IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958) *1/2 Actually, they must have got just a little bit carried away when thinking up the title-the terror is from our nearest neighbor planet, Mars. In the distant future of 1973 the thing gets on a spaceship and plays hide-and-seek with the astronauts. Losers are eaten. Yes, this is source material for Alien. The incompetent actors are well matched with their imbecilic script, and entirely outshone by the intermittent sequences of a very fake rocket ship slowly moving across a very still space scene to the accompaniment of very strange but boring music. Also recommended is the scene where the camera is set on its side to make it look like the astronauts are climbing on a horizontal spaceship wall, doing their best to act like they're underwater in those old scuba suits, which may have been used as space suits here now that I think on it. The mystery of whether the protagonist is good or bad only makes it 4 minutes or so into the film, giving way to the plot such as it is, but we all know that they didn't do villain movies in the '50s anyway. It's difficult to believe that anyone was ever taken in, much less frightened, by this sort of laughable silliness but it does go a ways towards explaining Nixon.