Harryhausen's Meditteranean Monster

20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I've been a fan of Ray Harryhausen since I was a kid, especially the sights of stop-motion animation in everything from "Jason and the Argonauts" and its dueling skeletons, to the rampaging dinosaur in "Valley of the Gwangi" to all those mythological creatures come to life in "Clash of the Titans." So I approached and received the same wild-eyed pop enthusiasm from "20 Million Miles to Earth" as I had from Harryhausen's previous work. It is a terrific ride of a movie

The opening scenes of this movie have an EC comics feel. A Sicilian kid named Pepe (Bart Braverman, "Match Game" fans rejoice) helps his father rescue a couple of astronauts inside a crash-landed spaceship, which had just made a trip to Venus and was on its return voyage back to Earth. While on shore and nursing them back to health, Pepe finds a cylinder that he decides to open and touches some jelly-like substance in it. It turns out to be an alien creature's fetus (known as the Ymir, the film's original title) that proportionally grows in size and strength. Need I say more?

The last surviving member of the Venus trip is Col. Robert Calder, who is seemingly stoically played by William Hopper. I say seemingly because the screenplay does occasionally allow him to be animated and humorous. One particular example is when Calder tries to woo a scientist's daughter (Joan Taylor) with thoughts of a nice dinner and wine. How sweet! But who has time for lovemaking when Calder and the U.S. and Sicilian goverments have to trap this destructive creature. Sulfur might help! Dogs and elephants might not!

"20 Million Miles to Earth" could've been the cheesiest and silliest monster movie ever. However, it has a charm and an innocence that resonates with its peculiar aspect of adding a monster to the most romantic environment in the Meditteranean Sea. That and peppering the movie with the scene-stealing tyke Bart Braverman, who only wants a few hundred lira and a cowboy hat from Texas for his scientific discovery, adds some excitement for kids who probably wish they would've found a cylinder like the one he finds (but a warning label should've been attached to it). The monster is believable enough and causes enough destruction to almost ape King Kong's own methods (he even battles an elephant in a scene that could have yielded laughs but its primitiveness makes it more thrilling).

So with astounding direction by the late Nathan H. Juran (an accomplished fantasy and science-fiction director known for "Attack of the 50 ft. Woman") and bravura touches of humanity and humor in equal doses by William Hopper and Bart Braverman, "20 Million Miles to Earth" is pretty damn exciting and thrilling enough for anyone who is a fan of monster movies and Ray Harryhausen.

The Lost World of Native Americans

THE EXILES (1961)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

 

When a lost film is rediscovered, it is always a pleasure, like unearthing a treasure that has only ripened with age. "The Exiles" is a rare treat of a film, a near-documentary expose of Native Americans living in the sordid sections of L.A. in the late 1950's.

By sordid, I do mean seemingly run-down, beaten paths of streets that are often seen at night bathed in neon signs and decorated with cigar shops and bars in every corner. That is not to say that the section of downtown L.A. shown in the film called Bunker Hill is sordid, but it has the look of noirish city streets with no end in sight, especially the tunnel that looks almost uninviting. I am sure that this is all by design since the story, centering on a group of Native Americans who reside in the city to get away from the reservation, seems to indicate a land of no exit, no hope and complete despair wrapped around a liquor bottle.

This group looks like young American adults with shaven faces, pressed shirts, nice convertibles, slicked back hair and an appetite for a night life of uncontrollable boozing, rock and roll music and scoring with women. The film plays like an existentialist version of "American Graffiti" in its evocation of a life with no meaning since these guys have no ambition, no goals. Yet, interestingly, they are aware of their place as dictated by voice-overs - they all sound like guys with a Mike Hammer fixation on an uncaring world. Heck, these Native Americans were exiled by the white man, forced to live in reservations, and now they leave it behind for, in a word, nothing.

One man seems to implicitly lose his patience with the world he lives in. That is Homer, a young, stocky Native American who never seems to get too drunk. He has a brief moment where he receives a letter and a picture from his parents who are still living in a reservation. There is a tinge of sadness to this, as if Homer is realizing there is more to living than drinking and women. That realization may or may not have a lasting impact on him.

Yvonne Williams is Homer's wife, and she is pregnant. She is the only character to express any measure of hope, particularly with her unborn son. She has no communication with Homer whatsoever - he simply waits for her to iron his shirts and fry his pork chops.

Beautifully shot in black-and-white by Erik Daarstad, Robert Kaufman and John Morrill and tinged with much despair and tension, "The Exiles" is a unique and tantalizing picture, a forerunner to films like "Mean Streets" and John Cassevettes films. Though it never got a proper theatrical release in 1961, it can now be placed in the real context of American cinematic equivalents to the French New Wave (just ahead of Cassevettes' own debut, "Shadows"). Stunningly directed by Kent MacKenzie, "The Exiles" has no real conventional narrative thrust - it sort of exists as an observation of lives lost in a city with boundaries that do not allow for freedom as one might ironically find in a reservation. At one point, the wild and unruly group find themselves on a hill (known as Hill X) chanting and beating drums only to be later followed by more fighting, boozing and a near-rape. And the final devastating scene of Yvonne peering through her bedroom window will leave you haunted for days. "The Exiles" is an essential and lasting masterpiece.