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Amazon.co.uk Review
Notable neither for its director nor its stars, 20 Million Miles to Earth has been given the widescreen spit 'n' polish treatment because of its special-effects man, the legendary Ray Harryhausen. And it's his work here that makes this daft slice of hokum so watchable. When a group of Italian boat fishermen investigate a crash-landed space rocket returned from a trip to Venus, they find one surviving all-American hero and an alien in aspic: the Emere, a tiny homunculus hungry for sulphur and growing faster than a teenager on steroids. Cue man-vs-alien mayhem, screenfuls of avuncular patriarchs and the gratuitous destruction of Rome.
A by-numbers B-movie, Harryhausen's sixth feature isn't a patch on his later Technicolor masterpieces, but the unusual Italian setting ("I wanted a trip to Europe") adds an exotic quality and his effects are as solid and convincing as ever. The film only really begins to crackle when his stop-motion creation is onscreen. Like a scaly King Kong, he's as likely to engender sympathy as fear: surely anyone who's been bombed, blasted, burnt, electrocuted, shot at by trigger-happy squaddies and involved in a punch-up with a pachyderm is entitled to lose their rag a little. And fans will enjoy spotting in the Emere the flowerings of Harryhausen's later and greater creations, Sinbad's Cyclops and The Titans' Calibos and Kraken. The denouement, with the creature atop the Colosseum, is as effective as that of Kong's. It wasn't beauty who killed the beast here, however, it was bombs.
On the DVD: 20 Million Miles to Earth's black and white picture is clean and crisp in this anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen transfer, and the Dolby digital mono soundtrack is clear enough. The theatrical trailer will please fans of kitsch, as will the featurette "This Is Dynamation" produced at the same time as the first Sinbad movie. The real corker here, though, is the generously lengthed documentary "The Harryhausen Chronicles". Narrated by Leonard Nimoy, this features a stellar cast of devotees (George Lucas among them) waxing lyrical about the influence of Harryhausen's films, and allows the man himself to ramble fascinatingly over clips of his filmic canon. The claw-slash menu marker is a nice touch, too. If you're a fan, this disc is Harryhausen heaven. --Paul Eisinger
Synopsis
The first human expedition to Venus returns to Earth in a crash landing off the coast of Italy. Theonly survivor is Hopper and he's frightened that he may have lost a canister holding specimens of Venusian life. 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH is Ray Harryhausen's signature special effects story of a terrifying monster from Venus running wild and wreaking havoc in Italy.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Before making his Sinbad movies and Jason And The Argonauts , Ray Harryhausen created the visual effects for a number of black and white monster pictures , the last of which was Twenty Million Miles To Earth. Most of the other elements of the movie are rather quaint , but the stop motion animation used for the creature from Venus still looks amazing today. In addition to the feature , the disc also contains a detailed one hour documentary on the whole of Harryhausen's career , a Dynamation promotional short from the time of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (both of these have appeared on previous releases ) and the original theatrical trailer.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
"20 Million Miles to Earth" offers a pair of interesting oddities when it comes to the realm of Fifties science fiction films. First, the monster comes from Venus, which, you have to admit, is pretty unusual. Usually Venus produces beautiful blondes, not reptilian bipeds. Second, the monster runs amuck in Rome, whereas we tend to expect the creature from another planet to wreck havoc on New York (or Tokyo if it is a terrestrial monster). This is a rather low-keyed story, where the chief pleasures are derived from Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion special effects. As our thrilling story begins an American spaceship returns from Venus and crashes off the shore of Sicily. Only one astronaut, Colonel Robert Caulder (William Hopper) survives, to be tended by Marisa Leonardo (Joan Taylor) an almost doctor, who feels no need to feign an Italian accent, unlike others in the cast, although most of the accents sound more Spanish than anything else to my ear (as does some of the ethnic music). Even more amazing, it takes a while for anybody from the government, local or American, to show up for the spaceship's crew (at which point the locals are confused by the idea of visiting Venus rather than Venice, which makes me somewhat surprised the climatic battle is not in the city of canals).
Meanwhile, Pepe, a boy from the local fishing village who drams of earning 200 lire to buy a cowboy hat, discovers a strange egg, which he promptly sells to Dr. Leonardo (Frank Puglia). The small creature grows rapidly and eventually attains a heigh of 20 feet as it starts cutting a path of destruction through the streets of the Eternal City. Fortunately Colonel Caulder is around to offer helpful exposition (apparently the crew discovered you cannot breathe on Venus, but only after many of them stopped dropping dead), but the film comes down to Harryhausen's special effects with the Ymir and the pathos he creates for the creatures who is stranded on a planet millions and millions of miles from home (think King Kong with scales). This is mainly because every time the action focuses on the humans the dumb dialogue really starts to get to you. Still, it is nice to go back to those good old days when a couple of American military officers could throw around a bunch of lire and do what they want in a foreign country where everybody apparently understands English if they are not actually speaking the language. "20 Million Miles to Earth" is pure B-movie entertainment, owing all of its success entirely to Harryhausen's stop motion animation with the Ymir, because you will end up rolling your eyes at just about everything else in this 1957 film (unless, of course, you have yet to hit puberty and are inclined to giggle at the insipid romance between the astronaut and the almost doctor).
Finally, boys and girls, let us consider the scientific validity of the title. Is Venus 20 million miles from earth? Well, Venus is 67 million miles from the sun and the Earth is 93 million miles from the sun. So that is a difference of 26 million miles, BUT that assumes the two planets are on the same side of the sun and on the same plane and all sorts of other fun things. At any given moment the planets could be anywhere from 26 million to 160 million miles away from each other. But would a title "26 to 160 Million Miles From Earth" really work? I think not.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
A boy (Bart Bradley) on the beach finds a canister form a wayward spaceship that crashed in the sea. Hence the title "20 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)
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)
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
"Fascinating... Horrible, but fascinating."
The third and last of Ray Harryhausen and Charles H. Schneer's pictures for churn `em out fast and cheap executive producer Sam Katzman, 20 Million Miles to Earth is a decent... Read more
Published 7 days ago by Trevor Willsmer
Pre-hysterical creature
Why I have always been drawn to this strange, prehistoric-like creature and more so than all others I have never tried explaining to myself and perhaps thats for the best. Read more
Published 17 days ago by Gerald Corper
20 million miles to Earth - Thoroughly entertaining creature feature...
This review is specific to the colourised version of the film, released in 2007, ASIN: B000QGEB1W. This version can also be found on the box set the Ray Harryhausen Collection :... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Victor
Why is it always, always so costly for Man to move from the present to...
20 Million Miles to Earth is written by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf from an original treatment by Charlott Knight. The film was produced by Charles H. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Spike Owen
Sci-fi delight !
Nice touch to the 50s atomic age science fiction genre . Seen this little gem at the pictures when I was a teenager and have since developed a soft spot for 1950s science fiction... Read more
Published on 4 May 2010 by David McDonald
An in-Sulfur-able creature
A boy (Bart Bradley) on the beach finds a canister form a wayward spaceship that crashed in the sea. Read more
Published on 15 Dec 2007 by bernie
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