Review of 20 Million Miles to Earth

"20 Million Miles to Earth" opens with a terrible voice-over leading ominously to the lacklustre title, then cuts to a bunch of painful-to-watch Italian stereotypes fishing near Sicily. An adequately rendered spaceship is seen, which then crashes in the ocean. The following scenes, in which the fisherman approach the wreck are outstanding (for the era). The movie then toggles back and forth between Harryhausen's masterful stop-motion monster (posthumously referred to as an Ymir) and some awful filler (especially Pepe and his hat, and other cringe-worthy Italianoids who, for example, describe a trailer as "a house that follows the car like a goat"). There is also the obligatory 'meet cute' romantic subplot, which is even more clichéd and tedious than usual for the genre. The final scenes of the Ymir, standing on top of the Colosseum, weakening by a barrage of bullets, catching itself before falling, then toppling dead to the ground below is clearly a homage to Harryhausen's mentor, Willis O'Brien's masterpiece, King Kong (1933). Like all of Harryhausen's canon, "20 Million Miles to Earth" is worth watching, but it's unfortunate that the same imagination and effort that went into the special effects were not applied to the rest of the film (but then again, who really cares about the frame when the picture is a masterpiece).