EDITOR’S NOTE: It! The Terror from Beyond Space was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, July 23, 1966 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, September 19 at 11:15 p.m.

In 1973, Earth is on its second manned mission to Mars. Only Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson) survived and it’s thought that he killed the other nine members of his crew. He tells anyone that will listen that a monster was behind it all. Commander Col. Van Heusen (Kim Spalding) orders Carruthers to be watched at all times, but it’s not him they should be worried about.

The monster that Carruthers warned everyone about is on the ship and bullets won’t stop it. Nor will grenades, electricity or radiation. It is played by Ray “Crash” Corrigan in his last role and he was a handful for special effects artist Paul Blaisdell, refusing to get fitting for the costume and drunkenly tearing it apart almost every day. By the end of filming, Blaisdell had just about had it with how he was treated by Corrigan and Shirley Patterson, who hated that she was stuck in a science fiction movie. The problems for Blaisdell were compounded when United Artists kept the costume and used it again in Invisible Invaders.

Directed by Edward L. Cahn and written by Jerome Bixby, this recycles the music from Kronos and used parts of the costumes from the Buck Rogers serials and Destination Moon. Yet for such a low budget film, it went on to be the obvious inspiration for Alien.