“It! The Terror from Beyond Space” is debatably the inspiration for the 1979 classic “Alien” and I can safely say “Alien” is a lot better. Even if you take into account it inspired one of the most popular sci-fi movies of all-time you still can’t excuse the fact it doesn’t hold a candle to other 50s classics such as “Destination Moon”, “The Thing From Another World” and “Forbidden Planet”.

Just like in “Alien”, a seemingly helpless crew are being picked off one by one by an alien life form; this one looks like a distant cousin of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The characters try desperately to rid their ship of this monstrosity with several things including guns, grenades and electricity… I think “Alien” learned from this.

The crew aren’t very exciting as they’re your standard 1950s sci-fi/horror archetypes. The monster in this one is really where the film is let-down. It lacks the subtlety of the creature from “Alien” as we see this one move around like Frankenstein’s Monster and we see far too much of the creature early on, which takes away some of the magic as right away it is clear it’s a man in a suit.

“It! The Terror from Beyond Space” has some great moments but overall the film just feels like a cheap mixture of several films that came before it. Once again, I dislike the fact we see a lot of the creature early on. Seen as how the movie isn’t much longer than an hour and if you can find it cheaply avid sci-fi fans may want to check it out for the history lesson. This movie only makes “Alien” better as it knows where “It! The Terror from Beyond Space” went wrong and addresses those issues to make a superior film.