20 Million Miles To Earth

Ymir Today,
Gone Tomorrow

20 Million Miles To Earth
USA 1957 Directed by Nathan Juran
Columbia/Indicator Blu Ray Zone B

20 Million Miles To Earth is the second film featured in Indicator’s boxed edition, The Wonderful Worlds Of Ray Harryhausen Volume One: 1955 - 1960. It’s also a film I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Alas, the Blu Ray does give the option of giving the viewing audience the choice between watching it in its correct black and white version and the regrettable ‘abomination against mankind’ option of watching it stupidly colourised by movie criminals who should know better. I obviously went for the monotone version and, of course, also chose to watch it with its original mono sound, not some stereophonic recreation as also optioned on the disc. Honestly, these stupid alternate versions that nobody even remotely interested in films would ever want should really stop now.

Again, a simple plot this one, after another narrative opening to set the scene and, as it often did, serve as a warning to mankind. We are then in Sicily where a fishing boat sees a rocket crash into the sea. The two fishermen and a boy, Pepe, go to help, pulling out the last two surviving crew members (although only one lives to tell the tale). The rocket has just returned from mankind’s first visit to the planet Venus and, as Marisa Leonardo (played by Joan Taylor) nurses the surviving Colonel Robert Calder (played by William Hopper) back to health, Pepe finds part of the contents of the now sunken rocket washed up on the beach and, finding a jellied egg in a container, sells it to the local zoologist for 200 pesetas (so he can buy himself a cowboy hat).  The zoologist also happens to be Marisa’s grandfather.

Anyway, as you would expect, while Marisa and Colonel Calder begin the first approaches to a romantic relationship, the egg hatches and the creature inside, known as Ymir, births and eventually breaks loose to go on a relatively peaceful rampage ending at the coliseum at Rome, hunted by the army after escaping captivity as a result of an earlier, much more successful attempt to keep the creature under control. And, as you might imagine, it all goes downhill from here so, yeah, not going to spell it out.

The film was pretty good, I’d have to say... and it was refreshing to see a giant monster, this one a specimen brought back from Venus, let loose in Italy (a location which stop motion wizard Ray Harryhausen, for this is one of his movies, chose since he’d never been able to afford to go there on holiday off his own back, so took a film crew instead), rather than in an American, English or Japanese setting, it has to be said. It’s a bit of a hit and miss affair though. One obvious miss being the completely wooden personality of leading man William Hopper, who really doesn’t seem to have much ‘on screen chemistry’ with anyone else in the picture. Another problem being the way some of the effects work, excellent as it is, is blended with the live action footage... it looks a bit ropey in some sequences, to be honest.

However, in spite of that, those stop motion effects are really well done in this one. I would go so far to say that this is the most lifelike animation Harryhausen ever did (of the many I’ve seen). Ymir, the beast in question, is so well animated and is also quite fast, with no real sign of jerkiness to him... I was very impressed. That being said, although Harryhausen (presumably) named the creature Ymir and it’s what it’s been known as ever since, there’s no mention of his name at all in the movie, for some reason. Nor, indeed, any mention as to how the Venusian beast has the name of a creature from Norse mythology either. Not sure what’s going on here then.

One thing which did make me do a double take, however, is the scene where a farmer and a few military are watching Ymir in the farmers barn. The farmer drops his rifle and rushes towards the Ymir with a pitchfork, stabbing him in the back as the two wrestle. We cut back to... a reaction shot of the military witnessing the fight, with the same farmer still standing with them clutching his rifle, before cutting back to him wrestling with Ymir again. Yeah... I guess they didn’t quite get all the scene coverage they needed on that day then.  

Included as one of Indicator’s many extras on the set (they always do a fantastic job) is a 20 minute featurette in which the great David Schecter talks about the use of 1950s B-movie science fiction score as needle dropped (or rather re-recorded and altered in many cases) cues in the film, as well as ‘music director’ Mischa Bakaleinikoff’s original contributions to the movie. This kind of musically oriented extra is like gold dust these days and they couldn’t get a better expert on the film’s music than Schecter. Indeed, he produced a very authentic rerecording of the score which you can buy doubled up with the score for Mighty Joe Young at Schecter’s record label Monstrous Movie Music, right here... https://www.mmmrecordings.com/index.html on the side index under MJY and, yeah, I’d recommend buying pretty much any of his label’s releases, to be honest. I don’t usually go for rerecordings myself but certain people like Schecter and, of course, those by the Morgan/Stromberg team, are definitely worth grabbing while they’re still available, for sure.

And that’s me done with 20 Million Miles To Earth for a while. I have to say I found this one a lot of fun and I was more impressed with Harryhausen’s animation on this one than I have been on certain others of his movies. For me, this is one of Harryhausen’s more interesting works and I expect to revisit it at least once more in the next ten years. A cracking movie.