This Island Earth

 

One of the classic science fiction films from the golden age of Hollywood is This Island Earth. It was critically acclaimed in all categories, including special effects, which are way ahead of its time, considering the film was released in 1955. The most celebrated part of the film is the last half hour. This rushes through, rather too concisely in my view, the background to the beginning. That a race of aliens on the planet Metaluna are at war with the planet Zagon and that they need the help of terrestrial scientists to protect themselves. There are numerous scenes of spaceships, bug-eyed aliens with crab claws etc etc and then it ends. However, I find the first two acts of the film the most interesting. They introduce the two main characters, Cal Meacham and Ruth Adams. They are scientists summoned to a secret location where somebody called "Exeter" has set up a laboratory. They are enticed to go there because Exeter sends them electronic components that are far in advance of anything humanity can produce. They can endure very high currents and voltages, even though they just look like beads. They are sent a book with pages that are not paper, but a material more like a kind of metal. When they try to drill through one of the beads they can't even scratch it. The transport that takes them to the laboratory is a Douglas DC3 airliner that is pilotless and passengers don't need to wear seatbelts, as if the aircraft can control gravity. Indeed at the start of the film there's an incident where Cal almost crashes a plane he is flying and he is saved by some kind of antigravity ray. Exeter himself and his assistant look strange. They both have large upper heads. To conspiratorial UFOlogists, all the above will sound very familiar. It is reminiscent of the descriptions of debris from the Roswell incident, the idea that aliens are on earth living among us, and that free energy technology that could transform the world for the better is being developed in secret. I wonder where the screenwriters Franklin Coen and Edward G O'Callaghan; and the novelist who inspired them, Raymond F Jones, got their ideas. Were rumours of such exopolitical hot potatoes already circulating in the early 1950's? This Island Earth is well worth watching. It is currently available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCT4xTywUEA.
See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2020/02/ufo-disclosure-portal.html.
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2020/08/free-energy-portal.html.