CAPT. MARK MARKARY (Barry Sullivan) is trapped in a derelict spacecraft occupied by the remains of an extinct alien race in TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO.
ARIO BAVA had been responsible for the first serious Italian science fiction film, La morte viene dallo spazio, in 1958, but that initial work was too earthbound and documentary-like to excite audiences or successfully establish a new Ital- ian genre of filmmaking. Overlooking an intermediary science fiction comedy (Totò nella luna, 1958), Italy’s next attempt at fantascienza—Antonio Margheriti’s color space opera Space-Men/Assignment Outer Space (1960), made in the semi-realistic manner of George Pal’s Destination Moon (1950)—proved far less success- ful, earning only 41 million lire [$26,000], one-fourth the earnings of Bava’s ground-breaker.