Excellent, but Flawed

In another thread, I made the statement about TIE:

"Excellent, but Flawed" and gave my review rating of 9/10
(nine stars out of ten).

In response to those who contacted me, and wanted to know why I said this,
here is my explanation of my statement:

By flawed I meant that the film needed a bit of polish to the script to eliminate flaws, and more support from Universal's executive offices that it didn't get, in order to be the flawless classic it could have been.

A good example is the script line 'ivyandstone' has quoted me: flaws in the dialogue:

Exeter says, "Ruth, don't tell me that as a woman you're not curious about our destination?"

I have a copy of the final shooting script, and the words 'as a woman' were lined out, stricken from the page, yet this line remains as spoken in the movie. This line was a put-down of women, and the director wanted it out, but someone made a mistake and didn't line it out in Jeff Morrow's script, which he showed me, where it remains, so he spoke it as written and it remained in the film due to a tight shooting schedule.

Exeter should have said,

"Ruth, don't tell me that you're not curious about our destination?"

There were other misogynistic comments in the script that were noted to be removed, but were not, such as when

Cal says to Ruth, "You were awful sissy about that icy water", and "Still a sissy!"
Very rude and inappropriate comments for a scientist to make to a research colleague, in spite of them having dated before.

There was nothing wrong with the special visual effects, which were and remain superb, even by today's standards, except for the world globe, and final scene in the picture.

That brings up an interesting point: A Clash of Wills at Universal Pictures:

David Stanley Horsley was the supervisor of the visual effects work, with Roswell A. Hoffman as his assistant (whom I personally met and interviewed in 1982) and Hoffman told me that the front office was annoyed with Horsley (who was a genius, and a perfectionist) because he was taking too long to complete the visual effects work.
Horsley took almost exactly one year to do the visual effects work, from January 1954 to January 1955, creating many new techniques along the way which are still used in the industry today, but in 1955 were ground-breaking effects.

Edward Muhl was the Universal Studios boss, the movie mogul in the front office, who was in charge of the entire studio. Muhl's idea of a science fiction movie was a cheaply made black & white B-movie with an effective scary monster in it, for the kids and teenagers, with a budget of about $250,000 to $500,000 tops in 1950s dollars. When Muhl looked over the proposed production budget for TIE, which was on Universal's A-List of productions, and was NOT a B-movie, he nearly choked on his cigar:

$750,000 minimum - $1 Million maximum.

He was angry and incensed, and sent off a memo to the producer, William Alland, ordering him to keep the costs down to the bare minimum. However, in January 1955, when the picture was supposed to be completed in a rough cut, Horsley was still working on the visual effects. Herman Stein, who was the main composer of the music score, whom I knew from my 1986 interview with him to his passing on March 15, 2007, told me that the music score was completed and was recorded by the Universal Studio Orchestra (a 40-piece orchestra) on January 11 and 12, 1955. Joseph Gershenson was the conductor (he was the Universal Studios Music Director and was a very powerful man at the studio in the 1950s - he was the only person who received screen credit for the music on this picture, and many others which had nameless composers), and he was very annoyed when Horsley wasn't finished, because the way the studio worked in the old days before 1968, was all the department heads had to get their footage assembled into a rough cut for the editor before it went to the music department to have the soundtrack music recorded (which was always one of the last pieces of the film to be added).

Gershenson went into Muhl's executive office and complained that Horsley wasn't finished and the rough cut was missing scenes which were shown onscreen in the workprint by lengths of black film leader. How can he score to blank film? he said to Muhl.

Muhl ordered Horsley into his office and fired him on the spot. Horsley, in his own defense, said he had one more week to go to finish the effects work. Muhl said to Horsley, "You're finished. Clear out your desk. I want you off the studio lot today!"

This shattered Horsley, who had been in charge of the Universal Pictures Special Photographic Department since 1946, when he took it over from the legendary John P. Fulton, as Fulton's assistant. Fulton had quit to go to work for Paramount under Cecil B. DeMille, and Fulton is the one who created the awesome visual effects for DeMille's greatest epics SAMSON AND DELILAH
(1949), THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952) and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956).

Horsley only worked sporadically as an independent artist on other pictures after that, his best known effort being Edward Small's imitation of Ray Harryhausen fantasy pictures, JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1962), and retired in 1966, and ended up an alcoholic drunk when he died in 1976 after crashing his car into a fence. Muhl had shattered his confidence as an artist.

Horsley should have, by all rights, been nominated in the 1955 Academy Awards for Best Special Visual Effects. He was not, and TIE was not nominated, due to Academy pressure from Muhl's office not to recognize or acknowledge Horsley's incredible work on TIE. The only nominations were Walt Disney's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and George Pal's CONQUEST OF SPACE, and Disney's film was the winner. It was a real shame. However, the Academy gave Horsley a "back door" Oscar Award, a Technical Achievement Oscar for his "Linear Accelerator" which was used to show the flying saucer moving through space in TIE. So, the picture DID win ONE award! And it was HIS!

