Retrospective Film Review

This Island Earth (1955) • 70 Years Later — Cold War paranoia through the lurid lens of Golden Age sci-fi

Aliens come to Earth seeking scientists to help them in their war.

Exciting story magazines had been rising in popularity since the 1930s and, by the 1950s, the science-fiction genre dominated newsagent shelves, attracting readers with their lurid, often exploitative cover art by an array of incredibly talented illustrators. People, usually women, wearing impossibly tight jumpsuits trapped in transparent tubes proved to be a popular motif. More often than not, they were being menaced by tentacled space monsters or aliens with enlarged craniums.

Today, This Island Earth delivers exactly what’s expected from a classic 1950s sci-fi movie. That’s because it brought so many of those pulpy tropes to the screen in the first place. Its imagery could’ve leapt off one of those golden-age magazine covers, which isn’t surprising as it was based on a series of three linked novelettes by Raymond F. Jones, originally published in the science fiction adventure magazine Thrilling…