 2: Also, they legit have a Bazuka. Like the Bazuka made
Speaker 2: me laugh out loud because I was already thinking this
Speaker 2: is too much. And then they have a Bazuka and
Speaker 2: they're gonna they're gonna load it up and potentially use
Speaker 2: it on board the spacecraft with computer equipment right behind it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: 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. Uh and uh. Mary says, every
Speaker 3: bone in his body must be broken, but I'm not
Speaker 3: sure that's what killed him. The shriveled up effect it it.
Speaker 3: I'll have to do an autopsy. So she's going to
Speaker 3: do an autopsy. Meanwhile, Van Houghton asks Carrothers, Okay, He's like,
Speaker 3: clearly you were right. Do you know what it is?
Speaker 3: And carr other says no, he may have faced it before,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't know how to beat it. And then
Speaker 3: Dad comes in with some thoughts. So Dad's like, you say,
Speaker 3: it's man shaped humanoid. Here's his explanation. He says, perhaps
Speaker 3: there was once a civilization on Mars. It ended disease war,
Speaker 3: something terrible. The Martians that were left went back to barbarism,
Speaker 3: savage murders. Maybe that's what we've got on board.
Speaker 2: I mean, he delivers it perfectly here, though. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's like the performance is solid enough that I'm like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that might be it. And again this is
Speaker 2: Dad's greer, so you know, solid actor here. It makes
Speaker 2: 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 a
Speaker 3: motive for the attacks. They say, it's hungry. It's eating us,
Speaker 3: all right. So some time passes and there's a scene
Speaker 3: where the monster trips the traps. It's crawling through the
Speaker 3: air ducts and it tries to crawl out and the
Speaker 3: grenades blow up in its face, but it is not killed. Instead,
Speaker 3: it seems just really annoyed and it starts running around
Speaker 3: smashing boxes in a rage. So at this point the
Speaker 3: crew go down to meet it with pistols drawn, and
Speaker 3: there it is, right there. It grabs a rifle from
Speaker 3: one of them and just bends it in half, basically
Speaker 3: ties it in a bow. That's a great scene. They
Speaker 3: retreat blasting the monster. There's a really well staged shot
Speaker 3: here that looks great where the monster is like clawing
Speaker 3: its way through a closed door from like it's lit
Speaker 3: very brightly from behind, but clawing its way into a
Speaker 3: darkened room with the smoke coming out as beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great shot. I love this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really cool. And Carrothers shows bravery here as there.
Speaker 3: You know, he covers retreat. As they go back up
Speaker 3: 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 2: Time to bust out the chemical weapons aboard the spaceship.
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 swipes
Speaker 3: in on Van Heusen's foot. It's like the claws up
Speaker 3: his boot really bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those moments where it's not
Speaker 2: a bloody film obviously, like you know, but these moments
Speaker 2: where stuff does happen, Like I kind of felt like
Speaker 2: it like totally flate his foot even though you see
Speaker 2: nothing graphic, like your mind fills in the rest and
Speaker 2: 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: all topsy results, and Mary Royce tells us there is
Speaker 3: not a molecule of oxygen or a drop of water
Speaker 3: left in kind Holtz This body. Every ounce of edible
Speaker 3: fluid in his body is gone, in which case I
Speaker 3: would think it would be more significantly reduced in volume
Speaker 3: than it appears.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it would. It would look more like Yeah,
Speaker 2: it would look more like a zombie husk. It's what
Speaker 2: it would look like. Yeah, But limitations fair enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they they reason, They start thinking about this,
Speaker 3: all right, Mars is a 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 Heuson is infected with the alien pathogen, his girlfriend
Speaker 3: Anderson starts moving in on Corruthers. She like goes up
Speaker 3: to 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 2: Yeah, it's an it's an icky love triangle that I
Speaker 2: don't think we really needed.
Speaker 3: I think it seems especially cold because it's like she
Speaker 3: turns to Carruthers as soon as Van becomes weakened. I
Speaker 3: don't know, it feels sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like yeah, like she like she can't exist without
Speaker 2: a strong man around her, and so she has to
Speaker 2: just jump ship to gorothers now like I don't know,
Speaker 2: it just did. Yeah, I guess it. It doesn't really work.
Speaker 2: It's not like completely believable and feels if it is believable,
Speaker 2: it's cold. So it's like, what how am I supposed
Speaker 2: to feel about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So I think the romantic subplot, I mean I
Speaker 3: would say 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 2: But yeah, the kids were making out to this apparently,
Speaker 2: like how did how they feel about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Okay, next plot development, space Dad Dad has a
Speaker 3: plan again. They can get in behind the creature by
Speaker 3: putting on EVA suits and doing a space walk on
Speaker 3: the outside hull of the ship down to the deck
Speaker 3: below it. Uh, And I really like this set piece.
