This Island Earth
Tags: cult

Plot synopsis:
Dr. Cal Meacham (Rex Reason) gives an interview to a handful of reporters, just before he boards his Lockheed T-33A jet fighter at Andrews AFB, just outside Washington, DC. He was in Washington for a conference on atomic energy, and he offers tantalizing details of his area of research: electronics, and alchemy. (Though he can't say so out loud, he's working on transforming lead into uranium.) Then he boards his plane and takes off.His route takes him across country, including the Grand Canyon and the Sierra Nevada range, until he makes final approach at the airfield of the Ryberg Electronics Company, his employers, just outside Van Nuys, California. He chats briefly with his research assistant, Joe Wilson (Robert Nichols), before he buzzes the control tower and makes a steep climb. Then--whether because he was being too much of a showboater or for other, non-obvious reason, his plane flames out. Without power, he will certainly crash--but then he hears a high-pitched howl, and his cockpit turns bright green. (Joe Wilson watches as Cal's plane also turns green.) Then, despite the engines being powered down, the landing gear lowers, and the plane makes a picture-perfect landing. Any landing's a good landing, as long as you can walk away from it, and Cal knows he's had a good landing--which does not change the fact that it was clearly impossible.The two men forget about the landing as they concentrate on their research. Their next experiment reveals no change, and they burn out one of their huge condensers. Then Joe tells Cal that he ordered two replacement condensers, and their regular supplier sent them several small beads instead. The remarkable thing about them is that each of them could take a load of 30,000 volts before abruptly disintegrating. Cal calls the supplier to find out about the beads--and hears that they haven't had an order from Cal's company for six weeks! Joe definitely placed it, but the supplier never got it. He also reveals that the beads came from an "Electronic Section, Unit 16." Joe assumed that was part of their supplier, but that is obviously not the case.Next day, "Unit 16" sends them a strange-looking parts catalog. It leads with a selection of bead condensers, like the ones they received, then with several versions of a device called an "interociter," and finally with a complete line of parts for this device. Cal suggests ordering every part listed, using the same channel through which they tried to order the condensers. Obviously "Unit 16," whoever they are, intercepted the condenser order, so they'll get this one.Cal is right. The parts arrive, more than 2,000 of them, in several wooden crates, with each part cross-indexed to the part it joins onto. Using the supplied documentation as a crude schematic, Cal and Joe assemble the interociter--a metal cabinet with an inverted-triangular screen on top. When they plug it in, nothing happens at first--until a voice (Jeff Morrow) advises them to "clear the screen" and tells them how. When they do, the owner of the voice appears: Exeter, a man with an obvious case of acromegaly, which has given him a head like that of a Chinese god--with extra room for more brains--and covered with white, stringy hair. Exeter tells them they have passed an aptitude test, and that Cal Meacham must prepare to "join our team." A plane will land, wait five minutes, then take off again. Before breaking off the conversation, Exeter orders Cal to set the catalog on a worktable, and stand back. Whereupon three bright red rays shoot out from the corners of the screen and incinerate the catalog. After this, the interociter blows up, catches fire, and burns, leaving a pile of slag a fraction of its original size.Cal agrees to board the flight, over Joe's strenuous objections. On the appointed day, pea-soup fog reigns--but the promised aircraft, a Douglas DC-3 Dakota, lands anyway. The twin-engined turboprop has its cockpit windows painted over, and no side windows. Inside, the cockpit incorporates another interociter. Exeter's voice sounds again, advising him to sit in the single seat, recline, and relax. He does, and the plane takes off for parts unknown.When he lands, Dr. Ruth Adams (Faith Domergue) greets him. He remembers her from a conference and a midnight swim, but she insists that he is mistaken. Nevertheless, she drives him to the hilltop house on the compound. There she introduces him to Dr. Steve Carlson (Russel Johnson) and Dr. Adolf Engelborg (Karl Ludwig Lindt), two other famous scientists at "The Club." Then Exeter comes out to greet them and calls them into his office. There Exeter tells Cal that he represents a group of scientists hoping to dazzle the world with high technological achievement and thus put an end to war. Naturally his office has an interociter, through which Exeter shows Cal a laboratory outfitted just for him. But in the middle of this virtual tour, the screen gives an