This Island Earth

Guess I'll have to watch MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE to find out what is so bad about THIS ISLAND EARTH. The film is intriguingly plotted, beautifully photographed, and has excellent (even by contemporary standards) art direction, costume design and special effects. So what if Rex Reason sounds as if he was dubbed (he always sounds that way), and some of the other performances seem a bit stilted. The Metaluna Mutant was the most memorable outer space monster until ALIEN.

I can only recall one technical error in the film. After the interociter (communicator) has been reduced to molten metal, Rex Reason picks up a Geiger counter and says, "It's no longer radioactive." There IS no set up for this (i.e., when it proved to be radioactive).

I'd certainly rate this film in the top ten of the best science fiction films of the fifties (probably in the top five). It's philosophical, exciting and well made.

This 1955 science fiction flick in a nutshell? One word comes to mind: masterpiece. Masterpiece. When it comes to science fiction, the director of this edge-of-your-seat rollercoaster, Joe Newman is a master.

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? I didn't either before watching it. But I couldn't press the fast forward button on my VCR remote as I watched "This Island Earth."

10 stars. Do yourself a favor and see this wonderful film.

I saw this film for the first time when I was about 10 years old and it has always stuck with me and when I saw it was on video I bought it immediately. I think that this is more than a B picture and what people have to remember is the fact that this film was made before all the great advances in special effects. Another thing that made it interesting was the fact that through the first half of the film you really didn't know if Exeter was human or alien. It wasn't until the second half of the film that we did see there was more to this mysterious group. This film is definitely an underrated classic of its era.

When it came out, I thought this was the most fantastic movie I'd ever seen. It was easy to identify with the lead character and to share his fascination with the technology that the aliens used to capture his attention and recruit his talents. I particularly remember being entranced by the special effects; the use of vivid color was outstanding among sci-fi offerings of the time. 45 years later, it's still my favorite of the era. I enjoy watching the movie on video and recalling the thrill of seeing it on the big screen for the first time.

I am old enough to have seen "This Island Earth" when it was first released. After "Forbidden Planet", it was the only other film for a decade to take place outside of Earth's solar system. Galactic fiction had been written for decades by Edmond Hamilton and a handful of others, very successfully; but it is still rare and hard to handle in film, because it requires some level of ideas and logical development of a political-philosophical system other than conventional and unimaginative acceptances--the stock in trade of those who rip off headlines, use titles such as "Across the Ses of Stars"--and then write nothing at all to go with the promising title. 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. The original story line, for those who have not read Raymond Z. Jones' original mystery-sci-fi, is much better than what was done with its ideas in the film's script. In that novel,Earth was to be destroyed, because it was in the way and being used as a base by one of two sides in a huge interstellar war; at the end, the hero, whose ingenuity has saved the one side, has to make a speech to save the Earth--a climax that did not make it into the film version. 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. What is right about the film I suggest is its color, its adventure narrative and swift-paced unfolding, since it is rather well-directed; what is lacking is the first-rate ideas of the novel from which it was adapted. "This Island Earth" ( a phrase later used in "Star trek's "All Our Yesterdays" also) is arguably a welcome change from all those sci-fi films where rockets seem tied to earth, unable to expand the human horizon. I like it, and recommend it to anyone who wants to escape from the present mean-streets ugliness cult's movies; it is physically beautiful and frankly more entertaining than most have credited it with being these past 50 years.