Metaluna mystery
By Mark Voger, author
‘Zowie! The TV Superhero Craze in ’60s Pop Culture’
All my life I’ve needed to see “This Island Earth.” My fellow 1960s monster nerds will know the reason why.
In the seminal monster magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, there were these full-page ads for pricey full-head masks from a place called Don Post Studios. They showed exquisite, hand-finished masks depicting the first string, the top tier, of monsters: Dracula … Frankenstein … the Wolf Man … the Phantom of the Opera … Mr. Hyde … the Creature From the Black Lagoon … the Hunchback of Notre Dame … the Metaluna Mutant …
Wait, what? The Metaluna who?
Yes, there was an interloper in that lineup — two, counting the mask of the Mole People, er, Person, which was likewise inspired by a movie monster of a then-contemporary vintage (as opposed to, say, the Hunchback, who made his movie debut in 1923).
As a faithful reader of Famous Monsters, I eventually gleaned the fact that the Metaluna Mutant hailed from a movie titled “This Island Earth.” Articles or captions intimated that, again like the Mole People, there was an army of Metaluna Mutants in the movie. Through the years, I’d see cool-lookin’ stills of the Mutant from “This Island Earth.” I also noted that he showed up in an episode of “Lost in Space” — or rather, his head (by Don Post?) on a different body as a random alien. (They had a lot of aliens on “Lost in Space.” You can’t blame them for recycling one.)
Anyways, just recently at age 66, I finally got to see Joseph Newman‘s “This Island Earth.” (The opportunity simply never presented itself until I finally had to seek it out for a project.)
Setup: Strapping (there’s no other adjective) Cal Meacham (Rex Reason) is a scientist and pilot who happens to be GQ handsome, built like a linebacker, and speaks in a baritone so low, you expect him to break into “Old Man River” any minute. Aliens from the planet Metaluna contact Carl via a futuristic doo-dad with a triangular video screen called an “interocitor.” Exeter (Jeff Morrow), an alien with a big, Matt Gaetz-level forehead, “invites” Carl to take part in a scientific fellowship made up of human scientists. The aliens, Exeter tells Carl, want to “end war.” (Yeah, right.)
Curious, Carl accepts the invitation. At a rendezvous point, he is delighted to be greeted by a human who is known to him: fellow scientist Ruth Adams (Faith Domergue). They met three years earlier at a conference. In fact, they went swimming together a time or two. Carl’s mierda-eating smile tells us that some hanky-panky went on between these two. But that smile abruptly vanishes when Ruth swears she doesn’t remember the encounter. (Hmmm …)
She drives him to a fancy mansion at which some noted Earthling scientists now live, working for the Metalunians. They saunter around, and are served sumptuous dinners with candles and wine at a fancy table joined by Exeter and another big-forehead alien, Brack (Lance Fuller).
Ruth and Steve Carlson (the professor himself, Russell Johnson), another scientist, finally tell Carl that they are virtual prisoners at the mansion. The three of them make a run for it in the car. The aliens send a flying weapon after them. Carl and Ruth find safety in a ditch; Steve is vaporized by the weapon.
Soon, Carl and Ruth are forced to board a spaceship which whisks them to Metaluna. Exeter admits that what the aliens really want is uranium, and lots of it, in order to stabilize the atmosphere on Metaluna. The trio lands on the dying planet that is under attack. Cal encounters a Mutant, of which Exeter says: “We’ve been breeding them for ages to do menial work.”
So, whaddaya know, the Mutants are pretty much in the same predicament as the Mole People — a revelation for any monster nerd who stared at those Don Post ads in Famous Monsters for hours and thought: “I know Dracula. I know Frankenstein. But who are these other guys?”
Will the planet Metaluna explode? Will Carl and Ruth make it back to Earth? Will we ever see more than one Metaluna Mutant at a time?
“This Island Earth” is a big-budget Technicolor entertainment made, not for sci-fi nerds, but for the masses. (The genre was hot in the 1950s.) There are some fantastic special effects, such as when we see Carl and Ruth’s skeletons as they get zapped in transparent tubes. Dying Metaluna is depicted via gorgeous matte paintings augmented by pyro FX.
Still, there are cracks in the veneer. The Mutant looks gnarly, but the big-forehead humanoid aliens — who wear cotton-white hair and eyebrows, to boot — are laughable. “Plan 9” laughable.
When Ruth shows Carl and Steve her sketches of Exeter and Brack, and asks if they’ve noticed their big foreheads, you wanna say: “Noticed them? Lady, have you been huffing interocitor fumes?”
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