8 / 10
20 Million Miles to Earth is the Harryhausen film set in Italy.
Nathan Juran directed it. William Hopper plays Colonel Robert Calder, an astronaut returning from the first manned mission to Venus. The American spacecraft crashes off the coast of Sicily. The only thing recovered from the wreck is a small alien creature called the Ymir. It has been brought back deliberately as a specimen. The Ymir grows rapidly in Earth’s atmosphere and goes from house-pet sized to building-sized over the course of the film.
Joan Taylor plays Marisa, the medical student who helps capture and study the creature. The climax is the Ymir destroying the Colosseum.
Of all Harryhausen’s 1950s monster pictures, this is the one I like best, mostly because I end up rooting for the monster. The Ymir never asked to come to Earth, and by the Colosseum I’m on its side against everybody. The human story around it is standard 1950s stuff and it’s what holds the film to an 8, but the creature and the Italian locations make up for a lot.
The film is the best of Harryhausen’s 1950s creature features. The Roman setting is the differentiating element. Harryhausen and producer Charles H. Schneer scouted locations in Sicily and Rome, and the production benefits enormously from the actual European backgrounds. The Colosseum sequence required permission from Italian authorities and was filmed with the cooperation of the Italian government.
The Ymir
For me the Ymir is Harryhausen’s best creature design of the decade. The creature has reptilian features, but its body language and reactions are mammalian.
The audience reads it as terrified, then aggressive, then exhausted, then desperate. The third-act Colosseum sequence ends with the Ymir wounded and dying, and the film gives that death real weight. I come away feeling I’ve watched a frightened animal die far from home, and that ending hurts more than it has any right to.
Harryhausen later wrote that the Ymir was his favorite creature design from his early career. The animation work is consistent across the film. The Ymir’s growth between scenes required Harryhausen to rebuild the puppet at multiple scales, with the largest version standing approximately six feet tall on the animation table.
For Writers
A creature that grows across the runtime has built-in dramatic escalation. The Ymir’s increasing size raises the stakes without requiring the script to do additional work. The lesson is that visual or physical changes to a character or creature across the runtime can substitute for plot escalation. If your protagonist is changing in ways the reader can see, the change carries dramatic momentum even when nothing else is happening.
The Italy Setting
The Sicilian opening sequences and the Roman third act give the film a different look from the standard 1950s American creature feature.
The local extras are real Italians. The architecture is real Italian architecture. The Colosseum is the actual Roman Colosseum. The cooperation with Italian authorities allowed Harryhausen to composite the Ymir into shots of the real landmark.
The film’s relationship with its Italian setting is respectful instead of tourist-oriented.
The Italian characters are competent and the Italian government is portrayed as functional. The American astronaut is the foreigner here, and the script treats him as a guest instead of as a savior. The choice raises the film above the standard American-centric science fiction of the period.
I love that the American astronaut is the outsider here. The Italians are competent, the officials know their jobs, and the film gets a whole atmosphere out of real Sicilian streets and real Roman stone that no backlot could have faked.
For Writers
A setting outside Hollywood gives a film atmosphere that local backlots can’t provide. The Italian setting in 20 Million Miles to Earth is part of what makes the film memorable forty years after release. The lesson is that locations have inherent character. A story set in a specific real place benefits from that place’s qualities. If you can write a story set somewhere with cultural and visual identity, the identity contributes to the work without requiring additional pages.
The Colosseum Sequence
The climactic Colosseum sequence is among the best Harryhausen action sequences of the 1950s. The Ymir, now approximately twenty feet tall, has fled into the ancient ruin. The Italian and American forces converge on the structure. The fight involves elephants from a nearby zoo, a tank, and the Ymir’s eventual death after a sustained tank assault. The animation work integrates the creature into the real Colosseum so convincingly that later viewers have remembered the shots as if the Ymir had been there.
The sequence is the high point of the production. The film couldn’t match it in the rest of the runtime. Harryhausen later regretted that the Colosseum climax cost so much animation labor that the earlier creature sequences had to be shorter than he’d originally planned.
The Colosseum climax is the reason this rates as high as it does for me. The Ymir fighting on real ancient stone is an image that thrills me, and I think Harryhausen spent his animation labor in exactly the right place, even if I’d have liked those earlier creature scenes to run longer.
For Writers
Spending production resources on a strong climax can mean cutting elsewhere. Harryhausen prioritized the Colosseum sequence and accepted that other parts of the film would be less developed. The choice was correct. The audience remembers the climax. The lesson is that resources are finite and you should know where you want the resources to land. If the climax is the heart of your story, build the climax fully and accept that other scenes will be smaller. Spreading resources evenly produces a uniform mediocrity. Concentrating produces peaks.
Craft Note
Nathan Juran directed. Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf wrote, story by Charlott Knight. Ray Harryhausen animated. Charles H. Schneer produced. William Hopper as Colonel Robert Calder. Joan Taylor as Marisa Leonardo. Frank Puglia as Dr. Leonardo. Released June 1957. Columbia Pictures. Mischa Bakaleinikoff composed the score. Filmed on location in Sicily, Rome, and studios. Approximately three hundred thousand dollar budget. The Ymir was a personal favorite of Harryhausen’s across his entire career.
Does 20 Million Miles to Earth still hold up?
8/10. The best of Harryhausen’s pure creature features of the 1950s, and the one where I feel sorriest for the creature.
The Italian setting gives it a look I don’t get from his other 1950s pictures, and the Colosseum sequence is iconic. What keeps it at an 8 is the script around the Ymir, standard 1950s science fiction with humans I don’t much care about. Watch it for the Ymir and for the Colosseum.
