Another glorious example of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion monstrosities, 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH features everyone's favorite monster from Venus, the Ymir- a reptilian creature, released from an egg, that grows from pint-size to economy-size at an astounding rate! The monster is caught, only to escape and go on an obligatory rampage of deadly destruction! The best thing about 20MMTE is that the Ymir gets a lot of screen time, making it one of the stars of the movie, as opposed to being just another rarely-shown threat. William Hopper, having just matched wits w/ THE DEADLY MANTIS, attempts to track the creature, as Col. Robert Calder. He is joined by Joan Taylor, shortly after her role in EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, as Marisa Leonardo. Contains the classic Ymir vs. elephant scene, as well as the finale at the Coliseum in Rome! A 1950's sci-fi gem!...

This film starts out almost like "The Blob", when an American rocket ship crashes into the ocean near a small Italian fishing village. Luckily some Italian fisherman come to the aid of the last surviving astronauts, carrying him to safety as the rocket sinks into the sea. Upon returning to shore, the son of one of the fisherman finds a canister washed up from the wreckage, and empties it onto a rock (what a smart thing to do!). Inside is a gelatinous mass that he sells to a nearby professor. It later turns out this weird mass is an egg, and it grows into the Ymir, a constantly growing, fish-like humanoid creature. The creature escapes its captivity, and goes on a rampage in Rome, even standing up to an elephant.The effects of this movie were excellent for its time, but what do you expect when Ray Harryhausen is in charge of stop motion? It's an impressive film, but it leaves you almost with a laugh at the end, let alone a smile. Definitely check it out!

Having suffered the indignation of being snatched from his home planet, taken to Earth and stuck in a cage, a rapidly growing scaly alien escapes to look for food, and is pursued by the authorities who poke and prod him until he understandably fights back.Just because a film boasts impressive special effects doesn't automatically make it a classic. 20 Million Miles To Earth features exceptional stop-motion animation work by Ray Harryhausen, whose Venusian lizard, the Ymir, is a delight to behold, but the film suffers from a tedious plot that clearly takes its cues from King Kong but which is never developed beyond its basic 'monster-on-the-rampage' scenario.Despite one or two memorable set pieces, such as the crash of a huge spacecraft and the sight of the Ymir in a struggle to the death with an elephant, 20 Millions Miles to Earth is a frustratingly dull film on the whole, suffering from predictable action, remarkably unlikeable characters ('hero' Col. Robert Calder is brash and obnoxious and Pepe the cowboy obsessed kid is a particularly annoying brat) and a daft finale in which US soldiers recklessly destroy part of the Coliseum in order to kill the beast.

It's probably being picky, but it wouldn't have been too much trouble for the film makers to find out that the closest Earth and Venus ever get depending on where they are in their respective orbits, is about twenty six million miles. Oh well, I guess they rounded down to come up with the title.I always get a kick out of these 1950's era sci-fi and monster flicks, doing the best they could with whatever the story writers came up with. I had to laugh when Colonel Calder (William Hopper) warned the others on the monster chase that the creature only got ferocious when provoked, at which point he poked him with a stick and beat him with a shovel. I wonder how he thought that was going to work out. And while I'm reading here that the beast was called an Ymir, I never heard it referred to by that name, nor did I see it come up in captioning as I watched the picture. If anyone could help on that score I'd appreciate it.As for the creature itself, it was a pretty cool Harryhausen creation, with that neat appearing handlebar mustache that really topped off the look. The battle against the elephant went a full three out of five falls if you were counting, by which time the Venusian beast was fully realized due to Earth's atmosphere. I'm not quite sure how Calder determined that the creature was susceptible to electric shock; it could have been a good guess but when they specified it took just the right eighteen hundred volts to keep it tranquilized, I knew they had to be making this all up on the fly.But you know what - none of the silly science stuff matters if you go for this grade B stuff from the Fifties. In a way, the picture seemed to be an ode of sorts to a couple other classic favorites of mine from the gorilla genre. When the Ymir broke the giant metal clamp pinning him to the lab table it reminded me of Mighty Joe Young, and the creature's death summoned up the way King Kong died in the original. If I ever get tired of this stuff, just throw one of those electrified nets over and haul me off.