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20 Million Miles to Earth (50th Anniversary Edition)
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| Genre | Sci-Fi |
| Format | Multiple Formats, Black & White, Dubbed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, Original recording remastered, NTSC See more |
| Contributor | Frank Puglia, Joan Taylor, Jan Arvan, James Dime, Nathan Juran, Sid Cassel, Bart Braverman, John Zaremba, Robert Creighton Williams, Charlotte Knight, Noel Drayton, Tito Vuolo, Christopher Knopf, Thomas Browne Henry, William Hopper, Arthur Space See more |
| Language | English |
| Runtime | 2 hours and 45 minutes |
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Product Description
Product Description
Special effects genius Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans)brings you one of his earliest groundbreaking films, now available for the first time in vibrant color! When an American spaceship crash-lands off the coast of Sicily, a rescue team discovers that the crew has brought back a gelatinous mass that soon hatches and evolves into a strange bi-ped creature which increases in size rapidly. Soon 20-feet tall, the creature rampages through Rome before being destroyed as it seeks refuge in the Colosseum.
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Special-effects legend Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion talents and "Dynamation" (rear-projection) process are the highlights of the '50s-era creature feature 20 Million Miles to Earth. An American spaceship returns to Earth after a mission to Venus and crashes into the sea near Sicily. A sole survivor (William Hopper) is rescued, along with a specimen that quickly grows into a reptilian biped called the Ymir. The being eventually grows to 20 feet high and escapes its confines, whereupon it rampages through Rome before a showdown with the military. Despite lacking much of a personality, the Ymir is a marvelous showcase for Harryhausen's skills. Unfortunately, the rest of the film does not match his level of excellence; direction by Nathan Juran is perfunctory (his later collaborations with Harryhausen, including The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, are more lively), and performances and scripting are flat. Still, Harryhausen fans should enjoy this opportunity to see this phase of his career before he created his most enduring works. --Paul Gaita
Set Contains:
Special Features: This double-disc presentation of 20 Million Miles to Earth includes a wealth of supplemental features, chief among them being a commentary track by Ray Harryhausen himself, who's joined by modern day special effects wizards Dennis Muren (Jurassic Park) and Phil Tippett (RoboCop). For fans who want the inside track on Harryhausen's creative process, this track is invaluable, as Muren and Tippett engage their hero in a lively discussion of his techniques. It's too bad that the colorized version of the film (which was partially supervised by Harryhausen, and is included along with the original black-and-white print) has gotten the lion's share of press in regard to this edition, because the commentary is truly the core reason to purchase the set. Also included is an affectionate (if slight) conversation between Tim Burton and Harryhausen, who discuss their love for stop-motion FX, and a featurette about the film itself which features interviews with fans like Terry Gilliam, John Landis, and Rick Baker. An interview with leading lady Joan Taylor, an informative featurette on composer Mischa Bakaleinikoff, and numerous promotional materials from the original ad campaign round out this exceptional DVD set. -- Paul Gaita
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : 1.85:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : NR (Not Rated)
- Package Dimensions : 7.1 x 5.42 x 0.58 inches; 2.88 Ounces
- Director : Nathan Juran
- Media Format : Multiple Formats, Black & White, Dubbed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, Original recording remastered, NTSC
- Run time : 2 hours and 45 minutes
- Release date : July 31, 2007
- Actors : William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Thomas Browne Henry, Frank Puglia, John Zaremba
- Dubbed: : French
- Subtitles: : English, French
- Language : English, Unqualified
- Studio : Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
- ASIN : B000QGEB1W
- Writers : Charlotte Knight, Christopher Knopf, Robert Creighton Williams
- Number of discs : 2
- Best Sellers Rank: #128,559 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #2,591 in Science Fiction DVDs
- Customer Reviews:
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As the film begins we're off the coast of a dinky, little fishing village in Italy, one that's startled by the arrival of a strange ship from the sky. The rather large and odd craft crashes into the Mediterranean (there's a ginormous hole in the side of the ship), and eventually two men are rescued from its interior by some plucky, stereotypical Italian characters before sinking into the ocean. Turns out one of the men is Colonel Robert `Bob' Calder (Hopper), a United States air force pilot, and he's just returned from a trip to...Venus! Anyway, after the crash, a young boy finds a cylinder from the ship on the beach, and he proceeds to sell its contents to a traveling zoologist named Dr. Leonardo (Puglia), whose granddaughter, named Marisa (Taylor), just happens to be a medical student and is called upon to aid the two survivors (the one who isn't Calder soon passes away from a severe case of space acne). Anyway, turns out the cylinder contained an alien life form, one that soon grows into a miniature Kraken, the kind similar to the one from the film Clash of the Titans (1981). Dr. Leonardo is amazed at `his' discovery, but guess what? The creature grows at an extraordinary rate, and soon escapes, terrorizing livestock across the Italian countryside. Calder and some military types give chase, but the alien beast, who is now the size of a man, is quite wily and manages to elude capture. The beast is eventually caught and taken to the zoo in Rome for study, that is until a mishap allows it to escape and go on an insane rampage through the streets of Rome (but not before fighting an elephant...woo hoo!), it's size now approximately about 50 feet tall (seems exposure to our atmosphere has some to do with the creature's rapid growth). Calder calls in for firepower, and the Italian army makes the scene, all leading up to a final confrontation at Rome's famous Coliseum, which seems somewhat appropriate...
