A person either loves 50's sci-fi and horror movies or they don't. There's no middle ground.
EDIT: This was in reference to some not liking that movie posters & movies of the time didn't always sync up or may not be as fast-paced as modern films.
-Innuendo
I see this as a response to 40hz's recommendation of IT: The Terror from Beyond Space and my dislike of it, so I'm responding to clarify my position.
I don't really mind that the movie poster didn't align with what happened in the movie. Heck, these days you'll see movie trailers with actual footage
from the movie that doesn't make it into the movie. And I don't mind slow-paced movies either, as long as something is happening (i.e. story or character(s) is/are developing).
What probably bothered me most about the movie was just how stupid and helpless everybody was. A couple of the really bad ones:
[Potential Spoilers Below]- They find out pretty early on that bullets are ineffective at stopping (or even harming) the Martian, yet every time they hear a growl from the creature, they immediately pull out their pistols and, if in sight, start firing.
- They have deadly gas bombs that are supposedly strong enough to kill dinosaurs, so all (but three) of them don gas masks (and the three without protection are only a few feet away from those with the masks) and toss a few down the hatch and seal it up. 10 seconds later they open up the hatch to see if it did the trick and let all the fumes up. If the gas was as deadly as they said, it would obviously kill the three unprotected folk pretty fast.
- They actually do this stupid hatch trick a few times. Throw something down there to destroy it and then immediately open up the hatch again to check if it worked, each time getting ambushed by the monster who is still in the same spot on the staircase/ladder it was in just 15 seconds ago.
- Why didn't they ever think to just jettison it out into space and be rid of it? If the thing got on board by someone accidentally leaving a door open that can be opened and closed (remotely) from the bridge/cockpit/control room, why not just open it up again while the creature is still down there?
- If you really think a guy murdered his entire crew on Mars for no good reason, why would you allow him to roam around freely (albeit accompanied) on your ship?
- If there's even the slightest chance of there being an alien lifeform on Mars (which was the lone survivor/alleged murderer's story), wouldn't that potential discovery seem more important than anybody made it out to be in the film?
- They are in a small spaceship, with circular rooms that are maybe 15-20 feet in diameter, yet two people will carry on a conversation (loudly) about someone else on the other side of the same room as if that other person won't hear it.
- Amazingly, that other person doesn't seem to hear it!
And these are just a few examples of the stupidity of everyone involved.
I disagree with 40hz's description: "With it's (mostly) intelligent dialog and brooding shadowy set, IT succeeds in creating a remarkably believable atmosphere of escalating tension."
In my opinion, the characters were unbelievably stupid (stupid is as stupid does) and quite often downright illogical. I do suppose, however, that there was escalating tension throughout the film, but that was mostly just my patience wearing thin waiting for anybody do to something intelligent.
Movies really irritate me when people behave irrationally or illogically for no good reason. (Upon reflection, that sounds funny, I need a valid, logical reason for someone to behave illogically.) I'm not good at watching movies just for entertainment. I usually can't help but think about them for the next few days and analyze them to pieces.
But now that I've vented about IT: The Terror from Beyond Space, I think I've gotten it out of my system enough that I can move on to analyzing
Pandorum, which I found while looking to see if Avalon was on NetFlix's Instant Play. (It's not.)
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