| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| Science-Fiction |
|
|
| Horror |
|
|
| Fantasy |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THIS ISLAND EARTH
Rating:  ½
USA. 1955.
Director – Joseph Newman, Screenplay – Franklin Coen & Edward G. O’Callaghan, Based on the Novel The Alien Machine by Raymond F. Jones, Producer – William Alland, Photography – Clifford Stine, Music – Herman Stein, Special Effects – Clifford Stine & David S. Horsley, Makeup – Bud Westmore, Art Direction – Alexander Golitzen & Richard H. Reidel. Production Company – Universal-International.
Cast:
Rex Reason (Dr Cal Meachem), Faith Domergue (Dr Ruth Adams), Jeff Morrow (Exeter), Lance Fuller (Brack), Russell Johnson (Steve Carlton), Robert Nicholls (Joe Wilson), Douglas Spencer (Monitor)
Plot: Dr Cal Meachem receives a catalogue that contains order forms detailing highly-advanced electronic parts unavailable by current Earth technology. Intrigued he orders some of these and receives back a device, which he then constructs. This proves to be an Interociter, a communications device and on it, Exeter, a strange high-foreheaded man appears, inviting Meachem to become a member of a scientific enclave dedicated to world peace. But at the enclave Meachem and colleague Dr Ruth Adams discover that the high-foreheaded people are really from the planet Metaluna and have come to tap Earth’s resources in their devastating war against the Zahgon. But when their discovery becomes known, Exeter abducts Meachem and Adams and takes them back to Metaluna.
This Island Earth is a classic film from the great 1950s Golden Age of SF Cinema. The film that started the so-called Golden Age off, Destination Moon (1950), had an extraordinary boldness in its promise of the ability of humanity to conquer space. But the sf films of the era subsequent to that suffered from a troubling timidity of spirit and rarely ever managed to muster such conceptual courage. Rather the tone of outward-venturing sf was eclipsed by fear of the rest of the universe and soon instead of any venturing forth the here and now was overrun by alien invaders and atomic monsters. This Island Earth is one of the rare ventures forward into outer space. It is one of the most colourful of sf spectacles to come out of the period.
Although, This Island Earth does disappoint somewhat today – many people who come to it having heard of its classic reputation don’t take the time to persevere through the rather slow lead-up of the story. It takes nearly two-thirds of the running time before it gets to the space scenes that everybody talks about. The dramatics in these scenes are rather pedestrian and are hampered by a wooden leading man and woman. But certainly in this latter third the spectacle has an extravagant spleandour as we journey beneath the surface of a planet pitted by meteorite attacks, through a vast crumbling underground city and encounter such wonderful super-science devices as a radiation cylinder that reduces people to coloured skeletons, not to mention the brief appearance of an insectoid mutant that has become somewhat of a classic creature among fans of fifties sf.
Although even ultimately in terms of the conceptual reach of fifties sf, This Island Earth suffers from a timidity of spirit. The ghosts of WWII and the atomic bomb that haunted the rest of 50s sf still linger. As with films like Rocketship X-M (1950), Forbidden Planet (1956) and time travel ventures such as Captive Women (1952), World Without End (1955), Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) and The Time Machine (1960), the boldness of the journey is undercut by the overriding message that the film has to make once it gets to the other world. Fifties filmmakers could not go beyond the concept of the impending atomic annihilation and invariably even superior civilizations ended up destroying themselves with (nuclear) war. This Island Earth, the beauty of its ravaged world and the journey aside, on a level of courage of imagination only really undertakes a journey there where we can be shocked at the ruined world and then turns around again and comes back again.
This Island Earth is one of the few 1950s sf films not to have been remade in the 1980s. The mutant did turn up as a musician in the background of the cantina in Star Wars (1977), makes a cameo in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), while the film itself was used as the basis of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1995) wherein in it was held up to ridicule and a joke track dubbed over it.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1998
|