obvious signal of an incoming call. Exeter must take this call alone, so he ushers Cal and Ruth out.The call is from The Monitor (Douglas Spencer), who in this scene appears only as Exeter's superior officer. The Monitor is displeased: Exeter is not moving fast enough. Exeter protests that "certain methods" that "The Council" told him to use were not practical. The Monitor will hear of no complaint, and instructs Exeter to get cracking on "Plan A," whatever that is.In the next scene, Exeter and Braack host a formal dinner for all the members of The Club: Cal, Ruth, Steve, Enjgelborg, Dr. Hu Ling Tang (Spencer Chan), Dr. Marie Pitchener (Lizalotta Valesca), and a Dr. Borfield (Manuel Paris). Here, Engelborg excuses himself, saying (in German) that Mozart is not to his taste, and bidding them good evening. (The house' sound system is playing Mozart's "A Little Night Music" in the background.) Cal turns to Exeter and asks him what he thinks of Mozart. And Exeter makes a major mistake. "I don't know the gent..." he begins. Then, catching himself, he says, "Ah. My mind must have been wandering. Your composer, of course."Cal, shocked, follows up: "'Our' composer? He belongs to the world!""Yes, indeed," says Exeter--lamely. And Cal does not miss that. So he announces that he will take some fresh air himself, and invites (or rather, almost orders) Ruth and Steve to join him. Exeter grants permission, but Braack is instantly suspicious.Outside, Cal notes to Ruth and Steve the lack of representation of any scientific discipline except for nuclear physics. Then he leads them downstairs and to his assigned laboratory. There he takes a thick lead plate and places it in front of his assigned interociter. Assured (as he thinks) of privacy, he demands that Ruth and Steve tell him what's happening. Ruth confesses, first of all, that she *did* take a midnight swim with him in Vermont, but needed to know that she could trust him. Then they tell him the reason for their concern: Exeter has been known to place some of their colleagues (except Ruth, Steve, and Adolf) under a "sun lamp" that does a noninvasive leukotomy on the subject, making him robot-like.Exeter and Braack (Lance Fuller) debate the use of the "Transformer," their name for the "sun lamp." Braack has a typical "police mentality," which Exeter does not share. But Exeter tries to tune the interociter to spy on Cal, Ruth, and Steve. The lead plate is no protection, but a tabby cat named Neutron (Orangey) gets into the beams and yowls at the three, alerting them that they are not so private after all. Exeter and Braack give up; they will learn nothing more.The next morning, Exeter and Cal have a conversation that starts out friendly and colleagual enough, but then turns threatening as Exeter sets up a demonstration of what an interociter can do--cut a neat hole in that lead plate! His message is plain: don't talk to his colleagues except through "channels." But Cal is not inclined to obey. Using Neutron the Cat as an indicator, the three have one last chat, in which they share what they know: sketches of the interociter (annotated with Steve's best guess at what its controls do), sketches of Exeter and Braack, and a sketch of a hillside, two miles south of the compound, that looks hollowed out and covered with canvas. Then they leave the laboratory and the house, never to return.In Exeter's office, Exeter and Braack take one more call from The Monitor: Plan A is out, and Plan B is in effect. An emergency plan. It means full evac, and destroying the house and everyone in it, except for Cal and Ruth, who might prove useful. So that as the three try to escape, Braack uses the interociter to fire neutrino beams at the car. Steve tells Cal and Ruth to get out of the car, and then tries to draw the fire of the interociter. Tragically, he is killed, as is Adolf Engelborg, who tries to talk to Cal and Ruth, except that he speaks only German, which they don't speak. Cal and Ruth continue on foot to the airstrip, where they get into a single-engine plane (a 1949 Aeronca 11 Chief) that Exeter has always kept for the amusement of the staff.But as the Chief takes off, something else takes off: a saucer-shaped hovering craft, which fires a ray that destroys the house. The ship then hovers over the Chief, bathes them in green light, and somehow pulls them up and into a holding bay. (Whether it does this by drawing them in with focused energy like the "tractor beam" of Star Trek fame, or merely by taking over the Aeronca's controls, is not clear.)Exeter, of course, commands that vessel, which has a crew of beings that look like him: oversized brain pans, white hair, and all. (And Braack is his master-at-arms, in charge of security.) Cal strongly protests the "mass murder" of Steve, Adolf, and the others in the destroyed house. Exeter protests that he could have done nothing else, and asks them to accept that they are to fly to another world: Metaluna, Exeter's homeworld.The