20 Million Miles to Earth

Rating:
Summary: It's Ymir-acle!
Review: Ymir is one of my favorite monsters. He looks totally cool and has the same sympathetic nature as King Kong. Ray Harryhausen (Earth vs. The Flying Saucers) crafted a very memorable beasty! Taken from it's home planet (Venus), Ymir's egg is brought back to earth. The rocket that held it crashes into the Mediterranean sea, killing all but one astronaut and sending Ymir's holding-capsule onto the beach. A boy finds the capsule and takes it to a local scientist. Of course, Ymir's egg hatches and the fun begins! Growing at an astounding rate, Ymir begins looking for it's favorite food (sulfur) and terrifying all who come in contact with it. Poor Ymir is just alone and frightened, trying to survive in an alien world. Well, we humans do what we do best and hunt Ymir down so we can kill it! The final battle in the Roman colosseum is almost as good as Kong's Empire State building climb! However, my favorite scene is Ymir's fight with the elephant. A true battle of the giants! A must for the true sci-fi / Harryhausen maniac...

Rating:
Summary: Good Special Effects and Story
Review: Ray Harryhausen's TWENTY MILLION MILES TO EARTH is good science fiction. The special effects are effective and work seamlessly with the story. The spaceship crashing into the Mediterranean was very good and very convincing. Ymir made a great monster and as usual had several moments of pathos making him the classic creature of forlornness trapped in an alien environment. William Hopper gave a better than usual performance showing sympathy to Ymir's plight. This is a winner all the way.


Rating:
Summary: An in-Sulfur-able creature
Review: A boy on the beach finds a canister form a wayward spaceship that crashed in the sea. Hence the title "20,000,000 Million Miles to Earth" It yields a cute little creature that just loves to eat sulfur. He just wants to be friends and is intrigued with his environment. As with all innocent space creatures just as he is beginning to trust us, he is enslaved abused and thoroughly disenchanted. This is just an enjoyable creature movie with some people interaction and a question of what you do with a misplaced Ymir.

As you have guessed this movie is packed with Ray Harryhausen's stop motion. See more of Ray's work in "Clash of the Titans" notice how that there titan from the sea looks like the Ymir.

See William Hopper tackle something a bit bigger in "The Deadly Mantis" (1957) ASIN: 6302763916


Rating:
Summary: WHEN IN ROME
Review: This 1957 sci-fi thriller is most notable because of the continuing genius of Ray Harryhausen and the remarkable creature he gives us. William Hopper (of Perry Mason fame) is the sole survivor of a Venus expedition which has brough back with it a gellified glob that contains this remarkable creature. The monster is accidentally sold to a visiting scientist by a little boy (Bart Braverman in his first role). Lovely daughter Joan Taylor (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers) happens to be a medical student. The monster hatches, a cute little thing remarkable in its dexterity and in Harryhausens amazing muscular definition. Of course it grows, is captured by the army and sedated in Rome. An electrical malfunction occurs and the now gigantic creature is let loose on Rome. It fights a huge elephant and then meets its end in the Colosseum. Hopper is awful in his role, more artificial than the monster. But it's a fun ride, and what makes this DVD so special is the addition of "The Harryhausen Chronicles" which gives us a blow by blow glance at some of Harryhausen's magnificent creations: the horrifying Medusa in "Clash of the Titans"; the metal colossus in "Jason and the Argonauts"; the crab and bee on "Mysterious Island" and countless others.
Harryhausen was a genius, working pretty much on his own. In today's CGI special effects, it's hard to think of only one person being able to create such marvelous fx.
RECOMMENDED.