20 Million Miles to Earth

During the barn sequence the farmer is seen in two different positions when the Ymir is cornered.

Colonel Calder has been bed-ridden in the hospital for a few days but when he finally wakes up and jumps out of bed, he is wearing a perfectly-pressed uniform.

Near the beginning when the spaceship starts to sink, the meteor hole starts to go under water.

The next shot is from the inside and the hole is still above the waterline.

The next shot is outside and the hole is almost covered with water.

As the fishermen row away from the sinking spacecraft, we have a clear view of the inside of their small boat.

The two astronauts they've just rescued are nowhere to be seen.

The Marines board the helicopter with plain metal helmets.

Later, they assemble wearing cloth camouflage helmet covers.

'William Hopper (I)' (qv)'s character, an Air Force Colonel (note clouds and lightning bolts on hat brim) would be wearing a navy blue hat with his tan uniform, not an olive drab Army hat.

Also, General's stars and Colonel's eagles would be silver, not gold.

(Colorized 50th Anniversary version).

A fisherman tells another to get the boat hook out.

Yet in the prior shot, the boat hook is already extended.

The General, fearing that the space ship has sunk, points to a body of water on the map and says that the lost astronauts are now "20,000 leagues under the sea.

" Of course, it's a coy reference to the recent sci-fi flick _20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)_ (qv) (and 'Jules Verne' (qv)'s novel).

However, a league is about 3 miles; no ship could sink 60,000 miles under the sea since the earth isn't that large.

The Verne title refers to the amount of miles traveled under the sea, not how deep the craft was operating.

So the General has made a geographical error while trying to make a hip quip.

The General says they are looking for a metal canister, and it does have metal bands around it but the canister itself is opaque - clearly plastic.

During the fight in the barn the stain on the Colonel's bandage grows from a small spot to two long streaks and then to a large stain covering most of the bandage.

But when Marisa Leonardo asks to change the bandage the stain has shrunk to about half the size.

The general and scientist consult a wall map of the world to locate the small village in Sicily where the rocket has crashed.

At the end of the scene the camera pulls in for a close-up of Sicily, and we see that there are no city names printed on the map - not even major Sicilian cities like Syracuse or Palermo, let alone a tiny fishing village.

In the opening titles, director of photography 'Carlo Ventimiglia' (qv) is credited as Carlos Ventigmilia.

After testing the release of the wire net from the helicopter, an enlisted man with one stripe on his uniform says to Col.

Calder, "The hook's working fine, sir!", to which Calder replies, "That's good, sergeant!" One stripe is the insignia of a private, not a sergeant.

It is stated that the craft was spotted by radar over Iceland at an altitude of 200, descending at 3,500 feet per minute.

It was then tracked again later, still descending at 3,500 feet per minute, and they project the landing position.

However, at that rate of descent, it would take 5 hours to fall 200 miles.

During that time it would make over 3 orbits of the Earth, so it would not be possible to simply look at a map and point to a landing location.

During the fight between the Ymir and the elephant, there is a tight shot of three men hiding behind a pillar of the viaduct.

When the two animals get close, the turn and flee, one of them falling backwards, and another tripping over him.

In a wider shot scene a few seconds later we see the same pillar, the same men run up to it, hide and watch the fight as before then turn and run, as before, tripping over each other.

It's then same shot used two times closer/farther perspectives.

In the sequence where the large military helicopter is searching for the Ymir, there is an aerial shot taken from above the helicopter as it skims over the fields.

The helicopter casts a big shadow as it flies, and if you look directly in back of that shadow you can see a smaller shadow trailing it, which is that of a smaller helicopter that is filming the scene.

"20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH" (1957, Juran) boasts an infamous monster, brought to us by the great hands of Ray Harryhausen, but the film itself is boring and weak when the havoc-causing alien isn't onscreen.

Despite an interesting creature, this movie was convoluted and really stupid. Astronauts exploring Venus?

Nathan Juran directed this science fiction story starring William Hopper as a returning astronaut commanding the first spaceship to Venus, which crashes into the sea of Sicily. Onboard was a local creature, called an Ymir, which was freed from its container by a curious child who had found it onshore, then proceeds to grow to giant size, terrorizing the countryside, then heading to Rome.

I know "20 Million Miles to Earth" is a low-budget programmer from the early phase of Ray Harryhausen's career, with by-the-book shot-calling by journeyman director Nathan Juran. Nevertheless, I rate it pretty highly in comparison with other 1950s monster-on-the-loose movies, which would seem to be the relevant metric.

A rocketship crashes in the sea off the coast of a Sicilian village and two survivors are rescued. The ship was also carrying an alien specimen in the form of a pod with a creature inside it.

Before special effects master, Ray Harryhausen, turned his talents to the more 'mythical' side of fantasy films, he was more known for creating monsters and mayhem in the more (straightforward?) science fiction genre, such as '20 Million Miles to Earth.

A spaceship, returning from Venus, crash-lands off the coast of Italy. It has brought something back, that something is a Ymir.

If you like cinema, you simply must love Sci-Fi movies from the 1950's! Never before or after was there put so much love, charm, dedication and contemporary craftsmanship into the realization of silly movie ideas.

Ray Harryhausen did it again when he created a creature from the planet Venus which is quite small when it's freed from a frozen liquid but grows quickly to be a constant threat to the population of Italy! The stories of the previous movies Harryhausen did the visual effects for were pretty good but I thought this one surpassed the others not only story-wise but also in good characterizations like the little Italian boy who loves the cowboys depicted in American movies!