journey is an eventful one. It means passing through a "thermal barrier," then going through a "conversion" process so they could live in an atmosphere with a pressure comparable to Earth's deep sea, and finally running a gauntlet of attack from another space power, named Zahgon, which has been at war with Metaluna--and is about to deal the coup-de-grâce. They make it through, destroying several guided meteors as they pass, and then pass through the "ionization layer," then to the now-barren surface of Metaluna, and then down a hole into a vast cavern to which the Metalunans have had to retreat. The ship docks with a tall pylon, and Exeter gives orders for all to be made ready for Cal and Ruth to keep working. Cal now knows why Exeter's project was so urgent: Metaluna needs uranium, and a lot of it, and fast, or else they'll lose their last shield.Exeter takes Cal and Ruth for a ride, past destroyed universities and recreation centers, to the center of government--a single building, surrounded by rubble. There sits the Monitor, on a bench-style two-handed interociter from which he is desperately trying to keep the ionization layer active. The Monitor then announces that the relative handful of Metalunans left will fly to Earth for refuge! Cal does not like that one bit, and argues with the Monitor over whether he, as a mere human, ought to bow before a Metalunan. The Monitor then orders Cal and Ruth to be sent to a "thought transference chamber."At the last instant, Ruth and Cal refuse to enter. But when they try to run away, a Mutant (Regis Parton)--a walking insect with an oversized, convoluted brain--bars their way. Exeter admits that the Mutants are selectively bred slaves. Exeter begs them to cooperate. Instead, Cal decks Exeter, only to face the Mutant. But a Zahgon meteor bomb strikes the building they are in, brings down a pile of rubble on top of the Mutant, and opens the way for them to escape.The problem: they could get to the spacecraft, but could never fly it off Metaluna. Ruth would rather die right then and not put it off. But Exeter, who has crawled out of the now-destroyed building, begs them to let him help them get off Metaluna. (The Monitor, meanwhile, has been killed, and his interociter/throne totally wrecked.)Exeter drives them to the ship, only to find another Mutant (Regis Parton, playing another part) guarding it. Exeter orders the Mutant to stand aside. But while Cal and Ruth can pass it, the Mutant abruptly turns on Exeter and injures him badly with the pincers that he has for hands. Cal grabs a fire extinguisher from the Aeronca Chief's cockpit, clouts the Mutant over the head with it, and helps Exeter aboard. Exeter, using one bench-style interociter, warms the ship up--but no one notices the Mutant climbing aboard just as the hatch battens down.Exeter succeeds in piloting the ship out of the cavern, through the hole, and into space. He notes as they go that the ionization layer is now gone, and the ship barely has enough power to get them off. Sure enough, the Zahgon fleet send two guided meteors after them; Exeter fires at both, but can destroy only one and must evade the other. But the Zahgon fleet pay them no more attention, and instead rain hundreds of guided meteors on Metaluna, making it so hot that it ignites and turns into a tiny star!Exeter then asks Cal and Ruth to take the "conversion" treatment in reverse, as Exeter also will. They do, but then the Mutant blunders in, his compound eyes on Ruth. And because Ruth's treatment is the first to finish, she finds herself having to run from the Mutant before she is fully recovered. Fortunately, before the Mutant can do more than grab hold of her (and then have to let her go just as quickly), the differential pressures catch up to him, and he falls to the deck and disintegrates.Exeter's ship limps back to Earth. (The film does not mention the thermal barrier again; this might or might not mean that the Zahgonians threw it up when the war started and have now taken it down.) Exeter charts a course for the Pacific coast, where Exeter will drop Cal and Ruth in their Aeronca Chief into the air. Exeter will not try to land. He says he will explore the galaxy for another Metaluna. Cal knows that story is bogus: the ship is almost drained of power, and Exeter could never make another world even if he could find it. He and Ruth beg Exeter to come with them, but he refuses, saying that his wounds are fatal. So he drops the two off, in the Aeronca Chief, over the California coast (and specifically over Palos Verdes, near Van Nuys Airport and Catalina Island). Cal and Ruth hold each other, and tell each other how glad they are to be home, and that they have a home to come back to--which Exeter does not. Exeter, meanwhile, steers out to sea, flying fast enough to start to burn up. He passes rapidly over Catalina Island and finally passes out at his interociter console. His ship ditches into the deep sea in a ball of flame.

