20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
When the first manned flight to Venus returns to Earth, the rocket crash-lands in the Mediterranean near a small Italian fishing village. The locals manage to save one of the astronauts Colonel Calder, the mission commander. A young boy also recovers what turns out to be a specimen of an alien creature. Growing at a fantastic rate, it manages to escape and eventually threatens the city of Rome.
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Simply A Masterpiece
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
A spaceship crashes off the coast of Italy. It's an American mission to Venus which has returned carrying a creature. A local boy retrieves a canister which contains that creature. It grows in size until the American military captures it and brings it to Rome.This is a simple black and white sci-fi movie. It is strictly B-movie acting and writing. The only greatness comes from Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation. His creature is terrific. Harryhausen would move on with colored films such as "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" in 1958. This one stalls whenever the creature isn't on the screen but the creature does have plenty of screen time. The fight with the elephant is fun. While there are some military equipment, their action doesn't have the intensity except for the creature.
This is a nice example of the fifties monster movie. Like "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" and "The Giant Behemoth," we have a lizard like thing that hatches and launches and attack on Rome. William Hopper (Hedda's boy and Perry Mason's investigator) is the central figure here. While the plot is pedestrian, Ray Harreyhausen's monster is a sight to behold. With stop action animation, it squirms and writhes as it tries to dominate its new habitat. You have to feel sorry for these guys. They are merely acting like wild animals (although the propensity for knocking down buildings seems to be a problem). Anyway, as the creature gets bigger and bigger, we watch it to its climax atop the Rome Coliseum.
(63%) As far as 1950's monster movies go that deliver plenty of mayhem, carnage, and fun then this is one of the very best of the lot. Absent are long drawn out dry scenes usually found in these movies slowing everything down that aren't really needed, and instead in its place the pacing is quite swift with the monster actually being present on screen for a good degree of screen time. The plot is simple stuff centred around an Italian boy selling off an alien egg found washed up on the beach, and the resulting ever growing lizard monster on the loose causing havoc wraps up the plot. All fans of monster movies need to give this a look for the sheer entertainment value.
Nathan Juran directed this science fiction story starring William Hopper as a returning astronaut commanding the first spaceship to Venus, which crashes into the sea of Sicily. Onboard was a local creature, called an Ymir, which was freed from its container by a curious child who had found it onshore, then proceeds to grow to giant size, terrorizing the countryside, then heading to Rome. Joan Taylor plays a nurse and potential love interest, who helps treat the creature when it is captured, though of course it escapes... Ray Harryhausen's F/X are excellent, but it is the sympathetic portrayal of the Ymir that makes this film memorable, certainly not the contrived and predictable story! That poor creature is just out of its element, and would never have grown that large in its native atmosphere.