[Journal notes: November 22, 2020.]
Although many science fiction films of the 1950s offer layers of implication that speak to adult viewers, while the surface levels of action, spectacle, and monsters appeal to children, THIS ISLAND EARTH is probably best appreciated by the young.
For pure spectacle, the film is a joy (and on the Scream Factory blu ray, looks better than ever). I must have been seven years old when I saw it for the first time, and watching it last night, I felt again that childhood appeal, even if its merits are only skin-deep. I would never call the film bad, so much as naive: the scientist heroes are essentially smart children, lured by the promises of a mail-order catalogue, given lectures by a school teacher benevolent yet distant, dragged without agency from one educational tableau to another. As a result, the film is dreamlike, episodic, with all the colours and emotional depth of a rain puddle bright with gasoline.
Still, for the sake of that colour, THIS ISLAND EARTH remains a film that a part of me will never outgrow.
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