Review: Where is the fun in these stereotypical, shoot-em-up extravaganzas?"This Island Earth"("TIE") with (for its time, remember)jaw-dropping visuals, big, truly alien world realizations and theme of inter-solar system war, hasn't been matched since its debut almost fifty years ago!
For a plot that catapults you half way around the universe with one beautifully realized set after another and an epic-sized stage on which to play out its themes, perhaps only "Forbidden Planet" ever matched up.The sounds, the visuals and the story line of "TIE" weren't intended to chastise you as a stupid earthling, but instead, have long served to take the willing on an adventure ride that all too few space movies have chosen to create.
This is a great treat from a wonderful era of Sci-Fi. Those who complain of the hardware aspects have no romance - an Earth scientist receives an unsolicited manual and roomful of parts to build a futuristic two-way TV, but the parts are a marvel and the pages of the manual aren't paper, but some manner of flexible metal.
The alien as our "friend" was later used in many settings, including one of the best of the "Twilight Zone" episodes, "To Serve Man."I was young when I first saw this in a movie theater, but even then I found the home planet, Metaluma, very striking and its fate frightening.
Almost everyone appreciates color more than black and white, and for a "Kid's" Science Fiction movie to be in color, it made This Island Earth all the more special.Of course, the special effects, acting, and other aspects of this movie don't match up to today's standards.
He, Jack Pierce, and other makeup masters of the past, created the foundation for today's highly imaginative work.Just think, future generations probably will give negative reviews of Stars Wars, Jurassic Park, E.T. and many of the other groundbreaking movies of our time.
They will probably laugh at the "poor" quality of the special effects, or the stilted dialogue and acting just as some of the younger audience does today.I agree with other writers that point out how much people miss by not watching a black and white, or even just not watching an older movie.
The 1955 sci-fi film, "This Island Earth" was spoofed in the film,"MST 3000: The Movie"; but in actuality the film got good reviews from Leonard Maltin, The Motion Picture Guide, not to mention Bill Warren's monumental opus, "Keep Watching The Skies!".
Jones story the film is based upon; however, the Neutrino Ray was demonstrated by Exeter to Dr. Cal Meacham on occasion); Meacham pulled the plug on one of them in his lab, causing it to self-destruct; leading one to wonder if that device were so advanced, then why didn't it have a backup internal power source and safety feature to prevent that sort of sabotage?
Guess I'll have to watch MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE to find out what is so bad about THIS ISLAND EARTH.
My issue with the film is not the message which I think is very good, or the special effects which really do bear up under time (my 17 year old son commented on the good quality of the effects, much to my surprise), but with the unevenness of the story line.
"This Island Earth" is an entertaining sci-fi from the 50's, with a story of aliens that need help from the Earthling scientists in their war against another planet.
With the brilliant performances of Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason, and leading lady Faith Domergue, this is a natural epic tale of the unparalleled interaction of aliens and humans.You don't like science fiction, you say?
