EDITOR’S NOTE: First Man Into Space was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 13, 1964 at 4:00 p.m.

U. S. Navy Commander Charles “Chuck” Prescott (Marshall Thompson) is worried if his brother Lt. Dan Milton Prescott (Bill Edwards) is the right man to be first into space. He doesn’t follow orders — he went to see his girlfriend instead of doing his post-flight report — and had some issues on his last flight. Now, as he flies an advanced jet into the upper reaches of Earth, he decides to go for it instead of landing.

As the crews examine the wreckage, they find it covered with stone that keeps it from being scanned by all forms of light. Soon, a creature is draining a nurse and cattle of their blood. That used to be Dan. Now, it’s a hulking monster that crashes through doors and stalks women. His brain needs blood because of how it was destroyed by a lack of oxygen and it’s only because of a high altitude chamber that he’s able to say, “I just had to be the first man into space,” before he dies.

Directed at the same time as The Haunted Strangler by Robert Day, this started as a potential AIP movie. When they rejected it, AIP’s Alex Gordon sent it to his brother Richard, who worked with writer Charles F. Vetter and John Croydon, taking parts of another script, Satellite of Blood by Wyott Ordung. This played double features with The Mysterians.

In the stock footage, when you see that jet taking off? That’s Chuck Yeager.

You can watch this on Tubi.