Could this be the greatest poster ever? Were drugs involved? This little beauty was made for the Christmas 1956 West German premier of This Island Earth, and it gives the film’s famous Metaluna Mutant—one of moviedom’s greatest monsters—the starring role it amply deserves. The “science” part of this sci-fi epic involved iterociters, voltarators, astroscopes, and lots of other made-up devices. The fiction part involved the usual Earthly takeover plot, headquartered on an alien planet where the weather outside was truly frightful. But in our humble opinion the movie is all about the monster. True, the creature had its flaws. It moved kind of slowly. It had claws like a lobster where hands would have been so much more useful. Oh, and it didn’t have a skull. Which is all well and good, as long as you’re adept at ducking, which, alas, it wasn’t. But flawed or not, this monster, and this film, are what mid-century sci-fi was all about. Glory, glory Metaluna!