Here we have a mysterious robot-controlled aircraft's flight, mail from aliens, the building of an Inter-Rossiter communication device, tall-domed aliens (exhibiting a variety of ethical characters), interstellar flight, a war on a planet called Metalluna, flaming comet-missiles, a competent alien mutant creature, an intelligent cat named Neutron, romance, news conferences, good and bad advice and more.
Handsome Rex Reason, who lacks classical accent ability, plays scientist Cal Meacham, opposite Faith Domergue, a fair actress who does well as Ruth, his long-lost love, or is she.
The film is stolen by Jeff Morrow as Exeter, also star of "Kronos"; Douglas Spencer is a bit disappointing as The Monitor, as is Lance Fuller as an evil Metallunan; the special effects such as rays that explode cars and the aforementioned comets are interesting for their time.
Spectacular Sci-Fi. This is beautiful science fiction thriller of two Earth scientists (Faith Domegue and Rex Reason) tricked into helping a war-torn planet by a bizarrely high-foreheaded white-haired alien (Jeff Morrow) and his crew.
However, "This Island Earth," one of the best sci-fi flicks of the fifties (right up there with "War of the Worlds," "When Worlds Collide," "The Day The Earth Stood Still," and "Forbidden Planet") creates a very credible alternative reality as a context for a literate plot line.
No, "This Island Earth" does not have the Oscar Winning effects of "The War of the Worlds", the snappy overlapping dialogue of "The Thing From Another World", the abundant richness of ideas in "Forbidden Planet", nor the spine chilling suspense of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers"; but what it does have is an irresistable charm, the result - I suspect - of having a peculiar combination of outstanding qualities coexisting alongside much inferior ones.
No, "This Island Earth" does not have the Oscar Winning effects of "The War of the Worlds", the snappy overlapping dialogue of "The Thing From Another World", the abundant richness of ideas in "Forbidden Planet", nor the spine chilling suspense of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers"; but what it does have is an irresistable charm, the result - I suspect - of having a peculiar combination of outstanding qualities coexisting alongside much inferior ones.
The plot, although considered humorous by some, involves the enlistment of earth scientists to help inhabitants of Metaluna build an "interocitor" to aid them in combatting the evil forces attempting to destroy their home planet.
With a supporting cast like Faith Domergue and Jeff Morrow, both veterans of genre, this movie is well worth your time..
Two scientific , Rex Reason Faith Domergue , are deceived , menaced , abducted and transported from earth to a weird and ruined planet where occurs explosion and destruction.As our heroes are theatened by unknown forces .Acceptable Scifi movie has thrills , intricate gadgetry , emotion , FX ahead of their time and super mutant monsters .This classic and rare Sci-Fi is considered to be the first serious film about interplanetary escapades .It contains primitive special effects and abundant matte painting .
Starred by little known actors as Rex Reason as a nuclear scientist , Jeff Morrow as the rare alien , and the beautiful Faith Domergue as a nuclear fission expert who screams lustily .
He was a prolific craftsman who made all kinds of genres as drama , gangster movie , Film Noir , adventure , such as : Tarzan ,Jungle patrol , The king of the roaring 20s the story of Arnold Rothstein , Love nest , Great Dan Patch and , of course , Science Fiction with this vintage film of the fifties titled This island earth.
This Island Earth is one of the best sci-fi movies of the 1950's.The cast includes Jeff Morrow as the alien, Exeter and Faith Domergue is the only female in this movie.
I'd recommend This Island Earth to anyone who has an open mind and appreciates fine work, done with care and attention to detail.I think MST3K used this film for their own stab at cinematic greatness precisely because it's a good film that would (theoretically) draw crowds of the uninitiated into the theater, while it's so obviously from the 1950s that it puts today's sci-fi moviegoers in a mood for nostalgia and good fun.
In some ways that might have helped the plot along, but you cant have everything.We all know the plot by now, humanoids from another planet are gathering the finest minds from earths science community together and giving them access to advanced technology in the hope that they will come up with a power source that will help the aliens win a war to save their homeworld.
