The Monster That Challenged the World / It! The Terror from Beyond Space (Midnite Movies Double Feature)

I remember watching this movie when I was a pre-teen and thought it was great. Fortunately, the DVD didn't disappoint my memory of the movie. Thank you for having this movie and for the quality in which it was received.Ruth C.

Years ago I saw these two great B/W 1050s "B" movies on TV about 5 times each. They were great.They did a great job putting them on DVD. The B/W pictures were clear and the audio was great.The Monster That Challenged The World is about giant slug like mollusks that are radiated by radiation from nuclear tests and are let lose by an earthquake from under a salty inland sea. We see the scientists discovering them underwater and numerous people getting killed as the creatures feed sucking the life fluids from the bodies in their mandible/pincers. The special effects were very good for a 1950s "B" rated movie. The caterpillar like mollusk looked cool with its two eyes and mandibles...not phony. The worry the Navy and scientists have is that these creatures will escape into the canal system and lay thousands of eggs and take over the world. A good plot, acting and ending. I enjoyed this movie. 5 starsIt The Terror From Beyond Outer Space was another 1950s B/W "B" rated film. I like any books or movies about Mars. They all helped me develop into a 40 plus year amateur astronomer and life member of the Mars Society.The DVD was great. The B/W movie was clear with good audio. Great plot, acting and great ending. The first spaceship crashes on Mars and 9 people are stranded. Only one, Colonel Carruthers the captain of the ship survives. Another spaceship arrives months later to pick up survivors. Col. Carruthers is to be Court Marshaled on earth for murder of the crew as a human skull with a bullet hole of a member of the first exposition is found by a member of the second exposition. Col Carruthers tells the crew of the second expedition he did not kill anyone. It was some kind of creature in a sandstorm. No one believes him.Unfortunately for the second crew, the IT creature sneaks aboard the second spacecraft shortly before liftoff. It starts killing crew members and draining their body fluids...all moisture. The big ugly creature looks cool in the full body rubber suit although The Creature From The Black Lagoon (see my review) looked better. The crew fights back with hand grenades, pistols, rifles, electrocution and trapping it in a nuclear reactor room and flooding the room with radiation enough to kill 100 men. Nothing will stop IT as it goes crazy and keeps killing more and more of the crew. I won't ruin the great ending for you except to say the few survivors radio back to Earth another name for Mars is DEATH and possibly should be avoided. Great classic Sci Fi movie and INMO one of the top 5 "B" rated B/W science fiction movies of all time. Rated 5 stars. Entire DVD 5 stars.

Although the two movies on the "Monster That Challenged the World/ It! The Terror from Beyond Space" split DVD are hardly film masterpieces, I had a good time watching both of them. I bought the DVD to own a copy of "The Monster that Challenged the World" but I have also watched and enjoyed "It!" I think the DVD is a good buy, and I wouldn't be amazed if the price increases (it can't go much lower than it is priced as I type this capsule review). I may as well be up front about the fact that I was a great fan of horror and science-fiction movies from at least the time I was five years old, and if a movie had a monster of any sort in it when I was younger, I felt I had to see it. I am still fond of "monster movies" today but I find that since the early eighties I have been entertained less and less by the genre, not because I have finally matured but because the films themselves have changed in ways I don't care for (I believe "Lake Placid" was the last film of the genre which I saw in a movie theater and enjoyed whole-heartedly). I have seen both of the movies on television at one time or another, but I had only seen "Monster That Challenged the World" twice (once in 1965 and once in 2004) and "It!" once (in 2004) before I bought this economically priced DVD. There is very little about "Monster That Challenged the World" that I don't like. It has an unusual setting (the Salton Sea of California), a good script, a fine cast (especially Hans Conreid), a well thought out menace, a great monster design, a few suspenseful moments, an exciting climax, and even a humorous dig at petty local politics. Monster also has a nice pace to it which makes it seem to go by quicker than its actually running time, but it doesn't seem rushed either. I would have loved to have seen the movie in a theater when I was ten years old, and I'm still able to appreciate the fact that it would have been right up my alley. I'll probably watch it once or twice a year for a long while to come. I know that quite a few people think that "It! The Terror from Beyond Space" may have been the inspiration for "Alien" but I have yet to see anything that suggests that both may have sprung from a novelette by A.E. Van Vogt titled "Destroyer" which is about an alien life form which has accidentally or intentionally stowed away on a spaceship and is slowly killing off the crew. The creature in the Van Vogt story is distinctly feline instead of being anything like the "lizard-man" in "It!" but I think there is quite a bit of the Van Vogt story incorporated into "It!" (and maybe just a trace of the idea in "Alien" as well). I think that "It!" has not aged nearly as well as "Monster That Challenged the World" mainly because of the poor design of the creature costume and its depiction of the interior of the spaceship and almost all of the visual components of the film seem "camp" because, while they were consistent with the then contemporary idea of what spaceships would be like, the visuals now seem quaint. That should undermine the movie more than it does, but for all the dated effects and the improbabilities of the script, "It!" still manages to convey a bit of danger and more than a little fatalism; the movie still works pretty well despite its flaws. The ending stands up just fine and is rather satisfying. I'm sure I will watch the movie again at some point in the near future. So, to recap, both films are decidedly old school, very old school, but both are greater than the sum of their parts. I gave them four out of five stars because they aren't great movies, and I gave them four stars instead of three because they are both better than other movies of their kind from the same era. The only thing I regret about buying the double feature DVD is that it makes me acutely regret that I've never seen either film on a real movie screen and will probably never have the chance to do so.

One of those movies dedicated to promoting space travel but also dedicated to warning what could happen if humans went too far or got too ambitious! Really I think the point was to keep us focused on going to the moon and no further!

excellent movie

husband watched this as a child and it terrified him. LOL. now the grandchildren are watching and thinking grandpa was a little lame when he was young.

Atención, es Región . El DVD esta impecable, pero para visionarlo debes tener un DVD multiregion o bien pasarlo a Región 0 con tu ordenador (en este caso el DVD Shrink funciona perfectamente). En cuanto al vendedor perfecto. Gran rapisez en el envio y unos costes muy buenos. También tengo que decir que solo ha sido editado en DVD en USA. En fin todo un 10!

great story

'It', the original Alien. I saw this years ago, in the Stone Age. A 'man in a rubber suit' monster and stereotype cast, but it was long ago. I found it still compelling and good fun. 'Monster' has the typical period characters, brave military man, helpless mother with irritating child in peril, but is a good Saturday night film. Enjoy, they're fun

F*** Yeah. Great to watch both these films. Annoyed as they would not play on my DVD which can play NTSC. Watched it on my lap top instead.