The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Boring

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The American military is on Operation Experiment in the high arctic. They denote a nuclear bomb which thaws out a gigantic dinosaur. Professor Tom Nesbitt encounters the beast but no one believes him. He is evacuated back home while the beast inevitably moves south. It leaves a trail of destruction and reaches New York City.Everything screams 50's sci-fi B-movie. The story is nothing special. The acting is mostly stiff and so is the directing. That is everything except Ray Harryhausen's work. This is his early stop-motion model animation and it is exquisite. The giant lizard eating the NY policeman is a major signpost in the field of special effects. It is cutting edge work brilliantly done by a fledgling master.

Eugene Lourie's ultra successful monster movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is an amazing watch for its time period. The animations for the real life looking dinosaur is incredible right from the start. I was glued in the initial scenes in the North Atlantic and it held my interest throughout the entire film. The characters and acting were solid and the plot was top notch up until the end. The ending seemed to have a throw away subplot and could have been better in my opinion. I don't discount the film that as being innovating for future monster movies and I sure as heck enjoyed it. Definitely watch The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms!

Messrs. Harryhausen and Bradbury serve up a thoroughly enjoyable dinosaur epic with a reasonable amount of thrills and typically excellent effects work by Harryhausen. It's rather heavy on plot and dialogue for a while, so the less patient of viewers may get a little restless waiting for the next good bit of dinosaur action. However, whatever pacing issues there may be are compensated for with some wonderfully iconic shots & scenes. The lighthouse sequence in particular is a gem.Based on the Saturday Evening Post short story "The Fog Horn" by Bradbury, this tells of an atomic test in the Arctic that unleashes a ferocious rhedosaurus from its icy tomb. It goes about doing just what you'd expect any monster to do in this type of tale, making its way to NYC for the grand finale. Nuclear physicist Tom Nesbitt (Paul Hubschmid), one of the first to glimpse the monster, must convince paleontologist Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway) that he wasn't hallucinating, and also enlists the services of Jack Evans (Kenneth Tobey) in hunting down and destroying this beast.The acting is engaging across the board, with Hubschmid very likable in the lead; Paula Raymond plays his leading lady (fortunately, hints of romance that might slow down the action further are kept to a bare minimum). Intrepid Tobey is once again terrific as the kind of hero you need in such a story, and Kellaway is delightful as the old pro who is willing to put vacation plans on hold in order to participate in a historic expedition. Donald Woods, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Pennick, Frank Ferguson, King Donovan, and an uncredited James Best can be seen among the top notch supporting cast.The exciting amusement park finale is of course the best part, with expert marksman Van Cleef and Hubschmid taking on the beast from atop a roller coaster.Good fun overall.Seven out of 10.

Out of all giant monster flicks made outside of Japan from the '50s, this is probably the one that stands out the most.I'll skip the synopsis since I'm sure people have seen the movie already, and others have commented on it.It's a fantastic movie with very real looking prehistoric dinosaur making its way to New York. It's the first movie of its kind, and is still one of the best. There're very little in this movie that you can point to to say it looks fake which is remarkable for something coming from the '50s. For its ground breaking realism, this movie scores high, and it shows in its popularity still after 60 years.It has already secured its place in the annals of motion picture history, and no doubt its a classic that will be around for a long time to come.