THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955)
Tagline: Two mortals trapped in outer space... challenging the unearthly furies of an outlaw planet gone mad!
(Action, Sci-Fi, Really Goofy Horror) [PG-13]
Cal, I - I know everybody's seeing flying saucers and screwy lights up in the sky. Well, you can put me in the booby hatch too, because, so help me, I saw this ship turn a bright green up there.
The plot for this one is pretty simple, like a lot of ‘50s sci-fi flicks. Basically, all the really smart scientists are kind of getting baited to go to work for a man named Exeter. He’s very mysterious and it seems like most that work for him are kind of out of it. Dr. Cal Meacham catches on pretty quickly that something bizarre is going on and both him Dr. Ruth Adams and Dr. Steve Carlson plot an escape from Exeter’s estate only to discover that he’s a freakin alien and his race is in the middle of a galactic war.
For a ‘50’s sci-fi flick, this one is a pretty strong outing story-wise. The dialog which is kind of silly by today’s standard is actually pretty decent, but the best thing about this movie is the strong performances out of Faith Domergue (as Dr. Ruth Adams), the legendary Rex Reason (Dr. Cal Meacham), and the, even more, well-known Russell Johnson. If you don’t know who Russell Johnson is, he was the Professor on Gilligan’s Island. He even voiced the Professor on the short-lived animated series Gilligan’s Planet. Yeah – that actually happened, there was an animated series where the people that were on Gilligan’s Island got stranded on another planet.
Anyway, where this movie fails almost completely is in its marketing. The posters all feature a mutant creature and even my banner does. It’s a crazy-looking design for the era, but the mutant is in maybe 3 minutes of this entire movie and all of the rest of the aliens look like normal dudes who just got hijacked by Ruby Rhod’s (THE FIFTH ELEMENT) hairdresser. It’s a waste of what I thought was a great design and it looked cool even half-finished. I guess they never did get the mutant's legs to work right. Because of that, if you were expected a bit of a monster romp, you might not like this damn thing. There is a ton of dialog and a lot of setup before we finally get to the meat of the plot.
Overall I actually liked this movie, all of the action sequences are clunky and the special effects for the most part are horrible. It’s about what I expected in those areas, but the story does keep you guessing as to what the heck is going on and there are several unexpected moments that make this more fun than it had a right to be.
For me, this is a 4 out of 7. There are better overall flicks out there, but I wish we had gotten more of the cool-looking mutant than we did.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF UNIVERSAL INTERNATIONAL PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. THE ARTWORK IN THE GRAPHIC IS BY KEN TAYLOR.
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