However, being fired from a major studio was a catastrophe for Horsley, and he never got over it. Horsley's father, David Horsley Sr., had co-founded Universal Pictures with the original founder, Carl Laemmle Sr. in 1915. Horsley was like studio royalty, and being deposed from his position was a disgrace he could not bear.

So, in January 1955, Edward Muhl, who saw red when he noted that the budget on TIE had reached a record $800,000. ordered the cinematographer on TIE, Clifford Stine, ASC, who had a lot of special visual effects experience himself, to complete the effects work, which was the final scene in the movie. Stine took 3 days to do it, as opposed to Horsley's "one week" Horsley had planned, with his assistants Roswell Hoffman and Charlie Baker, to show the flying saucer, suspended on a nearly invisible wire, to plunge into the ocean, a studio water tank prepared for the scene.

Stine didn't have time to set that up properly, so he simply put a large squib (a big sponge soaked in creosote oil, a highly flammable substance), on the wire, set at a 45-degree angle, anchored at the bottom of the water tank. He set up the shot, and ordered Charlie Baker to set it on fire, and then the flaming squib was propelled down the wire into the water at high speed to simulate the flying saucer burning up as it plunged into the Pacific Ocean. Then a dissolve was made to a giant yellow sulphur cloud by Charlie Baker and printed by Roswell Hoffman. Then the titles department put the end title over that, and the picture was finished. But the last shot in the movie doesn't really work, it isn't very realistic or believable. If you don't see the outline of the saucer, it spoils the effect. So this is the only flawed effects shot in the whole picture, and it was done by Stine, NOT Horsley.

So what did Muhl do? He congratulated Stine, and promoted him to supervisor of the Universal Special Photographic Dept. as Horsley's replacement. Stine remained in that position for over ten years until retiring in 1966. Stine had worked on the Universal sci-fi pictures IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) and THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) both in 3-D, and had supervised the 3-D camera work under David S. Horsley's special visual effects supervision. Hoffman remained at the studio doing the same work in the same department until his retirement in 1974, after a full 50 years of work at Universal.

Hoffman's final film work was on EARTHQUAKE (1974) which the studio made only by calling Clifford Stine out of retirement to supervise the amazing visual effects work on that picture. Curiously, Horsley was not called, even after Hoffman brought up his name in a studio conference when the picture was in pre-production.

Hoffman told me that the studio was very annoyed with Horsley over THIS ISLAND EARTH in 1955, and that's why he and the picture were not nominated for an Oscar, and it was a damn shame because Horsley was a brilliant artist and visual effects technician who was trained by John P. Fulton. Hoffman told me he had nothing but the utmost respect for Horsley, who was a master craftsman. The studio really should have spent at least $1 Million on the picture, and then by bragging about it in advertising. As it was, the studio had bragging rights to show "2-1/2 Years In The Making!" on the movie posters of THIS ISLAND EARTH. They could easily have spent a little more time and money on it and declared "3 Years in the Making at a cost of over a Million Dollars!"

But in the 1950s, science fiction was a new genre, mostly low-budget B-movies, and it would remain for another studio, MGM, to make the first big-budget sci-fi blockbuster, FORBIDDEN PLANET, released the following year in 1956, which cost a record $4.5 Million to make. And FORBIDDEN PLANET was nominated for Best Special Visual Effects for 1956, but lost to John P. Fulton in Cecil B. DeMille's TEN COMMANDMENTS.

So that's why, even though THIS ISLAND EARTH is a great film, an important film, it is a flawed masterpiece. The script needed some careful editing, which it did not get, and the effects work was tampered with by the studio. Also, the studio would have benefited on this picture by hiring a scientific consultant, since the scientific jargon in the picture doesn't really make sense, and isn't based on real science - ask any scientist "What is the Thermal Barrier?" and you will get a blank stare. And Metaluna turning into a radioactive sun - highly unlikely that any planet would turn into a sun unless they are gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn, ignited by atomic explosions. This event in the film is more poetry than science, as Exeter so eloquently puts it - "yes...a sun...giving light to those who may need it."
I will give Horsley and the art directors, Alexander Golitzen and Richard H. Riedel, high marks for their incredibly awesome and realistic depiction of the planet Metaluna, with the elaborate settings and matte paintings, background art, and the superscience of the advanced race of Metalunans. I especially love the ultra-art-deco design of the flying saucer, inside and out, the decompression tubes, and the whirling, colorful atom-structure on the bridge of the saucer and in the Monitor's throne room on Metaluna - Amazing!

However, the effects work is uneven because the Earth doesn't look realistic in the film - it's missing its cloud cover, and was a prop borrowed from the Universal Title Department where it was used as the world globe that spins in the Universal-International screen logo. Chesley Bonestell got it right in all the George Pal movies, DESTINATION MOON (1950), WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951), WAR OF THE WORLDS(1953), and CONQUEST OF SPACE (1955). Why didn't Universal take note of this? It's the only thing I can fault Horsley on.

That's why, in the final analysis, I give the film a 9 out of 10.

Dejael