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Customer Reviews of This Island Earth

Space Opera at its finest!
The 1955 film version of Raymond F. Jones sci-fi classic THIS ISLAND EARTH is a visual wonder and thematically solid. Released about 1 year before the genre masterpiece, FORBIDDEN PLANET, some regard TIE as predecessor to STAR WARS ( the way Forbidden Planet paved the Star Trek phenonmenon). This Island Earth...the movie...is SPACE OPERA at its finest. It is complete with "glowing green" flying saucers; sinister alien bad-guys; and perhaps the greatest BUG-EYED MONSTERS ever filmed: The Metalunan LOBSTERman... Interestingly, what holds the film together is Jeff Morrow's role as Exeter (Jorgasnovara in the novel)the alien leader torn between duty to his home planet, Metaluna, and sympathy for the Earth scientists who are...in the film...both his colleagues and prisoners. Faith Domergue and Rex Reason are fine as earth physicists who are tricked into working for an alien race (The Metalunans) fighting...and losing...an intergalactic war for survival. As is often the case, the novel's plot is more complicated and different. THIS ISLAND EARTH, (the novel)...refers to the irony that "good" aliens and their bad guy adversaries...regard earth as merely a combat staging-area...to be used and abandoned when strategic advantage dictates. In the novel, THE WAR is essentially a never-ending battle, and woe to "pebble in the sky" planets like earth when their utility is nada mas. In the movie, Metalunans are on the verge of losing the war, and their planet, not merely subjugated, but wiped-out of existence. Earth scientists represent a desperate effort to restore the PLANETARY DEFENSE/ENERGY FIELD. They fail. In the spectacular climax, the planet is solar bombarded ( enemy ships are comet-like energy entities; telekinentically piloted) into firey oblivion. THIS ISLAND EARTH is a class production all around. Much of its FX employs superb matte backgrounds, excellent animation and set-pieces ((the flight through the thermal barrier; the apocalyptic annihilation of Metaluna; and yes, the epic battle with the ARCHETYPAL BEM!)). So tac-up your Interociter and warp-out to This Island Earth......

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One of the worst looking DVDs I've seen
It's hard for me to take "This Island Earth" very seriously after seeing "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie," but it's actually a pretty good '50s Sci-Fi flick. I bought this edition because Image Entertainment usually an excellent job of restoring films for DVD (see, for example, "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe"). Unfortunately, the picture quality of this disc is very poor (grainy, dull colors, and lots of white speckles) and there are ZERO extras. The only redeeming quality is the excellent cover art. It's a shame, because "This Island Earth" - with its groovy futuristic matte paintings, laser blasts, glowing spaceships, and bleeding 'Mut-ants' - is tailor-made for the DVD format. Let's hope this title will be properly restored and reissued in a Special Edition sometime in the near future.

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A Classic Of Early Science Fiction
It has taken me a few decades but I have finally seen the film This Island Earth (I had to buy it first). I must say that I was not disappointed by this well-crafted tale.

A physicist working on new power from uranium and the transmutation of elements to create more uranium, gets involved in a project of a far grander scale. Replacement parts are ordered for the lab but the parts that arrive seem far superior to anything that should be available. Then a catalogue of other equipment arrives and soon the lab is set on building a strange device.

The device is a communications console which puts the scientist in contact with a white-haired man seeking out talented scientists to tackle the issue of world-wide peace. The scientist joins a small think-tank of top researchers who are working on increasing the energy available from nuclear reactions. But it soon becomes apparent that all is not what it seems. The head of the project, and his assistant, are actually aliens. They are hoping that the human scientists can come up with a way to save their home planet.

The story then escalates to include the alien world and their plight at the hands of a second, and vicious, race of aliens. We learn of motives, deceits, and how far the peaceful will go to save their own home. Distrust and compassion struggle against one another until the film's conclusion.

This is not a typical B-movie of alien invasion. Unlike most of that type this film was not a quick project. Two and a half years were spent in the making so that the film is pretty well consistent within itself. The pacing of the plot's revelations is well handled and almost resembles a classic tale of A.E. van Vogt. This is definitely a film for fans of the great black and white science fiction films.