In the 1950s, Sci-Fi was all the rage and Ray Harryhausen was the king of special effects, thanks to his work in stop-motion. One such film is 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, a very mixed film.
The plot isn't too different from several others of it's period. Rocket crashes off the coast of Rome before drifting egg from Venus makes it way to the shore, is found by a kid, and soon hatches. Only problem is, the beast inside, tends to grow fast. Quite fast actually. So fast that by the end of the movie, Rome is under attack.
One thing that annoys me about this movie is how dull the humans are. You actually care about and sympathize with the Venusian creature more than any person present. People say and do things that are unlikely and some of the dialogue is just atrocious. After a man dies, his friend, who we can assume had a close relationship with the deceased, is told by his romantic interest: "Better get some sleep", only seconds removed from the actual moment of death. By the end, you'll be rooting for the monster to kill off every cliche cardboard character on the screen, and he almost succeeds.
Stop-Motion always has fascinated me, but I find Harryhausen's work here to be particularly impressive for the B&W films he worked on. He did a fine job in THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, but I think he's even better here. Only in a few instances toward the end does the Stop-Motion lose it's illusion.
This film, is really nothing special. It's a Stop-motion entertainer, with cardboard characters we've seen many times before save for the slightly sympathetic monster from Venus who destroys half of Rome. But I can't hate on it. Given the accepted conventions of 50s Sci-fi, I can tolerate this one and it's just entertaining enough to rise above some of it's drive-in counterparts. THREE STARS OUT OF FIVE.
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