20 Million Miles to Earth

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20 Million Miles to Earth
DVD cover
Directed by	Nathan Juran
Produced by	Charles H. Schneer
Written by	Bob Williams Christopher Knopf
Starring	William Hopper Joan Taylor Frank Puglia
Music by	Mischa Bakaleinikoff
Cinematography	Irving Lippman Carlo Ventimiglia
Editing by	Edwin Bryant
Running time	82 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

20 Million Miles to Earth is an 82-minute 1957 black and white science fiction film scripted by Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf from an original treatment by Charlott Knight. It was produced by Charles H. Schneer's Morningside Productions for Columbia Pictures Corp. and directed by Fred F. Sears. It was developed as a piece to showcase the stop-motion animation talents of Ray Harryhausen, as with several other Schneer-Columbia collaborations. This film starred William Hopper as a U.S. Army colonel, Joan Taylor as a scientist's daughter, Frank Puglia as her father, and featured Thomas Brown Henry and John Zaremba as another military officer and scientist, respectively.

1 Synopsis
2 Trivia
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The first manned spaceship to visit Venus, launched by the USA, returns to Earth and crash lands into the sea off a small Sicilian fishing village. The surviving crewmen are rescued by some fishermen and taken to the local hotel, where a visiting American scientist's daughter (played by Joan Taylor), a medical student, tends to them. One crewman, the ship's doctor, dies, leaving behind his notebook; the other crewman, Col. Robert Calder (played by William Hopper), survives and takes up the quest to find a speciman brought from Venus. Meanwhile, the speciman washed ashore and was found by a young local boy, who sold it to the visiting scientist. Overnight, however, the egg hatches a bipedal reptile-like Venusian creature which just as quickly begins to grow. It is placed in a cage by the scientist, but shortly becomes big enough and strong enough to free itself. An apparent vegetarian, the creature attacks only when provoked. It goes on a rampage through the countryside and is captured, eventually taken to the city of Rome, by which time it is the height of a two-story building. After escaping and fighting with an elephant, the Ymir goes on a rampage. The American and Italian military authorities combine to stop the menace, which in fact is an innocent animal that is not understood.

[edit] Trivia

Although the creature was named an "Ymir" in the treatment, it is never actually called anything in the film itself, as Harryhausen was worried that audiences would confuse Ymir with the Arabic title Emir.

The film is supposedly also known as "The Beast from Space" and "The Giant Ymir", but in what context is unknown and, in fact, these reported alternate titles cannot be confirmed.