Island City is a science fiction television pilot movie that was aired by Prime Time Entertainment Network in 1994. The film was produced by Lee Rich Productions in association with Lorimar Television. It is the last TV film to be produced by Lorimar after the company shut down in 1993.
Plot: In the future, humanity develops a “fountain of youth” drug, but as many people around the world begin to take it, most begin to mutate into a barbaric proto-humanoid state. The few people immune to this side-effect of the drug band together and live in a futuristic city while the mutants live in the vast wasteland outside its gates. In an effort to save the human race and understand what went wrong, the city sends out research missions in fortified vehicles to bring back mutated humans for research, and to rescue healthy humans. The film focuses on one such squad of soldiers and scientists.
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OUR THOUGHTS:
A forgotten television pilot imagined a future where science conquered aging—and nearly destroyed the human race in the process. Thirty-two years later, ISLAND CITY deserves another look.
By the BEAUX HOMMES Film & Culture Desk
There is a particular kind of science-fiction disaster story that begins with humanity doing something foolish.
Island City begins with humanity doing something completely understandable.
We find a way to stop aging.
And almost everybody says yes.
That is the wonderfully cruel idea at the center of this obscure 1994 science-fiction television movie and intended series pilot, created and written by Jonathan Glassner and directed by Jorge Montesi. It aired on March 2, 1994, and stars Kevin Conroy, Brenda Strong, Eric McCormack, Pete Koch and Constance Marie.
For BEAUX HOMMES readers, Island City is more interesting than its low-profile reputation suggests.
This is a dystopian story about beauty, aging, genetic engineering, desire, government control, family, masculinity, reproduction and the dangerous assumption that scientific progress automatically equals human progress.
In other words, there is quite a lot going on beneath the mutant attacks.
And yes—
We recommend it.
Not because it is a forgotten masterpiece.
Because it is a forgotten idea machine.
THE DISASTER STARTS WITH A MIRACLE
The future of Island City has developed what amounts to a fountain-of-youth treatment.
According to creator Jonathan Glassner, genetic engineering advances far enough to produce an injection that permanently arrests aging. Humanity enthusiastically embraces it. Then, roughly five years later, the terrible side effect appears: the treatment causes most recipients to mutate into violent humanoid creatures. Glassner recalled that about 95 percent of the population was transformed, leaving survivors either genetically resistant to the mutation or people who had refused the treatment entirely.
Civilization collapses.
The surviving population retreats into a fortified settlement—the Island City of the title—while the wasteland beyond its walls belongs largely to mutants.
The city’s soldiers and scientists venture outside to rescue surviving humans, capture mutants for research and try to understand whether anything can be done about the catastrophe. The movie follows one such mission after a member of the team is lost and must be recovered.
That premise alone could sustain years of television.
It almost did.
Glassner has said Island City was conceived as a backdoor pilot and that he wished it had continued as a series; he also recalled that the movie performed well enough financially that he received participation payments, despite the fact that no series followed.
That unrealized future is part of the fascination.
You can watch Island City and feel an entire television universe trying to begin.
THE REAL MONSTER IS VANITY—BUT NOT ONLY VANITY
It would be easy to read the movie as:
“People wanted to stay young, so they deserved what happened.”
That interpretation is too simple.
Who would not be tempted?
Imagine being told that you could remain physically 30, 35 or 40 indefinitely.
No wrinkles.
No declining strength.
No visible aging.
No watching the mirror slowly return a stranger.
BEAUX HOMMES celebrates bodies, beauty and physical confidence, so we are not going to pretend vanity belongs exclusively to somebody else.
We understand the temptation.
That makes Island City more effective.
The disaster begins not with an obviously evil invention, but with something millions of people would desperately want.
Science fiction is often strongest when the audience cannot confidently say:
“I would never have done that.”
Would you take the injection?
Be honest.
BEAUTY BECOMES BIOLOGY
What happens after the catastrophe is even more disturbing.
