20
Million Miles To Earth: 50th anniversary edition (1957)
Sony
Cast:
A big green monster, William Hopper, Joan Taylor..
Rating:
NR
Run
time: 165 mins (2 discs).
Genre:
Science Fiction
Verdict:
Beautiful (see
rating
system)
No
wonder special effects legend Ray Harryhausen raves about
the colorization of this 50-year-old classic - it has never
looked so good.
As
well as the new color version, purists can also watch the
original black and white - and there's a second disc loaded
with great extras on the making of the movie, interviews with
the 87-year-old Harryhausen and star Joan Taylor and more.
William
Hopper plays the sole survivor of a space mission to Venus
that returns to Earth with the unhatched egg of a part-humanoid/part-lizard
creature they found on their voyage. The spaceship crashes
into the Mediterranean Sea and a boy from a fishing village
finds the egg washed up on a beach and sells it. Within hours,
the strange creature hatches - and starts to grow!
American
scientists and Italian police and army are soon hot on the
trail of the creature, which starts wreaking havoc.
The
"monster" in this movie is actually quite endearing
and you can't help feeling sorry for a creature taken from
its natural environment and dropped among us supposedly civilized
Earthlings. Indeed, the similarities to the King Kong storyline
are startling. And note the :"birth" scene of the
creature: Harryhausen fan Steven Spielberg must have drawn
upon it for the T-Rex baby bursting out of its shell in the
first Jurassic Park movie.
Even
with special effects that look a tad creaky in this computer
generated age, Harryhausen's work is amazing and the movie
remains very entertaining - particularly in its gleaming new
color format.
