First Man into Space Movie Review

An astronaut returns to Earth covered with a crust of strange space dust and with an organism feeding inside him (shades of Alien). The alien needs human blood to survive and starts killing in order to get it. Prototypical “astronaut turns into monster” plotline sets down the plodding formula used for years afterward (see Monster A Go-Go and Incredible Melting Man for more of the same) until the climax, which creates a great deal of sympathy for the helpless man within the monster. May have served as partial inspiration for Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four series. AKA: Satellite of Blood.

1959 78m/B GB Marshall Thompson, Marla Landi, Bill Edwards, Robert Ayres, Bill Nagy, Carl Jaffe; D: Robert Day; W: John C. Cooper, Lance Z. Hargreaves; C: Geoffrey Faithfull. VHS, Beta DVT, RHI, HEG