Speaker 3: So it's Corruthers and I think Lieutenant Oh, it's Lieutenant
Speaker 3: Calder also. So they suit up, they put their suits on,
Speaker 3: and they go out on the outside of the ship
Speaker 3: and walk down the hull. I thought this this scene
Speaker 3: looked great. It sounded great. I love the atmosphere. It's creepy,
Speaker 3: quiet and really compelling. Way very strong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, firing on all cylinders, and we're really not even
Speaker 2: seeing the monster for the most part during this this sequence.
Speaker 2: I mean we get some we get some hints of them, because,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss there's they're having to distract the monster
Speaker 2: in 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. So
Speaker 3: this is basically the plan from the Thing from Another World.
Speaker 3: They're gonna You're gonna shock it from below.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, They're gonna pull a thing from another world
Speaker 2: on it. Yeah. I was really concerned that it was
Speaker 2: gonna work because because I mean, they also did this
Speaker 2: in Creature, which 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. It doesn't even doesn't even appear to
Speaker 3: work at all in this, like the crawls down under
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 not happy,
Speaker 3: so it attacks them. Lieutenant Calder gets his leg broken
Speaker 3: and is trapped behind a large metal cylinder. He's got
Speaker 3: a blow torch in his hand that he can use
Speaker 3: to protect himself from the beast while Carruthers escapes to
Speaker 3: the outside and I think he makes it back up
Speaker 3: the outside of the ship hull to everybody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know how long he's supposed to be
Speaker 2: stuck down there, but it seems like he's probably down
Speaker 2: there for hours, the monster lunging at him like every
Speaker 2: few seconds, and having to like hold a blow torch
Speaker 2: up to protect himself. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's talking to the rest of the crew via radio
Speaker 3: and he's like, Yeah, I'm stuck down here. I can
Speaker 3: see it. It's looking at me, and every time it
Speaker 3: comes for me, I hold the blow torch in its eyes.
Speaker 3: It's a predicament. He's in a tight spot. He's in
Speaker 3: a pickle. Yeah. So later we learn that Van's infection
Speaker 3: is taking a turn for the worse. He is delirious
Speaker 3: and the bacteria are they're attacking his bone marrow. They
Speaker 3: say it gives him a condition similar to lukemia, and
Speaker 3: the romance between Anderson and Corruthers really picks up. But
Speaker 3: they the crew decide, okay, Van, he needs blood, so
Speaker 3: we got to go down to storage to get blood
Speaker 3: out of the blood blood box. He needs blood. So
Speaker 3: Calder witnesses the creature going into the reactor room, and
Speaker 3: here Carrother sees a chance to act so they remotely
Speaker 3: close the door to the reactor and seal the creature inside,
Speaker 3: and then a team of men goes down to get
Speaker 3: the blood. So they're blood jacking and they've only got
Speaker 3: a tight window to get the blood in. But in
Speaker 3: the middle of all this, a delirious Van gets the
Speaker 3: idea to open up the reactor core with the creature
Speaker 3: in the reactor room, saying, okay, the radiation will kill it.
Speaker 3: We couldn't kill it with grenades, with gunfire, with gas, grenades,
Speaker 3: with electricity, but we can try radiation, and so the
Speaker 3: he does this. Unfortunately, while the blood jacking team are
Speaker 3: there right next to it, and this of course just
Speaker 3: makes the beast furious. The radiation does not kill it,
Speaker 3: drives it out of the reactor room, where it meets
Speaker 3: the blood jacking team and kills a crew member named Bob.
Speaker 3: So the remaining the surviving crew members retreat to the
Speaker 3: upper deck. They're up in the command deck and here
Speaker 3: we're sort of approaching the final showdown. Somewhere around here,
Speaker 3: Van really catches on what's happening with Anderson and Cruthers.
Speaker 3: He's like, are you going to him now? Are you
Speaker 3: leaving me for him? And she's just like, let's talk
Speaker 3: about it later. And this goes up to a final
Speaker 3: showdown where they are sort of like they're dug in.
Speaker 3: They've all got their weapons aimed at the hatch coming
Speaker 3: up from the floor below where the creature is. And
Speaker 3: finally the creature starts busting through the hatch, tearing through
Speaker 3: the metal, coming up into the room, and they literally
Speaker 3: blast it with a bazooka.
