***20 Million Miles to Earth is a science fiction monster movie from the Fifties, made more charming and more exciting by the fact that it dispenses with the typical "guy in a rubber monster suit" in favor of really impressive stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen, the pioneer, and legend in this field. (To slightly misquote Stephen King's seminal nonfiction study of horror, Danse Macabre, Harryhausen use to "pal around with a guy named Ray Bradbury" when he was a kid.")
A rocketship crashes off the coast of Sicily. It was an American expedition to Venus, and there is only one survivor, Captain Robert Calder (William Hopper). A young boy in love with American western movies, Pepe (Bart Bradley), the son of the fisherman that helped rescue Calder, finds a weird tube-like device with a curious, gelatinous blob floating within. Taking it to a zoologist, he sells it to him and his soon-to-be-a-doctor daughter, Marisa, who has no accent (played by Joan Taylor). Taylor oversees Calder's recovery, and the two are doomed to a stormy love affair as a subplot. Calder claims he knows what killed his fellow crewman (the ship itself was struck by a meteor), and he has GOT to find that cylinder. Because, apparently it contains the Ymir, which is a thing from Venus that grows to ENORMOUS dimensions.
Marisa's grandfather finds that out, when it hatches from its jello-like egg and is at first, just a scaly, upright reptilian, or wingless dragon. But smaller than a few feet. Overnight though, it begins its monstrous, Godzilla-sized journey from tabletop terror to tower-crushing pteranodon (whatever the hell that is).
(The stop-motion effects, I might add, though crude by modern standards, are virtually flawless. One can almost FEEL the hours of painstaking work it must have taken to move the little jointed model ever so slightly between pictures.)
At any rate, the Ymir escapes the back of the good doctor's truck, and goes on an eating binge (goats, sheep, and other livestock I presume), reminding one of the Chupacabra. At this point, the AMERICANS have made it to Sicily to retrieve their man and the monster he's brought back from space, they (Calder and Ymir) have a duel in a barn, and the ever-growing beast is captured.
Somewhat illogically, they keep him chained to a table and pumped full of volts of electricity...but not too much. A certain voltage, you see, keeps him docile. Too much, though, and it's like crystal meth for ymirs. Of course, the inevitable happens, and the power goes out. Giant Ymir breaks free from his chains, and the rest is a little like a Godzilla picture. Except, Godzilla was fat, slow, and lumbering as he stomped around, breathed radioactive fire, and destroyed tabletop Tokyo. By contrast, the Ymir is animated (literally), buff, badass, and ready to rumble. Illogically, again, supposedly he has "no heart or lungs" (curious since his chest seems to move up and down with respiration), and "bullets do not affect him." (I have yet to see something, anything that couldn't be blasted into tiny fragments if enough firepower were applied to it.)
At any rate, the military is called in for the finale, as Ymir goes about hurling huge chunks of granite and concrete, and generally making a disaster movie of things. This is an entertaining picture for the kids still sitting in the peanut gallery.
20 Million Miles to Earth (also known as: "The Beast From Space") is one of the best of the Fifties monster movies, and reportedly, it was one of Ray Harryhausen's personal favorites. For that reason alone, it's worth the relatively short run-time. And that lashing, reptoid tail is a real turn-on, I must say.
20 Million Miles to Earth can be viewed on YouTube
About the Creator
Tom Baker
Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com
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