It! The Terror from Beyond Space

The original "Alien." A nicely low-key, realistic feel with lots of fun familiar faces (and written by Mr Good Life himself!). But then it starts to drag...and drag...as a half-hour idea is padded way out of proportion. Oh yeah, and one more thing: the critter isn't affected by tear gas (but lack of air will kill it)?

This is why I love cheap 50s sci-fi. Under all the ridiculous effects and po-faced acting, there's a great idea here: a spaceship collects an astronaut who may or may not have murdered everyone on his crew, and now they're stuck with him on board until they bring him back to earth. It's a great setup for a psycho thriller, basically a blueprint for 'Alien'... and then they just go "Nah, lets call it 'IT! The Terror From Beyond Space!' and have people lob grenades at a guy in a gorilla suit."

As an indie 50's sci-fi film you might expect some MST3K style laughs. Or as an influence on Ridley Scott's Alien, you could also anticipate sophisticated horror. Ultimately, however, it's closer to a tv show like Lost in Space. The production isn't perfect: the tension isn't high, the script uses Idiot Ball moments, and the ultimate character motivations stumble in the end. Still, being an intellectually & politically unoffensive work from the era makes it a marginal recommendation.

I found this to be really entertaining and surprisingly tense. The look of the creature was the weakest part of the story.

The whole premise of a stow-away monster picking of crewmember one by one feels like a prototype for Alien. It's far from flawless but it's more than sufficiently enjoyable during it short runtime, that efficiently doesn't waste too much on set up and explanations but spends lots on actual action and suspense.

It's a dumb flick in a low budget 50's sci-fi kind way ... the spaceship seems to be as big as a small hotel and the mission to Mars for some reason included pistols, grenades and a bazooka. It's like a slightly less crazy version of "The Angry Red Planet", and I must say ... I missed that film's craziness.

Cheap and most basic horror sci-fi treatment, with a rubber monster disguised by shadows and scattered cutting, but zero artistry.

Solid UA-produced Alien prequel -- with more sexual undertones than its sequels.

Despite the mediocre acting and terribly cheap sets and costumes it was fun for a while. The silliness lowers expectations and it works well enough when it comes to creating tension. By the end, though, it really stretches credulity and even common sense just too far.

I'm glad Alien ripped this off and made a way better movie. Amusing, though.

Underrated and entertaining B-movie set in space with a decent cast of people I've never heard of. The monster is one ugly bastard and this movie clearly was one of the handful to influence Alien-the other main one being Bava's cult flick Planet of the Vampires.

Good for a few larfs. Those astronauts were packing some HEAT.

I liked this movie mostly for its naïveté. Its crew apparently thinks nothing of smoking and using bullets, bazookas, poison gas, and grenades in a paper-thin aluminum can in space. The exterior scene displays an abject lack of understanding of gravity, and the creature's eventual downfall resulted from a massive plot hole. The film also has disappointingly little of the Raygun Gothic style that allows any of these movies to age remotely well at all and a strikingly mean-spirited romance.

it was pretty entertaining in the way that something ridiculously cheesy can be. there are no great leaps in film making here, in fact, it's pretty much all below par, but i'm not going to do any complaining about them placing a grenade in every square inch of a space ship to kill the fake looking alien because it has a degree of charming ineptitude.

Laughably bad sci-fi/horror flick about an alien monster from Mars who gets aboard a human spaceship traveling back to Earth. It's basically a guy in a rubber monster suit menacing the crew for 60 minutes. Good thing they brought along a crate of grenades and a rocket launcher and they're not afraid to use them inside their cramped ship! Very goofy.

Low-budget but atmospheric.

The movie "Alien" was based on(?)

Passes the time.

A cool story that could actually be good if it weren't a trashy B-movie. It has some nice shots occasionally and the creature is funny, but it's also dreadfully boring and uninteresting. It inspired Alien, so it's not without importance.

If this really influenced Alien as much as people claim, Ripley would have spent the entire runtime serving sandwiches and caressing men with minor injuries.

When they say that Alien is a highly effective version of a B-movie concept, this is what they're referring too.

Enjoyable movie and it was funny seeing the zipper on the creature as well, lol!