There is a scene in It! The Terror from Beyond Space that is epitomical of the whole thing. The monster aboard the ship is trapped in a room that connects to another via ladder and hatch. So, the men aboard the ship open the hatch and, over a prolonged period of time, kneel and toss multiple gas bombs and shoot at it (yes, with real handguns in a spaceship) while it stands and waves its arms around. The women are off screen for this scene, probably fixing dinner or cleaning. Of course, the gas and bullets don't do anything to the monster, so they have to think of another plan. It seems they summed up everything that was wrong with the movie and stuck it all into a single scene. Since the same problems with the story show up again and again, it's not even fun to make fun of.

Here's the plot: The United States sent a crew to explore Mars. Some time after losing contact with the ship, it was learned that all crew members are dead except for Colonel Edward Carruthers. They assume he killed the other crew members, so they send another crew to bring him back to face a court martial. Carruthers earns a big "I told ya so" when the very monster that killed his partners is discovered traveling back with them aboard this second ship, sucking dry any astronaut it can get its hands on. Now the crew has to survive a trip home with a carnivorous monster on a liquid diet.

This movie is bad. The film's stupidity begins when we see that the supposed murderer is allowed free range on the ship with no signs of nervousness from the crew -- they never even mention it, in fact. And forget firearms, at one point during their attempts to kill the monster, the crew pulls out an entire case of hand grenades! The mission was to apprehend a single man who was all alone. Did they think he was going to be Robocop? Of course, that's not to mention the obvious fact that these explosives are tossed around (and at one point clustered together near a ventilation duct) with absolutely no regard for hull damage. The only reason they have these things is that someone must have thought a few explosions and some gas masks would excite audiences, 'cause they sure as hell don't belong on a spacecraft.

Wait, wait. It's not just technicalities that ruin the film, either. The plot is nothing but repetitive. They try to kill the monster over and over again in different ways. That's it. Plan "A" didn't work, so go to plan "B," then plan "C," and so on. Despite a few killings, there is only one scene of suspense, and that suspense is miniscule: one man gets stuck in the room with the monster, and he has to keep him at bay for a few hours with a blowtorch. There are no subplots at all, but I suppose that is lucky for a movie of this quality.

I know the next question: But does it have a good monster? No. The monster looks like a slimy, supermuscular humanoid with a piranha-pig head. Funnily, the writers seem to have tried to build up suspense by revealing it only pieces at a time -- a foot first, a hand next, then later a shadowy face -- because they finally do get around to showing the whole ridiculous thing fairly well lit. Maybe they thought they had something really cool. I'm also convinced that the costume had no eye-holes for the actor inside because at no point does it seem to be aware of its surroundings.

What makes everything worse is that It! The Terror from Beyond Space doesn't seem that it was written by an idiot. Writer Jerome Bixby seems simply not to care because even the most undereducated writer would recognize its glaring problems. I hesitate to even call this science fiction. This is some non-categorical movie with an alien, some people, a spaceship, some guns, and some explosions, all tossed together and sold as a film. What it really is is an unsalvageable mess. Top it off with some female crew members who do nothing but cook and clean, and you have yourself a real piece of crap.