First, the undercard ‘Space Master X-7’ (1958), running 1 hour and 11 minutes, rated at 5.3 from 298 preferences.
A lobby card that misleads audiences. Typical.
The Sy Fy aspects are few and quickly pass from the story. A rocket called, modestly, Space Master X-7’ returns its cargo of samples (from parts unspecified to my memory), which when spread around kill people. Morale. Do not spread space samples around. Ever wonder what that Moon rock in the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. is up to?
The sample becomes an enveloping and mortal fungus with the personality of a GOP senator. It destroys all without a backward glance. See, the comparison is apt. This fungus might have been a metaphor for Communism in a 1958 pix, made during the Cold War, but I did not detect any such innuendo. No, the sledge hammer script went at it literally, a fungus is a mushroom beyond the plate.
At a top security base in the remote desert Southwest a scientist, about whom more later, examines the sample, after much stock footage of rockets, parachutes, tin cans, and security blankets, uh, boxes. But people keep interrupting him, so he takes the sample home to work uninterrupted on it there.
Top security, right.
While poking the sample at home he has an argument with his ex-wife come a-calling. She goes away in anger and he keeps poking. Whoops. The fungus has had enough of that and it is goodbye scientist. Gulp. In truth, and very risqué for 1958, though the she and he had a child, they were, in fact, not man and wife. Gasp! In the morēs of the time that transgression allows a fate to befall the poking scientist.
By this time the slow-witted security officer at the base, played by Bill Williams, with his usual concussed look, comes to the house and seeing the fungus has had its way burns the house down. To avert a panic he puts about the story that the scientist died in the fire, and that they are looking for the woman seen there. In turn she thinks they suspect her of the fatal arson and takes evasive action. Bill wants to find her to stop the spread of the fungus but she knows nothing of this fungus, having not entered the home lab. This part is believable: she outwits the FBI, the USAF, and the police for an hour.
Per B-movie conventions they track down this interplanetary Typhoid Mary and that is that. The origins of the fungus, how to avoid it in the future, and such details are ignored.
Hardly Sy Fy.
There are only two interesting things about this overrated dross. Two of players are immediately recognisable. One is the scientist who is played by Paul Frees and many viewers, young or old, would twitch. He was a voice actor who did that work for two or more generations, much of it in animated movies until 1987 with ‘The Wind in the Willow.’ He also does the announcements at the train station in this picture, after the scientist is dead. He calls the timetable from the incinerator.
Frees in lab coat.
However, I remember that voice well from ‘The Milllionaire’ (1955-1960) where each week the heard but unseen John Beresford Tipton voiced by Frees handed over the dosh.
His Sy Fy credits as a voice actor are many and include ‘When Worlds Collide’ (1951), ‘The Thing’ (1951), ’War of the Worlds’ (1953), ‘Space Attack’ (1955), ‘Earth versus the Flying Saucers’ (1956), ‘The Twenty-Seventh Day’ (1957), ‘The Mysterians’ (1957), and ‘The Time Machine’ (1960). Like other voice actors his name seldom appeared in the credits but he always had work, unlike many credited actors.
The other notable player is Shemp Howard of The Three Execrables playing a straight part as a cab driver. Seeing him, the fraternity brothers waited eagerly for the pie in the face and were disappointed.
Now for the main event. the very superior ‘This Island Earth’ (1955), running 1 hour and 26 minutes with a 5.9/10 from 7413 opinionators on the IMDB.
It stars Rex Reason’s chin as the Earth’s greatest scientist and test pilot. While flying his X-Plane it conks out, ever the peril with the low-bidder products, and a green aura surrounds the aircraft as it gently descends to Earth.
Chin and airplane.
While Rex is used to the unusual in his charmed life this experience does give him brief pause. But only that. He goes to his top secret laboratory where strangers come and go at will. Next thing you know boxes and boxes of equipment arrive unordered, and with Allen Key in hand Rex and his obsequious assistant start putting together the Ikea television it becomes.
Once complete Siri turns herself on (down, fraternity brothers!). and there is Jeff Morrow with the strangest haircut congratulating Rex’s chin on winning the Nigerian Research Grant Lottery, first prize is an all-expenses paid trip to a secret locale where there is another laboratory. Who could rest that? Not that chin.