I'll tell you straight up the story here isn't all that hot, and the writing, in terms of the dialogue, is generally pretty ridiculous, but the special effects are top notch, and features some of Harryhausen's best work, in my opinion. The great thing is the creature appears quite early in the film, and then continues to be present throughout, all the way up until the end, in varying sizes. As far as the actual characters go, they're all fairly standard, including Hopper's manly, sometimes misogynistic hero type and Taylor's comely female who eventually catches the eye of the hero. The latter was somewhat interesting at first as she seemed to buck the trend in sci-fi films of the time in that she seemed a strong willed, opinionated, female character, one who was studying to be a doctor (not a nurse), but soon enough she gets all chummy with the hero, as it seems few could resist his sheer, unadulterated manliness. I suppose it matters little as her character really had no real purpose in the film other than to provide for a female presence. There are some really, unintentionally funny bits throughout, probably the best occurring when Calder and some locals chase the creature down early on into a barn. Calder, who apparently had some experience with the creature back on its home planet, tells the others it won't attack unless provoked. After doing so Calder then proceeds to jab the man-sized beast with a pole, trying to force it into a wooden cart (I guess jabbing at it with a pointy, wooden stick isn't considered provoking). Now realize only a short time prior the creature had escaped from Dr. Leonardo, who had been keeping it in an iron-barred cage, which it tore apart easily, so trying to capture it in a wooden cage seemed pointless. Another really funny part comes after the capture of the creature and the military decides to hold a press conference and spills the beans to the world. During the conference, after being told of the semi-successful mission to Venus, one ace reporter comes forth idiotically with the following..."Venus? The planet Venus?" Another part that sticks out in my mind...near the end, as the creature, who's quite large now, is rampaging through Rome, Calder's following it in a car, apparently trying to keep tabs on it. For some reason, at one point, he rams it with his car...now I was unsure the purpose of this action, but it seemed to me not such a hot idea to angry up the rather large beast by plowing into it with an automobile (hey, let's see how ticked off we can get it). But seriously, the main reason to see this film is for the effects work, which mainly consists of stop motion animation. I did develop some sympathy for the beast, given the fact it was a hapless victim of circumstances beyond its control, but not so much that I minded the army trying to blast the hell of it. The special effects work is exquisite here, and while it may appear hokey by today's standards, know that at the time, this was state of the art stuff, and no one did it better than Harryhausen, who influenced so many of the effects artists working in the industry today (you ask any of them of their influences, and they invariably mention a Harryhausen film). It should also be known that the type of animation present here took months to achieve, requiring patience and eye towards detail few other than Harryhausen possessed.
The picture, available in both widescreen anamorphic (1.85:1) and fullscreen (1.33:1), looks decent for the most part, although there is some graininess present at times, and the Dolby Digital mono audio comes through well enough. As far as extras there's the usual featurettes `This is Dynamation' and The Harryhausen Chronicles, both of which appear on any number of other Harryhausen DVD releases. Also included are subtitles in English and French, and a trailer for this film along with in for The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960).
Cookieman108
By the way, if you're interested in picking up this feature, I might recommend looking into purchasing a DVD set entitled The Fantastic Films of Ray Harryhausen - Legendary Science Fiction Series as it contains the following It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), Earth vs. the Flying Saucer (1956), 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), Mysterious Island (1961), and H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon (1964), all at a price considerable less than buying the features separately.
Harryhausen had originally developed a story about the frost giant Ymir from Norse mythology. He then changed the creature to a cyclops-satyr mix from another planet who rampages on modern Earth, but still kept the name Ymir. (The Cyclops-satyr would later show up in "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.") When the film finally went before the cameras, the Ymir had become a humanoid-reptilian beast from Venus. Brought to Earth in a crashed rocket, the Ymir emerges as only a few inches high, but starts growing rapidly in the Earth's atmosphere. Originally peaceful, the Ymir is provoked into violence by frightened humans. The movie climaxes in Rome when the captive Ymir bursts loose and starts smashing famous monuments in the Eternal City.