The surviving society begins regulating reproduction according to genetics. Citizens wear colored crystals that represent their genetic classifications, and compatible pairings are determined according to those categories. The stated purpose is to prevent combinations believed capable of reproducing the mutation that devastated humanity.
Now we have crossed into something darker.
A medical disaster produces a government that believes survival justifies control over who may reproduce with whom.
There is an uncomfortable logic to it.
And that is precisely why dystopias work.
The best authoritarian systems do not begin by announcing:
“We are evil.”
They begin by saying:
“This is necessary.”
For public safety.
For health.
For the children.
For genetic stability.
For the future.
Island City asks what happens when fear of another catastrophe becomes powerful enough to make intimate freedom negotiable.
That question remains relevant far beyond the movie’s relatively modest production values.
WHO OWNS YOUR BODY AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD?
This is where Island City becomes particularly interesting for BEAUX HOMMES readers.
We spend a great deal of cultural energy discussing the body as something personal.
My body.
My health.
My beauty.
My sexuality.
My decisions.
But in a crisis, governments frequently begin treating bodies as resources.
Workers.
Soldiers.
Patients.
Carriers.
Reproductive units.
Genetic material.
The survivors in Island City are valuable partly because there are so few of them.
And scarcity changes the political meaning of the human body.
Suddenly choosing a lover can have implications for species survival.
That creates one of the oldest political conflicts in a new form:
When does the survival of society override the freedom of the individual?
The movie does not fully resolve that question.
Good.
Neither have we.
THE WOMAN WHO STAYED YOUNG
One of the movie’s most provocative subplots involves Brenda Strong’s Dr. Sammy Helding.
Glassner described the character as one of the people who took the youth treatment and therefore remained physically young, while her husband—who refused the injection on moral grounds—continued aging normally and became an elderly man.
Stop there for a moment.
That idea could sustain an entire movie by itself.
Imagine being married to someone you love.
You remain physically 35.
They become 45.
The public sees a young woman and an old man.
But inside the marriage, both remember being the same age.
Who becomes the caretaker?
Does sexual desire survive?
Does resentment?
Does jealousy?
Does the younger-looking spouse feel guilt?
Does the older spouse begin to feel betrayed by time itself?
Science-fiction films frequently become obsessed with enormous machines while ignoring the much more interesting question:
What does the invention do to a marriage?
Island City understands that technology becomes meaningful when it enters a bedroom, a family, a friendship or a human heart.
AGING IS NOT JUST A COSMETIC PROBLEM
Our culture frequently talks about aging as though it were a design flaw.
Creams.
Procedures.
Hormones.
Supplements.
Surgery.
Training.
Hair restoration.
Filters.
Retouching.
And, increasingly, serious scientific research into longevity.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to remain healthy, strong or attractive.
At BEAUX HOMMES, we actively encourage people to care for themselves.
But Island City reminds us that there is an enormous philosophical difference between extending healthy life and deciding aging itself is something civilization must eliminate.
Aging structures human relationships.
Parents age.
Children become adults.
Generations turn over.
Power changes hands.
New artists replace old ones.
Young people rebel.
Older people remember.
Take away biological aging and you do not simply remove wrinkles.
You potentially restructure civilization.
That is why longevity is such rich science-fiction territory.
KEVIN CONROY WITHOUT THE CAPE
The film’s central authority figure is Colonel Tom Valdoon, played by Kevin Conroy. Modern audiences overwhelmingly associate Conroy with his legendary voice performances as Batman, but Island City gives us the less commonly remembered live-action Conroy leading a futuristic rescue unit.
And there is something enjoyable about seeing him occupy this world.
Conroy naturally projects command.
He has the seriousness necessary for a character living inside a civilization that could collapse again at any moment.
The characters are not exploring a comfortable utopia.
They are guardians of what may be humanity’s final organized refuge.
That means leadership cannot simply be charismatic.