Check it out, and there are more like that at home!
Spoiler coming.
Jeff and that white bouffant are from MetaLuna, well that is what it sounded like to me, which is losing a war because it is running low on nuclear energy. Being vastly superior beings they have sent Jeff via a nicely realised flying saucer to gather up scientists from all over the galaxy, though none of these other gatherees do we see, to synthesise nuclear energy on MetaLuna. Yeah, sure. Just add radium.
Jeff provided the green aura that saved Rex and his chin.
Among the scientist Jeff has gathered in his castle in the desert hideaway is Faith Dominguez. ‘Nice going, Jeff,’ shouted the fraternity brothers. While last year she and Rex did some skinny dipping when at a conference in Vermont (are there conferences in those woods?) she feigns not to recognise that chin. Since that is impossible he knows something is amiss but keeps it to himself.
The Professor from Gilligan’s Island is there, perhaps this explains how he got tenure on the islet, and with Faith he tells Rex that Jeff is not to be believed or trusted. Disbelief and distrust are now the order of the day.
While Jeff is Mr Congeniality, he has a mini-me with the same hair who is a white lab rat. Jeff reports to The Hall Monitor on an OLED Smart television and stalls for time while the scientists work, but the mini-me later tells The Hall Monitor that Jeff has gone native, watches baseball games, eyes off Faith, plays Monopoly, listens to Mozart, and has generally gone native and it not to be believed or trusted. Disbelief and distrust are now the order of the day.
This is the toxic atmosphere typical of most organisations, so Rex gets on with caring for his chin. When he cannot find a razor, he decides to escape with Faith and since the Professor seems an ever-present third wheel, him, too. Meanwhile, The Hall Monitor overrules Jeff and demands that he pack his scientists on the flying saucer and return home where they will keep working in a slave laboratory. Mini-me pursues Rex and company with lightening bolts. Zap! The Professor sacrifices himself for the man with the better chin, and a passerby is also zapped to show what lousy aim mini-me has. No wonder these superior beings are losing the war with gunners like that.
When Rex and Faith are flying away in a conveniently parked Piper Cub, they are John Deere tractor-beamed on board the flying saucer and whoosh…..
Jeff tells his sad tale as above. More whoosh.
Security may be a joke to the USAF but TSA full body scans are necessary to land on MetaLuna.
On MetaLuna the war is lost and Jeff defies high command and steals the saucer, evidently the only one left, to take Rex and Faith back to Earth. He does; he dies. They descend in the Piper Cub. Chin and Faith cuddle up in the Piper Cub, which hardly seems possible, with no further thought to the Meta-heads.
Meanwhile, the fatally wounded Jeff nobly crashes his saucer into the sea to be found later in other Sy Fy films.
The saucer effects are good, and the flight over the battle scared MetaLuna is effective, as is the shattered underground fortress, though the insect peons are there only for the creature feature advertising. Faith screams on cue. The pace is good. The sets are well designed and there are plenty of extras with that hair. It has the look of a A-picture. While Faith has Sy Fy credentials, the Chin does not, while Jeff has at least one other on his cv.
The gossip is that the original script played Jeff as a villain but the actor Jeff Morrow, who was well-known as opinionated, argued with the director, writer, producer, and busboy to make Jeff more human and rounded. He won and he was. This Jeff is a decent alien driven to extremes by circumstances beyond his control. He has indeed gone native, and was probably watching ‘I Love Lucy’ instead of beating the scientists into success with a slide-rule.
OK, but that does not explain the hair. Still less does it explain the fact that every other Meta-head we see on MetaLuna has the same hair under a clear plastic football helmet, except the Hall Monitor whose exalted status, apparently, frees his locks. Efforts to find a picture on Google Images failed. Suppressed!
The Hall Monitor has some pretty unkind remarks to make about Earth and Earthlings. He is a graduate of Kim Jong-un School of Intergalactic Diplomacy.
Faith Dominguez is there to scream and scream she does. She is not even permitted a lab coat! What a travesty of science.
Nor did I figure out any meaning from the title, on this the Nth viewing. I did not get any Cold War vibe from it.
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