The parallels to King Kong are obvious, and Harryhausen intended the Ymir to also be a sympathetic, misunderstood creature. He succeeded grandly: "20 Millions Miles to Earth" is Harryhausen's best early film. The direction from Nathan Juran and the human actors are perfunctory and clichéd, but the effects are still stunning today, and the Ymir is a superb actor. Designed along human lines, but with dinosaur features, the Ymir elicits strong emotions and exudes tremendous personality. The scene of it hatching from its `pod' (made of gelatin) and exploring the strange world around it for the first time is one of the high points of Harryhausen's career, and a sequence of which he rightly feels great pride. The scene of the full-sized, fifteen-foot Ymir wrestling an elephant (also animated) is also a stunning piece of work.
(Harryhausen's love of the Ymir extended to late in his career. In his last film, "The Clash of the Titans," he used the Ymir as the basis for the design of the multiple-armed monster the Kraken -- the heads and bodies are almost the same.)
The DVD presents the film in widescreen format for the first time since its theatrical release. The image is crystal clear and lets Harryhausen's work shine. There are a few extras. "The Harryhausen Chronicles," a lengthy documentary, does an excellent overview of the man's career. This same documentary appears on most of Columbia's Harryhausen DVDs, so if you're a fan of the animator you've probably seen this before. Also included is a vintage featurette about the animation process, called "This is Dynamation." It was made for the release of "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad," so it actually has nothing to do with "20 Million Miles to Earth."
This is a must-have DVD for any Harryhausen fan and any admirer of 50s science fiction. It's one of the highlights of giant monster cinema.
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The really interesting extra is ‘The Super 8 one reel version’- which was reviewed in Paul Van Someren’s ‘Super 8 Collector Issue Six page 19’. The review outlines the plot and comments that Columbia had just released at two reel version in the US and readers were recommended to wait until it is available in the UK. Not that the editing was considered bad on this one reeler but it was too short to do justice to Ray Harryhausen’s brilliant special effects and the final scenes in the Coliseum, Rome. This one reeler was awarded ‘A’ for both picture and sound. Unfortunately the version on the discs is the one reel silent version, but it was a nice memento of the one reel sound version I once owned.
The third and last of Ray Harryhausen and Charles H. Schneer's pictures for churn `em out fast and cheap executive producer Sam Katzman, 20 Million Miles to Earth is a decent mixture of sci-fi and monster movie. Rather than having its humans travel to another world and confront monsters or having ancient monsters reawaken and wreak destruction on the modern world, it tweaks both formulas to have a doomed mission to Venus bring back a sample of alien life with them. At first this creature is minute, but exposed to earth's atmosphere it doubles its size every day...
Although it's far from one of their best efforts as a film, some intelligence has gone into the script. The Italian setting allows the Ymir to fight for our entertainment on the same locations (the Colosseum) and against the same kind of creatures (an enraged elephant and well-armed fighting men) that gladiators did centuries earlier. And rather than going the King Kong route, there's no sympathy for the creature here - to the humans it's just an animal to be examined and then destroyed when it objects. But what really stands out about 20 Million Miles is the extraordinary quality of Harryhausen's special effects.
A close relative to the Kraken in Clash of the Titans, the Ymir is a huge leap forward for Harryhausen, the first of his own creatures to have a personality, conveyed through beautifully acted body language and credible reactions. It's also remarkably fluid compared to earlier efforts, constantly reacting - even when it's asleep it still breathes. Much of the animation is particularly complicated, not least a sequence when the Ymir is caught in a net. Throughout he's integrated into sets and real-life locations like the Rome Zoo, the Ponti St. Angelo and the Forum rather than just standing in the foreground as in much of Harryhausen's earlier work, even interacting properly with the shadows as the light source shifts. It's the moment that Harryhausen outdoes his mentor Willis O'Brien for the first time.
As with Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers and It Came From Beneath the Sea, Columbia's region-free Blu-ray offers a typically unconvincingly colorised version alongside the original black and white version (both probably cropped tighter than on their original release at 1.85:1) and another plentiful selection of extras - audio commentary by Ray Harryhausen, Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett and Arnold Kunert, featurettes Remembering 20 Million Miles to Earth, Tim Burton Sits Down with Ray Harryhausen, The Colorization Process and David Schecter on Film Music's Unsung Hero, an interview with Joan Taylor that's also included on the Earth vs. the Flying Saucers [Blu-ray] [2008][Region Free ], stills and poster galleries and a preview of the digital comic book, but no trailers for other Harryhausen films this time round.
Usually, these colourised films look awful. It is really obvious the colours have been artificially painted on, and they don't look like real colour film at all.
Here it is very well done, and the colour is the proper tone that Technicolour looks. Very amazing indeed.
Of course you can see it in b/w as well if you like, and the film is beautifully restored.
Lots of nice extras too.
A good disc that is recommended.




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