À des millions de kilomètres de la Terre

The moment the film begins it draws the viewer into its story about a US mission to Venus that brings back a specimen of a creature that grows at an incredibly rapid rate in Earth's atmosphere. The creature is like nothing else ever before on screen with its lizard-like human head and human torso, and dinosaur like legs and tail. The story naturally concentrates on capturing this creature before it destroys Italy. Like other monster films where the monsters are the sympathetic ones and the real monsters are the people, 20 Million Miles to Earth depicts a creature that is inquiring, basically harmless unless provoked, and heroic despite its eventual fate. Ray Harryhausen did a terrific job with his stop-motion animation, especially when we see the beast battle an elephant in the streets of Rome. The acting is decent, not as bad as some critics would argue. The film is pure entertainment and yet another commentary on mankind and the whole concept of the stranger within our society.

Ray Harryhausen always wanted to film a monster movie in Europe and he got his chance with 20 Million Miles to Earth.

A spacecraft returning from a trip to Venus crashes into the sea just off the coast of Italy. Local fishermen rescue two of the occupants who are still alive just before it sinks. One of them dies just after and the other is taken to a local hospital. Then, a small boy finds a canister containing a strange jelly substance and takes it to a visiting circus to see what it is. The owner of the circus takes charge of the jelly and a strange creature, the Ymir emerges from it. The following day, the Ymir has grown into a giant and it escapes and goes on the rampage, eventually ending up in Rome. The Military are called to try and capture it, but fail. While in Rome, the Ymir is put in the zoo as a tourist attraction, but it escapes from there, fights and kills an elephant and climbs the Colosseum, where he gets shot down and killed.

This is Harryhausen's personal favourite movie and he has a cameo appearance in the zoo sequence. As well as the Ymir, the elephant is also done in stop-motion.

The movie stars 50's sci fi regulars William Hopper (The Deadly Mantis) and Joan Taylor (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers).

This movie is one the better monster movies of the 50's and one of my favourites.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

I saw this gem in 1957 at the Vineland Drive In, La Puente, California (which still exists! Saw Hellboy there last night.) The creature was so believable it scared me into peeking from beneath a blanket. I was eleven. I was hooked. Sci-Fi rules. Harryhausen's work is amazing and reason enough to seek it out. I was thrilled to discover it is available on DVD, and disappointed that some TV stations cut the elephant/creature fight scene for fear of upsetting animal rights folks. I will definitely find that DVD - and thanks to someone for noting the Full screen version is best, the "Wide-screen" is actually cropped top and bottom. I wanna see it all!

Let's state the obvious right off the bat. If it weren't for the stop-motion animation in this film, it would be simply awful. Awful acting, awful script, mediocre direction, this film has it all.

But once the monster appears on screen, none of that matters. Ray Harryhausen's animation is, as always, simply spellbinding, giving the monster, paradoxically, both a heightened reality (as it really is a physical object photographed in "real life") and a dreamlike quality. It's easy to see how Harryhausen's work set the standards for monster special effects until Star Wars and computer animation came along many years later.

This film is a particularly good example of his work for a number of reasons. There's only one monster (unlike the Sinbad/Jason/Titans movies), so all his effort is spent on that one "character". The monster also starts out small and grows huge by the end of the movie, allowing us to see it in a variety of settings. And, the fact that it's a humanoid (rather than a dinosaur or big octopus) allows it to "act" in a much more expressive manner (not unlike the original Kong).

So while this movie may qualify as little more than "MST3K" fodder as a science fiction work (did I mention how truly awful the script is?), as a piece of animation, it's a pure classic, deserving a space on your shelf next to King Kong, Snow White and Fantasia.

This movie is a prime example of the work of one of the masters of stop-motion animation, a form of art that is rapidly being supplanted by CGI. Ray Harryhausen was the ultimate master of this technique, having trained under the likes of Willis O'Brian. His work is still the inspiration for many of the special effects wizards today. Granted, the movies of the 1950's do seem stilted and silly, but quite frankly, the worst of them are probably still superior to most of the direct-to-video drek produced today, and likely better than most of the films produced by major studios. I was raised on films such as 20 Million Miles to Earth and have no problem letting my child watch films like this. I cannot say the same for most of what is released today. 20 Million Miles to Earth is a unique, fun film. It, like others of its kind, comes from a different era, when people were not as jaded and world-savvy as they are today. Save the critical eye for the more cynical, overproduced films of today. Enjoy it for what it is.