I'm not going into that room!"Exeter played by Jeff Morrow is of course a great character and is really entertaining to watch...he has a cheeky face and honestly looks a LOT like Robin Williams..
Less happy as a device are the 'neutrino rays', via which the Metalunans perform most of their more impressive activities, such as saving Meacham's plane at the start or menacing escaping cars, the zap-bang operation of which sometimes brings events to closer to B-movie level.This Island Earth is divided into two halves.
(A similar sense of awe attends the viewing of the underground workings in Forbidden Planet.) Visually impressive for its time, This Island Earth received an Academy Award for its technical effects, the look of the production, once the plot reaches Metaluna - a doomed, hollowed out planet, battered by meteorites, its iconic figure of the mutant menacing and mute in attendance, is still memorable.
Anyway, the film may not be as cerebral as FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) or as philosophical as THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957), but it's certainly more ambitious (and intelligent) than your average sci-fi flick  though, ultimately, emerging to be more interesting than entertaining (chiefly due to its surplus of technical chat).Jeff Morrow is an unusually benign presence among the typically superior (with elongated foreheads to show for it!) and tyrannical aliens  intent on colonizing the Earth because their own planet, Metaluna (literally meaning 'half-moon'), is dying.
One doesn't really mind the charmingly dated special effects (which culminate in the destruction of Metaluna), or the fact that the planet's surface is depicted largely through matte paintings.By the way, an essay I often read as a kid (found in an old movie-magazine of my father's) had named THIS ISLAND EARTH one of the top 3 efforts from Hollywood's Golden Age of Sci-Fi movies  along with 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954) and FORBIDDEN PLANET!.
This film comes nearly ten years after America ended World War II with an atomic attack on Japan, nuclear reactors had been commissioned and were no longer seen solely as a weapon of mass destruction, the nuclear age was prominent and very much a reality.Yes the film is far fetched fantasy, and it tries too hard to encompass a myriad of plot strands, something which to the younger viewers is likely to fly right over their heads.
Newman directed this science fiction yarn that stars Rex Reason as Dr. Cal Meachum, who is enlisted by aliens from the planet Metaluna(after being tested first) to help them save their dying planet.
The plot has aliens with over-sized foreheads taking Drs. Cal Meacham (Rex Reason) and Ruth Adams (Faith Domergue) to their planet to help with some things.
It has the sort of look that one would typically associate with a '50s sci-fi flick: he always wears a gray flannel suit, while she always wears a fluffy dress.Probably the main (if not only) reason that anyone in the 21st century would know about it is because the "MST3K" movie showed it, with Mike, Servo and Crow making their usual kinds of comments.
The story, while it has some interesting elements, does very little after Dr. Cal Meacham arrives to the mysterious conclave of scientists lead by mysterious Exeter (Jeff Morrow) The movie has a promise of something greater, but it just fails to deliver it.
I've seen every sci-fi movie of that decade, and this one certainly has to rate in the top five...and I'd rate it even higher than that.Whether you gauge it based on storyline, plot twists, adventure, quality of special effects (for the time), or the sheer effort that must have gone into it, this is certainly one of the best of its genre for the era when it was released...MST3K snark notwithstanding.If you haven't seen it, skip the Mystery Science Theatre version, make a big bowl of popcorn, pretend you're at the 50's drive-in with Betty Lou, and see the original all the way through for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Apart from including some fine special effects of the times, "This Island Earth" has a good story and a good performance from Jeff Morrow.
However, if seeing the film for the first time today, a lot of the impact may be lost as everything about the movie has been stolen or taken and put in other sci-fi productions of the last 60 years.
I haven't watched many of them, but while the FX of this are arguably only decent(with that said, that suit ain't bad), the designs of gizmos are reasonably interesting, and this certainly does deliver all you could hope for in one of these; campy alien beings, a nicely done foreign planet, cool labs and spacecraft, some pseudo-science(portions of which are rather questionable now that we know more...!) and, well, *fun*, with crap blowing up and being/catching on fire.