Speaker 2: They even fire the bazuki and I think Mary fires
Speaker 2: it right, Like that sounds right. Yeah, she may have
Speaker 2: to fetch coffee for everyone else, but she gets to
Speaker 2: fire the Bazuka's right, and it doesn't kill everyone, yeah,
Speaker 2: or even the monster or the.
Speaker 3: Monster, but they've already tried explosives, why would this work.
Speaker 3: But finally they get the idea, Hey, everybody, put on
Speaker 3: your EVA suits. We're gonna vent the air out the
Speaker 3: air lock. And here we have another comparison with alien. Right,
Speaker 3: how do they defeat the alien? How does Ripley, the
Speaker 3: only one left, defeat the alien? At the end, she
Speaker 3: vents the atmosphere in the escape pod to the to
Speaker 3: the outside and the creature is blown out of the airlock. Now,
Speaker 3: in this case, the alien is not blown out of
Speaker 3: the airlock, but venting the atmosphere out of the command
Speaker 3: deck causes the creature to not have the air it
Speaker 3: needs to breathe, and it dies by I guess suffocation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's still satisfying in a way. It's even
Speaker 2: more satisfying because I thought, oh, they're gonna blast it
Speaker 2: out the airlock. I've seen this before, granted from a
Speaker 2: film that comes decades, but it was still it was
Speaker 2: refreshing that it wasn't quite that solution. It was this
Speaker 2: alternate solution, even if it's also a solution that if
Speaker 2: you think about it too much, you might ask, well,
Speaker 2: why didn't they try this earlier? But that can often
Speaker 2: be the case with films where they try multiple solutions
Speaker 2: to a given problem. It's always the last one you
Speaker 2: try anyway.
Speaker 3: So finally we go back to Earth to the spokesman
Speaker 3: at the you know, he's doing a press conference of
Speaker 3: the Capitol building, and he says, you've been called here
Speaker 3: again to receive further information about the story, which you
Speaker 3: didn't hear last night. I will read you the text
Speaker 3: of a teleradio message received from the challenge one forty
Speaker 3: two less than an hour ago. This is Eric Royce
Speaker 3: talking of the nineteen men and women who have set
Speaker 3: foot on the planet Mars six will return. There's no
Speaker 3: longer a question of murder, but of an alien, an
Speaker 3: elemental life force, a planet so cruel, so hostile, that
Speaker 3: man may find it necessary to bypass it in his
Speaker 3: endeavor to explore an understand the universe. Another name for
Speaker 3: Mars is death. And then it just goes straight to
Speaker 3: the end. I love that the last the words the
Speaker 3: movie has to say, or not about like the the
Speaker 3: indomitable spirit of humankind, or or about the courage of
Speaker 3: the you know, the people who gave their lives fighting
Speaker 3: against this beast. It's like, Mars is terrible. Don't ever
Speaker 3: go there. It's just trash.
Speaker 2: Mars is death. Mars is dead to us. We're just
Speaker 2: gonna skip over that. What's next, what's the next one,
Speaker 2: because we're gonna go there instead. Nothing on Mars for us.
Speaker 3: Jupiter is life.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe, but yeah, but you know, it is kind
Speaker 2: of a hint of some of the I don't know,
Speaker 2: partially cosmic horror inspired stuff to come, including alien like
Speaker 2: this idea that, yeah, humans should never have left Earth,
Speaker 2: and of course they're going to encounter, you know, unspeakable
Speaker 2: horrors out there because we were not meant to know
Speaker 2: of it. Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: So, as we said earlier, it the Terror from Beyond Space.
Speaker 3: I feel like a pretty strong thumb for what it is.
Speaker 3: It is a modest science fiction movie. It's kind of
Speaker 3: it has bottle episode vibes, but given all that, quite strong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I was really impressed with it. I
Speaker 2: think this one would have scared me a bit if
Speaker 2: I'd seen it when I was when I was a
Speaker 2: lot younger, and I would love to hear from folks
Speaker 2: out there who saw it in on the big screen
Speaker 2: at some point in a drive in in environment. That
Speaker 2: would have been neat. Again, the performances are solid. The
Speaker 2: monster costume, for the most part, looks really good. I
Speaker 2: neglected to mention that there are some shots where, at
Speaker 2: least in silhouette, it reminds me a bit of the
Speaker 2: aliens from Earth. Girls are easy, but you know, because
Speaker 2: something about the head shape kind of reminds me of
Speaker 2: the helmets that those aliens have. But again, for the
Speaker 2: most part, I love the monster here all right. There
Speaker 2: you have it, it the Terror from Beyond Space. We're
Speaker 2: going to remind everybody here that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes and
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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