Every mistake potentially costs part of the species.
ERIC McCORMACK BEFORE WILL & GRACE
Another fascinating piece of television archaeology is the presence of Eric McCormack, several years before Will & Grace, playing Greg 23.
There is something pleasurable about watching actors before the role that eventually defines them.
You see different possibilities.
Different casting.
Different career trajectories.
For aspiring performers, that is worth remembering.
The job you become famous for may not resemble the work you are doing now.
Careers are strange.
Science fiction knows this.
So does Hollywood.
VIRTUAL REALITY BEFORE IT BECAME ORDINARY
Island City also contains virtual-reality technology integrated into daily life.
One subplot involves a child using VR both for education and to simulate experiences with his absent father. The technology also contains parental restrictions controlling what material a young user can access.
In 1994, virtual reality remained largely futuristic imagery for mainstream television audiences.
Today we immediately recognize the questions.
Should children have unrestricted access?
Can simulated experiences substitute for absent people?
Who controls virtual environments?
What happens when fantasy becomes emotionally preferable to reality?
Can an artificial memory provide genuine comfort?
The hardware looks dated.
The question does not.
That is one of the pleasures of watching older science fiction.
Sometimes the prediction looks ridiculous.
Sometimes the prediction has simply become your Tuesday afternoon.
THE CITY AND THE WASTELAND
Visually, Island City works with one of dystopian science fiction’s most reliable oppositions:
Civilization inside. Chaos outside.
The city represents control, science, order and survival.
Beyond the walls waits ruined civilization and violent mutation.
That division gives artists and designers a very clear visual grammar.
Clean versus broken.
Structured versus wild.
Protected versus exposed.
Human versus transformed.
But the clever part is that the supposedly civilized city contains its own disturbing compromises.
The wasteland’s violence is obvious.
The city’s control is polite.
That contrast is more interesting.
A monster chasing you through ruins is easy to recognize as dangerous.
A bureaucracy telling you whom you may love because your genetic crystal is the wrong color?
That danger comes with paperwork.
A LESSON FOR BEAUX HOMMES ARTISTS
Creative people should look beyond whether every 1994 effect still convinces.
Ask instead:
What is the visual idea?
A protected human enclave surrounded by a ruined world.
Color-coded genetic identity worn directly on the body.
Youthful people living beside naturally aged people.
Fortified expeditions entering mutant territory.
Virtual worlds existing inside a collapsing real one.
Those are strong concepts.
Artists frequently confuse production value with imagination.
They are not the same.
A $200 million film can contain boring design.
A television pilot can contain an idea worth stealing—not literally, but creatively—for thirty years.
Island City proves that one bold concept can generate costumes, architecture, social rules, vehicles, relationships and stories.
That is world-building.
THE BODY AS HORROR
There is another reason the film belongs in our Summer of Sci-Fi conversation.
The catastrophe literally transforms the human body.
The promised ideal body—
young forever—
becomes the monstrous body.
That reversal is wonderfully cruel.
Human beings attempt to control nature.
Nature responds by making them physically unrecognizable.
The same injection that promised permanent beauty produces mutation.
For figure artists, photographers and designers, that creates a fascinating conceptual pair:
idealization and distortion.
Artists have always done both.
Classical sculpture exaggerates toward perfection.
Body horror exaggerates toward nightmare.
Both require understanding how audiences read the human form.
Before a distorted body can disturb us, we have to know what the body was supposed to be.
THIS IS ALSO A STORY ABOUT MUSCLE
Interestingly, contemporary descriptions of the movie characterized the mutants as physically powerful, violent humans produced by the serum. A 1994 newspaper description summarized the catastrophe as a youth serum turning many people into “musclebound psychotics.”
For a magazine that spends plenty of time admiring muscular bodies, that gives us an irresistible contradiction.
Muscle does not equal civilization.
A powerful physique says very little about the morality, intelligence or humanity of the person occupying it.