Newman's extremely enjoyable si-fi film, "This Island Earth" (1955) is one of the much more intelligent science fiction movies that were churned out during the nineteen fifties.
Twists and turns aside, Exeter is one in a race of large headed aliens called Metalunans and Meachum and Dr. Adams who were called to save Metaluna, now have to save their own planet.I'm going to go back to the first 40 minutes of this movie.
In modern times, however, it seems rather silly and preachy, and makes a fantastic candidate for "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" (this is the film featured in "MST3K: The Movie").Nuclear scientist Dr. Cal Meachem (Rex Reason) is contacted by a strange man named Exeter (Jeff Morrow), who has assembled scientists from across the world to aid him, including Dr. Ruth Adams (Faith Domergue).
When they try to leave the compound they are collected by a spaceship and transported to a distant planet which will die unless a new energy source can be discovered.I have seen this film a few years ago but a viewing of the Mystery Science Theatre movie reminded me to write a review.
I would have welcomed the film looking more into the idea of the scientists being put at risk by the working `man' but this doesn't do it.The set designs and aliens are imaginative and well put together (despite being back drops and men in suits), and they do well to portray another planet.
That said-- post Star Wars, Post ALIEN and everything else, 'Island Earth' is a stilted pulp Sci-Fi movie that was unknowingly CREATED just for Mystery Science Theatre.Yet still, the main reasons I still put the disc in from time to time: One--The Interocitor.
The special effects and sets get better and better as the film shifts from the mansion to the planet on a trip aboard the alien saucer with Domergue, Morrow, and Reason.
THIS ISLAND EARTH is without question one of the best science-fiction movies from this era.
Perhaps the best thing about "This Island Earth" is that "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie" came out of it.
Nuclear scientist Dr. Cal Meacham (Rex Reason) joins a group of fellow atomic brainiacs at a centre run by the enigmatic Exeter (Jeff Morrow), who turns out to be an alien from the planet Metaluna.
Exeter and his cohorts are looking for a way to synthesise uranium so that they can protect their home planet from attack by Zagons, but the large foreheaded aliens also have a back up plan: to make Earth their home and become the master race.The image of a Metalunan Mutant menacing Dr. Ruth Adams (Faith Domergue) is one that has stayed with me since a child, when I collected bubble gum cards featuring scenes from old sci-fi and horror films.
Sadly, the film that this unforgettable image came from, This Island Earth, isn't all that great: the first half is incredibly talky and quite uneventful, and the second half is totally pointless, with our hero and heroine visiting Metaluna for ten minutes or so before leaving, having done absolutely nothing!The special effects are also rather disappointing: there's nothing here that Flash Gordon didn't do twenty years earlier, with some iffy matte paintings, dodgy model work, silly communication devices (a triangular screen-really?), and an unconvincing rubbery mutant.
The fifties gave us so many genuinely great sci-fi films-Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Incredible Shrinking Man, to name a few-but This Island Earth isn't one of them..
But in some sense it actually gives right back to the audience where it had great intentions and you consider what this movie was up against at the time with terrific movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing From Another Planet, and War of the Worlds, this in itself is a small little gem.Dr. Cal Meacham, a noted scientist, receives an unusual substitute for electronic condensers that he ordered.
It is then that Cal and Ruth learn that Exeter and his band are aliens from the planet Metaluna, come to Earth seeking scientists to help them defend their planet in the war against the evil Zagons.Over all this is a fun sci fi film that delivers in the cheesy good times.
I would recommend it for those who are fans of the 1950's era sci fi movies, they are good fun and always a pleasure to watch, for those who don't like them that much, I'd say steer clear then of This Island Earth.6/10.
The print was brand new; the colors were vivid; the special effects were as good or better than any science fiction film done before.
And this is true for almost all of the science fiction films made in this era - they were made ONLY to be seen on MOVIE SCREENS.
Watch it for great special effects for the time, an interesting story AND aliens who are neither good nor evil--just like us humans!.