This Island Earth (1955) on Netflix
Approved19551h 27mHorrorMysterySci-Fi
Scientist Cal Meacham's failing jet is saved by a green glow. Parts he receives let him build the interocitor, and the man on its screen invites him to a secret research project.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb5.9/1011,557 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
Physicist Cal Meacham flies to his laboratory and, as his jet's engine fails, a green glow surrounds the aircraft and sets it down safely. Among a delivery of electronic condensers he finds parts made of an unknown, nearly indestructible material. He and his assistant Joe Wilson order instructions and assemble a complex device called an interocitor, though neither has heard of it. A man named Exeter appears on its screen and tells Meacham he has passed a test. Meacham accepts a place on Exeter's research project and is carried by an unmanned, windowless plane to a remote part of Georgia, where he joins an international group of atomic scientists, among them Dr. Ruth Adams, and meets Exeter and his assistant Brack.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about This Island Earth (1955)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The mutant costume originally had legs that matched the upper body, but the special effects department had so much trouble making the legs look and work properly that a studio deadline forced them to simply have the mutant wear a pair of trousers.
- Dan Aykroyd has said this film partly inspired his Coneheads characters on Saturday Night Live, aliens whose oversized heads the humans around them barely acknowledge.
- Most of the film's alien sound effects, including the spaceship and the interocitor device, were made simply by recording radio teletype transmissions picked up on a short-wave radio and playing them back at different speeds.
- The Metaluna Mutant proved to be an iconic look for a screen alien, and its design is seen as a precursor to H. R. Giger's design for the Xenomorphs in the Alien franchise.
- The front office was dissatisfied with the footage director Newman shot for the Metaluna sequence, so most of it was directed again by Jack Arnold, who, unlike Newman, had several science-fiction films to his credit.