Strength can protect.
Strength can destroy.
The interesting question is always:
Who is directing it?
BEAUX HOMMES loves muscle.
But our readers know the slogan by now:
A great body gets attention.
A great mind gives it meaning.
WHAT ISLAND CITY GETS RIGHT ABOUT DYSTOPIA
The most compelling dystopias rarely contain only one problem.
Island City understands that catastrophe creates secondary systems.
The youth drug produces mutation.
Mutation produces collapse.
Collapse produces fortified cities.
Fortified cities produce militarization.
Genetic danger produces reproductive regulation.
Loss produces virtual substitutes.
Scarcity changes relationships.
Longevity changes marriage.
One invention causes an entire chain of cultural consequences.
That is excellent science-fiction thinking.
Do not merely invent the technology.
Ask what happens next.
Then ask what happens because that happened.
Keep going.
Eventually you have a world.
WHY WASN’T THIS A SERIES?
That may be the most frustrating part.
Because Island City clearly behaves like a beginning.
Jonathan Glassner later said directly that the movie was designed as a backdoor pilot and that he would have loved to continue the world as a series. He remembered it as a project that performed well but nevertheless did not receive a series order.
You can imagine where it might have gone.
Mutant societies evolving outside the walls.
Genetic factions within the city.
Political conflict over reproduction.
People hiding incompatible relationships.
Black markets for youth treatments.
Naturally aging citizens challenging permanently young ones.
Scientific factions arguing over whether the mutants should be cured, studied or destroyed.
Children born after the disaster questioning the rules created by frightened adults.
And perhaps the most intriguing possibility:
What if the mutants were not simply monsters?
What if some were changing again?
The series never got the opportunity to answer.
That makes watching the pilot strangely bittersweet.
WHY BEAUX HOMMES READERS SHOULD WATCH
Watch Island City because it is an artifact from a period when syndicated and network television was experimenting aggressively with science fiction.
Watch because Kevin Conroy is always worth watching.
Watch because seeing an early Eric McCormack is fun.
Watch Brenda Strong’s unusual marriage subplot and think about what immortality would actually do to love.
Watch the mutant material as body horror.
Watch the genetic matching system as political dystopia.
Watch the virtual reality material as a piece of technological prediction.
And watch because imperfect science fiction can sometimes be more stimulating than polished science fiction.
A flawless movie tells you what it accomplished.
An ambitious failure sometimes makes you imagine everything it could have become.
For creative people, that can be even more valuable.
THE QUESTION THE FILM LEAVES US WITH
Suppose tomorrow a pharmaceutical company announced:
One injection. You will stop visibly aging.
The treatment has passed every available test.
Millions of people are taking it.
Celebrities are taking it.
Athletes are taking it.
Your friends are taking it.
Your partner wants it.
Do you?
And if you refuse—
what happens twenty years from now when everyone around you still looks 35?
That is where Island City gets you.
Not with the mutants.
With the temptation.
BEAUX HOMMES VERDICT
★★★½ out of five
Island City is not lost Kubrick.
It is something perhaps more lovable:
an ambitious 1990s television science-fiction pilot absolutely overflowing with ideas.
Some concepts are better developed than others.
Some visuals announce their era.
And because it was intended to launch a continuing series, parts of the story feel deliberately unfinished.
But we would rather watch ambitious science fiction that reaches for six ideas than safe science fiction that reaches for none.
Island City gives us eternal youth, mutation, genetic regulation, military rescue missions, virtual reality, unusual marriages and a surviving civilization trying desperately to decide what “human” still means.
That is plenty to discuss after the credits.
And for BEAUX HOMMES, the warning could hardly be more appropriate:
Love beauty.
Protect your body.
Stay strong.
But before somebody promises to make you young forever—
read the side effects.
BEAUX HOMMES — SUMMER OF SCI-FI
Bodies. Beauty. Culture. The Future.
www.beauxhommes.com