Metaluna Mutant

Every year toy companies make hundreds of action figures. This is one of them. From the classic film of the 1950s, This Island Earth, NECA presents the definitive Metaluna Mutant! Praised for its special effects and vivid use of Technicolor, the sci-fi film sees several scientists embark on a strange and suspenseful journey involving distant planets at war with each other. Just like Van Helsing, that bio is about the movie, not the character. Fix your work, NECA, dang! This Island Earth was based on a novel (originally serialized in Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine), but the Metaluna Mutant wasn't part of it; that was something added for the movie, entirely at the insistance of producer William Alland - neither the writer nor the actors were fans of its inclusion, finding it cheap and silly. And yet today, the Metaluna Mutant is the only thing This Island Earth is known for. Like the Gill-Man (and, amazingly, Mr. Hyde), the Metaluna Mutant was designed by Millicent Patrick - at least, she started on it, but then The Creature from the Black Lagoon opened to great acclaim, with Universal Studios sending her on a publicity tour to promote both the movie and her work. This made the attention-hogging head of the makeup department, Bud Westmore, jealous, and he fired her, leaving others to carry out her design. According to the movie's main alien contact, Exeter, Mutants are artificially engineered creatures bred for menial work, not dissimilar to Earth insects. Is that why everybody in the movie constantly pronounces it as "Myoot-ANT"? Obviously its most prominent feature is the large, exposed brain that would go on to inspire other characters in the future, but there's also the distinctive shell or exoskeleton or whatever that is, with big visible veins and what may or may not be muscle fiber wrapping around the chest. While the upper body is definitely an interesting alien design, the lower body is less so: the Metaluna Mutant quite famously looks like it's wearing pants. Just regular pants. Originally it was going to have legs that matched the arms, but the effects department couldn't get them to work right, and with the deadline nigh, they just gave the Mutant pants instead. Gee, maybe you shouldn't have fired the woman who knew what she was doing, Bud. The feet do at least get two big claws, just like the hands have, but you can't help but wonder what might have been. This Island Earth was Universal's first sci-fi movie in color, which is why the Mutant looks the way it does: it was originally going to be brown and yellow, but since it was only going to be seen in a dirt cave and on the silver spaceship, they changed it to the more familiar blue and red to really make that Technicolor process "pop"! Usually merchandise makes those colors super vibrant, but that's not how they actually looked in the film - John Wardell has chosen muted tones that more accurately match the real design. If you're used to seeing the Mutant in neon colors, this may look dull to you, but if you want to mix him with his Universal Monster brethren, you'll be happy. One of the complaints actor Rex Reason had about the inclusion of the Metaluna Mutant was that it didn't fit in with the rest of the movie: "you could tell immediately that this was just a stuntman in a bug uniform." That's particularly true of the arms, which have an extra joint in them that is just painfully obvious that it's where Regis Parton's hands are, with the suit extending way beyond them. You know how when a character in a movie or TV show loses a hand and gets a hook, and then that arm is noticably longer and has an unnatural bend to it? It's like that, but with the flimsy excuse that this is supposed to be an alien. Okay, then why's it just in the arms and not the legs? Those extra joints mean extra articulation, and that's even before you consider the fact both claws on each hand are hinged. The carapace over the shoulders limits those a bit, but it is a separate piece that's glued into his back, and is made of PVC, so it can flex at least a little. And Thomas Gwyn made sure the skin beneth it is sculpted with a full texture, too! The figure doesn't include any accessories, because the character doesn't use any. When Diamond Select made their version, it included an Interocitor, the state of the art in soft-serve technology, but here we don't even get a photo of one on the backdrop behind the figure. We do at least get a second, alternate noggin, this one shown with the massive head wound the movie's otherwise-inactive "hero" gave it in his one moment of activity, bravely clobbering it from behind with a fire extinguisher. The creature's blood was originally going to be blue, but the paint stained the rubber of the costume and so would require repainting the suit between takes. Instead, they ended up just using literal ketchup, because that could wash off easily. This Island Earth found its way back into theaters in 1996 when it became the subject for Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Unfortunately, Gramercy Pictures (a collaboration between Universal and Polygram that served as Universal's "prestige" label) had two movies coming out that summer, and needed to decide which one they would put the full force of their (meager) promotional department behind; MST3K lost out, and Barb Wire won. If you can consider that "winning." As Kevin Smith said in regards to how Gramercy handled Mallrats, "they couldn't market their way out of a paper bag"; Gramercy insisted on the host segments having a running plot, on the movie being shorter than a regular episode, and on fewer riffs with less obscure jokes - in other words, "making things worse." And yet because they put the movie in so few actual theaters, it had the highest per-theater average for its opening weekend, more than twice the next closest film. Imagine what it could have done if anyone not directly involved in the making of the film had known it existed! As a story, This Island Earth influenced things as wide-ranging as The Last Starfighter, the Coneheads, and Marvel's Kree/Skrull War; as a movie, This Island Earth is entirely overshadowed by the Metaluna Mutant, a creature which only appears for 92 seconds of screentime. We're a bit sad Diamond Select didn't make a Minimates set when they had the Universal Monsters license - you know, Cal, Ruth, Exeter, and a Mutant, along with an Interocitor prop - but right now NECA's made the best Mut-Ant possible. -- 11/09/25 Have you ever actually seen This Island Earth? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.