Cheap 20 Million Miles to Earth (DVD) (William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Frank Puglia, Thomas Browne Henry) (Nathan Juran) Price

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Customer Reviews of 20 Million Miles to Earth

That's 50s sci-fi for you. No frills storytelling, and it's darn good fun. But what makes this entry especially enjoyable is, you guessed it, the monster itself. The Ymir (curiously, that name is never mentioned in the film) is another in the long list of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen's creations. Unlke many of the mythology-based creatures in his other films, this one was entirely his own design, and let me say this, it looks really great. It's a neat mix of reptilian features reminiscent of the dinosaurs and humanoid form with fully-developed and functional arms (a decidedly non-dinosaur feature). Now that's cool.

I mentioned earlier that the monster has a lot of character. It really does. This isn't your basic carnivorous beast that devours any living thing in its path. It feeds on sulphur (!), and is actually non-aggressive. In one unforgettable scene, the Ymir stops and growls at a grazing sheep, then walks right by, leaving the sheep unharmed. (The growl probably translates roughly as, "excuse me, do you know where I can find some sulphur? You don't? Ok, thank you.")

The problems start when the humans, in their typical fear of what they don't know or understand, set out to destroy the creature. Naturally, it becomes violent. What the humans don't know is, the big guy is really just an unfortunate victim of circumstances that wants to be left alone. But then again, how do you leave a 20-foot Ymir alone?

Speaking of leaving things alone, this was Harryhausen's last black-and-white film. Nobody better even think about releasing a computer-colored version. That would take away so much of the nostalgic enjoyment we classic sci-fi fans get from watching films like this.

A Ticket to the Roman Coliseum
A long time ago, in a land far, far away, a young wide-eyed boy attended the local Saturday movie matinee. Here he met Ymir, the towering, bellowing monster from Venus who crash-lands on Earth in "20 Million Miles to Earth". The young boy was me. A routine story-line and a tepid romance do little for 1957's "20 Million Miles to Earth", but the stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen has rarely been equaled. Like the early film classics, the monster here is portrayed with compassion and respect. It is one of Harryhausen's most sympathetic creations. Early in the movie, police and villagers chase the monster, evoking the original "Frankenstein". In the finale, the wounded beast clings to the crumbling walls of Rome's Coliseum(shades of 1933's "King Kong"). The references are not random. They're done with reverence. As a wide-eyed boy, Harryhausen first worked on 80% of the animation for "Mighty Joe Young" in 1949. At the end of his career, he was enlisted for Disney's charming remake of "Mighty Joe Young". This time he was an actor. He had come full cycle. 1957's "20 Million Miles to Earth" stars William Hopper(son of Hedda/father of Dennis) as Col. Calder, the astronaut assigned to tame the creature. Just a few years later, Hopper would become immortalized on TV's "Perry Mason". This handsome Columbia TriStar 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer is nearly pristine. The generous DVD has 2 trailers, a promo for Harryhausen's "7th Voyage of Sinbad", and a one-hour documentary from 1997: "The Harryhausen Chronicles". It sparkles with clips from every fantasy feature this Academy Award-winning animator has enhanced. It's astounding. "20 Million Miles to Earth" is not a classic. The story creaks here and there. But the special effects resonate back to hand-made, sympathetic creations considered far too expensive in today's world of rote CGI. More than anything, "20 Million" will appeal to young, wide-eyed little boys. No matter how old they are.

The best of Harryhausen's early work
Released in June 1957, "20 Million Miles to Earth" is an important film in the canon of visual effects genius Ray Harryhausen. It was the last of the black and white science-fiction films he worked on during the 50s. It was also the first film based on one of his own ideas. It set the stage for his color fantasy films triumphs that would follow.

Harryhausen had originally developed a story about the frost giant Ymir from Norse mythology. He then changed the creature to a cyclops-satyr mix from another planet who rampages on modern Earth, but still kept the name Ymir. (The Cyclops-satyr would later show up in "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.") When the film finally went before the cameras, the Ymir had become a humanoid-reptilian beast from Venus. Brought to Earth in a crashed rocket, the Ymir emerges as only a few inches high, but starts growing rapidly in the Earth's atmosphere. Originally peaceful, the Ymir is provoked into violence by frightened humans. The movie climaxes in Rome when the captive Ymir bursts loose and starts smashing famous monuments in the Eternal City.

The parallels to King Kong are obvious, and Harryhausen intended the Ymir to also be a sympathetic, misunderstood creature. He succeeded grandly: "20 Millions Miles to Earth" is Harryhausen's best early film. The direction from Nathan Juran and the human actors are perfunctory and clichéd, but the effects are still stunning today, and the Ymir is a superb actor. Designed along human lines, but with dinosaur features, the Ymir elicits strong emotions and exudes tremendous personality. The scene of it hatching from its 'pod' (made of gelatin) and exploring the strange world around it for the first time is one of the high points of Harryhausen's career, and a sequence of which he rightly feels great pride. The scene of the full-sized, fifteen-foot Ymir wrestling an elephant (also animated) is also a stunning piece of work.

(Harryhausen's love of the Ymir extended to late in his career. In his last film, "The Clash of the Titans," he used the Ymir as the basis for the design of the multiple-armed monster the Kraken -- the heads and bodies are almost the same.)

The DVD presents the film in widescreen format for the first time since its theatrical release. The image is crystal clear and lets Harryhausen's work shine. There are a few extras. "The Harryhausen Chronicles," a lengthy documentary, does an excellent overview of the man's career. This same documentary appears on most of Columbia's Harryhausen DVDs, so if you're a fan of the animator you've probably seen this before. Also included is a vintage featurette about the animation process, called "This is Dynamation." It was made for the release of "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad," so it actually has nothing to do with "20 Million Miles to Earth."

This is a must-have DVD for any Harryhausen fan and any admirer of 50s science fiction. It's one of the highlights of giant monster cinema.