Jerome Bixby was a science fiction writer who also wrote several notable SF screenplays. He co-wrote the screenplay for Fantastic Voyage and wrote three episodes of the original Star Trek (Including “Mirror, Mirror”, the one with the Evil Mirror Universe, where Spock has a beard). The Twilight Zone episode It’s a GOOD Life (the one with Billy Mumy as the omnipotent boy who sends those he doesn’t like “into the cornfield”) wasn’t written by him, but it’s based on his short story. And, of course, he wrote It! The Terror from Beyond Space, which Alien stole its plot from.
But he also wrote some other screenplays that have been overlooked.
I can understand it with The Curse of the Faceless Man, which is basically a mummy story, but with one of those plaster of paris figures from Pompeii . But his third 1950s work appears to have been almost completely forgotten. The Lost Missile (1958) . It’s not even listed among Bixby’s films on his Wikipedia page. It’s about an atomic-powered rocket used as a weapon, launched by an un-named power (pretty obviously the Soviet Union), which an American missile intended to destroy it merely moves it off course. The still-traveling missile is in a very low earth orbit and is wreaking havoc on everything it passes over. Attempts to destroy the missile repeatedly fail, and it’s on its way towards New York City when a scientist tries a newly-developed weapon against it.
Interesting, totally neglected flick. I’ve only seen it once, on TV. The DVD is listed at Amazon and WalMart, but always as “out of stock”. You can find it in some obscure places, if you dig deep enough. But I haven’t seen it in ages.
Bixby also wrote The Man from Earth (2007), an effects-less SF story about a man who has lived practically forever. It resembles his Star Trek screenplay “Requiem for Methuselah” in many ways. I’ve only ever seen it as a DVD.