20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957)
It's interesting to consider when the films of Ray Harryhausen started to feel the most like they belonged to him in terms of artistic style. Maybe it was right at the start with Mighty Joe Young. It certainly has a lot of personality and the technical wizardry is obvious. Perhaps the subsequent creature feature The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms is more your sort of thing. But despite their strengths the former feels like another Kong retread and the latter is too reptilian to have much charm. As a result I'd have to choose this later story idea, The Giant Ymir. Combing everything that came before in terms of monster pathos and sci-fi storytelling it's one last hurrah for the black and white era. A send-off before the Technicolor fantasies arrived.
There are countless alien visitors to choose from in the B-movie world during this period, but this is one of the essentials for many reasons. Revisiting it is strangely refreshing despite all usual the tropes. Perhaps it's the European setting that makes this feel more unique than its predecessors. Harryhausen himself just wanted to see Rome of course, but it lends the story an interesting atmosphere. There are less lab coats, naval vessels and giant computers... although these stock elements do feature. But the film is less sterile and more earthy as a result. There's an escapist element to the whole thing and it's partly due to the way it avoids The Big Apple or Washington DC. The film makers are having a vacation and we're going along for the ride.
The story begins with a space rocket crashing in the Mediterranean sea, as several groups of men in fishing boats from a small coastal village watch aghast. Initially there's the sense that this might be an alien craft, but when the hardiest of the sailors venture inside it becomes obvious this is an Earth vessel. Maybe it's all the air-force markings, or the way the inside of the ultra sleek ship looks like a normal submarine. There are also signs that this could be another Quatermass style story about astronauts bringing back an infection. This whole setup and the rocket design itself is very familiar. But these sinister implications are all misdirects and the narrative leans more into King Kong that it first appears.
This summer trip to Italy wouldn't be complete without the star of the show. The alien itself is never named, but the most viewers will know it's call The Ymir. The rocket voyage took the crew to Venus where they suffered the effects of the toxic air. In an effort to study this further, and engineer better equipment, they stole an alien egg which washes ashore. Again there's a darker version of this story in many other films out there. Some of them would probably try to depict the surface of another planet. Instead it takes a cheeky turn and local boy Pepe (Bart Bradley) sells it to a travelling zoologist Dr. Leonardo (Frank Puglia) to fund his Wild West obsession. In some ways the creature that soon hatches in the doctor's caravan is also a naive child. Unfortunately there are still plenty of chances for things to go awry.
It's a hungry little guy and soon the small cage in Leonardo's travelling veterinary practice isn't big enough hold it. But the film's strength is the way that the Ymir isn't another alien killing machine or an invasive species. It escapes but quickly wanders around aimlessly, staring bemused at horses and sheep on a nearby farm. It chews up sulphur from a barn supply without much malice or urgency. If it wasn't for guard dogs and overly aggressive locals with pitchforks maybe the authorities could have done things peacefully. The military want it alive for selfish reasons of course but the story is effective at making it all feel like a tragedy. In later decades material like this would have been used in a film about kids befriending the monster.
When the Ymir gets bigger and angrier the spectacle ramps up, and the stop motion effects are all excellent. There are several attempts to capture it with some great helicopter sequences. With the work done to establish its personality and benign nature the third act is all about screaming Rome residents and armoured vehicles. In the confusion that follows it comes to blows with an elephant in a city zoo before running amok in the local ruins. At this stage it's tough to have any sympathy with the troops being squashed during the rampage. Again there are times when it feels a bit like a travelogue, but the ancient columns and Italian streets lend it all extra charm. There's an obvious attempt to end it with an iconic fall from a tall monument, and that's all well and good.
The human element of course stands up less to any scrutiny which is to be expected. The story early on involving Pepe and his elders is reasonably engaging, but this is soon dropped in favour of men in uniform and plenty of stern talk. The most interesting inclusion is a clash between the local officials trying to kill the Ymir to save lives and Americans who want to make scientific discoveries. Elsewhere there's a boiler plate romantic clash between pilot Bob Calder (William Hopper) and Leonardo's daughter Marisa (Joan Taylor). Thankfully this isn't a big focus and the pacing is never bogged down by melodrama. It's all about the monster and that's what matters since it has far more screen presence than all these other characters.
4/5
BONUS REVIEW
IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955)
On the opposite end of the spectrum is a film without a personality. Of all the films from this cycle this is the weak link. Considering the subject matter it's strangely lifeless. Maybe even more lifeless than Harryhausen's own eerily cold flying saucers which were at least crewed by awkward invaders. But this time around there's no prehistoric creature or alien, it's just an octopus. An enormous radioactive octopus no less, but still nothing to get excited about. The creature is still the best part of the film and another magic piece of animation expertise, don't get me wrong. But after smashing the Golden Gate Bridge it just slithers around the bay area for a while, and they just blow it up at the end without much fanfare.
The film itself has the opposite problem to 20 Million Miles. It's all melodrama with barely any multiple limbed monster. Commander Mathews (Kenneth Tobey) is the squared jawed submariner and Professor Joyce (Faith Domergue) is the biologist he's going to woo by being generally brusque and ill-mannered. Meanwhile Dr. Carter (Donald Curtis) is supposed to be in the middle of this as part of a love triangle. Or at least I'm guessing that's the idea, since he's got less charisma than either one of them. It's all kind of slog thanks to this meandering narrative as they attempt to convince the military brass an nuclear fuelled octopus is on the loose. Still, for the faults of the central creature at least it has more personality than this lot.
But the truth is that these kind of tentacled terrors are featured as minor villains in later films like The Mysterious Island for a reason. They aren't that interesting and don't offer as much room for creative set pieces. There's no mystery to solve (beyond what the two leads see in each
other) and eventually the navy builds a new torpedo to solve the
problem. If this was set on board the confined space of the sub it might
have some suspense to offer. The story has little to say about nuclear weapons tests and even less to say about human romance. It's all just so weirdly stiff in comparison to the writhing monster effects. Fortunately this is the only major dud in the stop-motion roster and there are many others to get your hooks into.
2/5
