06/16/2025
DAVE'S MONSTER MOVIE MONDAY REVIEW:
This week, “This Island Earth”
This 1955 Universal-International film stars Rex Reason and Faith Domergue.
Physicist, pilot, and all-around swell guy Dr. Cal Meacham (Reason) receives some mysterious supplies at his laboratory and gets instructions on how to build an 'interocitor.' Even though Meacham and his trusty sidekick, Joe Wilson, have no idea what an interocitor is, they build it anyway. Once completed, a man named Exeter appears on the devices viewscreen to chat with Meacham. The fact that Exeter's forehead is large enough to park a fleet of Pontiac Catalinas on it doesn't seem to scream out, "Hey, I'm an alien!" to Cal and Joe. Some people just can't take a hint.
Cal agrees to help Exeter with his still unrevealed experiments and get spirited off to a house in the Georgia countryside. Once there, Cal is reunited with his old flame Dr. Ruth Adams (Domergue), and meets Steve Carlson, a pre-'Gilligan's Island' Russell Johnson. No coconut cream pies or palm leaf huts in this movie, however.
Predictably, no one trusts Exeter and his silent man servant Brack, yet they continue working on creating new forms of atomic energy for him anyway. Things don't go quite as planned, and Cal, Ruth, and Steve make a break for it. Poor Steve gets zapped by a heat ray, but Cal and Ruth end up transported safely into a giant flying saucer that closely resembles an upside-down toilet seat. Once in the ship, Exeter reveals he's from the planet Metaluna, and his people are at war with the nearby planet of Zagon.
Upon arriving at Metaluna, our gang discovers that the Zagon offensive has overwhelmed Exeter's people, and his ruler, The Monitor, who appears to be sitting on a giant toilet, tells them that the Metalunan people are going to just pack up and go live on Earth since their own planet is no longer habitable. There's no doubt they aren't getting their security deposit back!
Exeter helps Cal and Ruth plot a daring escape during the Zagon bombardment, but a giant sentry that looks like an ant with huge lobster pincers, attacks Exeter and mortally wounds him. Our heroes are able to board the toilet seat spaceship, but the sentry, conveniently called a Mutant (mute-ant), also boards and waits for his chance to strike. Regular spraying and strategically placed ant traps would have been effective here, but a bit too late for our friends in this movie.
Cal, Ruth and Exeter watch Metaluna heat up and glow into an inferno of radiation as they zoom off back toward Earth. The Mutant makes his last stand, but the pressure inside the ship as it travels through the imaginary thermal barrier causes him to fall and expire, thus ending the screentime of the coolest alien creature Hollywood ever imagined. Exeter returns our two lovebirds to Earth, and then crashes his toilet seat into the ocean, for no other reason than to provide one last explosion before the ending credits.
This movie was released as part of a double feature along with 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy'. It was considered well-written with great effects and the bonus eye candy of Technicolor. As for being a science fiction classic, there's no doubt. If you're looking for the film to make sense, you're probably going to be a bit disappointed, but you'll certainly be entertained. Because of its cult status, I rate this movie as 4 out of 5 stars. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Watch it for free on YouTube TV. Just be sure to leave the toilet seat down.
