A great and wonderful Review: This Island Earth
Honest to gosh, I had one of the greatest experiences, EVER, with the new Blu Ray Disc of This Island Earth!!!!!!!!!!!
And it begins in 1959 for me, but let us go to 1955 when the film was released.
This is an interesting Sci-Fi movie of the 1950s, based on a novel by Raymond F. Jones, , that rally makes little sense. Dr. Cal Meacham, played by Rex Reason is pushed into building an “Interositor” that enables people from another planet to communicate with him. He, and his girlfriend, then becomes a player in a war between Metaluna and Zagon, as the Metalunas (or Metalunitics) need him to help create energy for their weapons. But enough about them!!!!
In 1946 my father, long before I was born, bought a Bell and Howell 8mm camera and projector. And yes, we have black and white film footage of my older brother! Well, in 1959 my brother bought for $5, black and white, silent condensed film of This Island Earth and it was entitled War of the Planets. There was a company called Castle Films that produced these forerunners of home theatre. It was about 400 feet of film and lasted five minutes or so. We projected on the portable screen (which I would say was five feet by five feet) turn on an appropriate record, pop popcorn, invite friends over and have a hell of a time. We eventually got “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”
My brother was anxious to see this IN COLOR, FULL LENGTH, WIDESCREEN, STEREO (yes it was originally produced in stereo) using my JVC 3000 projector and Panasonic 9000 Blu Ray. And we did. The picture quality was just okay, a lot of grain in the picture and it wasn’t always as clear as we’d like. The DTS stereo sound was barely fine, not bad. By today’s standards, a fair image and sound. But we loved seeing the movie, big screen and all. But that was not the best part!!!!!
We went to the bonus features and guess what!!!!! This included the Castle Films version of War of the Planet….in glorious black and white. We got to see our original silent version complete with title cards!!!!!! We loved it!
Everything old is old again!
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