This Island Earth

I saw the movie on video tape years ago. I sat there with a friend watching it. The box in the video store talked about how many years it took them to produce. It was a big budget science fiction epic in its day. Rex Reason said he was pleased that it was the subject of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. It inspired the Coneheads on Saturday Night Live. Aliens walk around with big heads and no one notices, or at least no one has the bad taste to mention it.

But it wasn't quite as entertaining as you'd think.

Rex Reason plays a scientist who goes to secret lab in Georgia where other scientists are working for the aliens. The day he arrives, the aliens are ordered to blow up their lab and return to their home planet. Reason and his scientist ex-girlfriend are taken aboard the flying saucer. They fly to their home planet which takes very little time. They're only there a few minutes. The planet is about to be destroyed so they jump back on the flying saucer and head back to Earth.

Reason is the main character, but he's simply dragged from place to place. Hell, I could do that. He watches helplessly as his girlfriend is attacked by a giant insect-like mutant. When he's finally able to run to her rescue, the mutant has died on his own.

Someone noted that it was pro-nuclear.

Rex Reason should have beaten up a few aliens.