This Island Earth (1955)

Two attractive scientists are kidnapped and taken on a joyride to another planet by their alien employer. His home world is so desperately out of resources they need the inferior humans to help them improve their power supply. But time is running out and it may be too late!

This first encounter with an alien species is an acid trip in vivid 3-strip Technicolor, but dry and unemotional like an Arthur C Clark epic. The actors stand around explaining things to each other while molecule sculptures blink and rotate like a moderne chandelier run amok. A large psychedelic console unit, the Interocitor, is a videophone, autopilot, and death ray all-in-one. At one point the spaceship is attacked by triangles that hurl sparkling balls at them, but they escape. Then they are attacked by a deranged slave bug, but they escape. Etc, etc. Occasionally the aliens strike a pose like the Abraham Lincoln statue, making them seem aloof and too preoccupied to get emotionally involved.

There aren’t any surprises here and that’s the surprise. It’s oddly refreshing to watch a sci-fi drama without the cliches, no sassy mouthed princess…, no wild west gunslinger or WW1 pilot…, no druids…. What you get is pure ’50s science fiction adventure that slowly unfolds from the mundane, to the mysterious, to the monumental as our stunned Earthling tourists witness the death of an alien civilization!