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.