IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

traitorjoe666 Don't get me wrong, it's an enjoyable flick, but it typecasts humans *perfectly*, for the asshats they usually are.This is the King Kong epic, only with a reptilian "ape" kidnapped from Venus, not some obscure tropical isle. And of course, "humanity" wins by murdering the creature when it proves to be inconvenient.I'm hoping the purpose of the flick was to be a sort of expose', rather than rooting for the "good guys" to kill the "bad" creature, and if so, this hits the mark dead-on.The unfortunate creature, Ymir, is taken from his native Venus as an egg, where he later hatches into a cute little lizard-critter. But of course, the "scientists" react by grabbing, capturing, and caging the little critter, to be experimented on, without even wondering what it needs as far as food, water, etc. And the nerve to call it "so ugly"... like it'd think the pink squishy things imprisoning it were paragons of beauty?? Okay, Joan Taylor is seriously hot, but still...So, when Ymir can *finally* escape, all he does is grunt at his captors and wanders off, never so much as touches them. Only when provoked does he react in anger; they even *say so*! He wants to eat, gets attacked by a dog, and only then gives the dog a beat-down. He gets repeatedly attacked, and only when pitchforked in the back does he attack his attacker. He's electrocuted and recaptured, experimented on some more, and only through human incompetence is able to escape again. But from there, he's met with guns, flamethrowers(!), tanks, all sorts of weaponry. Finally, in his last-ditch effort to escape by just blindly climbing to nowhere in particular, he's howitzered and finally murdered. Yes, murdered.Yay, "humanity".So then, finally, can the gorgeous almost-doctor and square-jawed military-dood go have a nice quiet meal in a dark cafe. Gives ya the warm-fuzzies just allllll over.Again, I'm really hoping that was the intent of the movie, to show humans in the light they've earned throughout history. Maybe it'd be a wake-up call to some. We can only hope.

Fuzzy Wuzzy If you enjoy crazy "rampaging monster" movies from the 1950s, then 20 Million Miles To Earth is sure to give you an extra-satisfying adrenaline rush with its top-notch special effects by Ray Harryhausen.As the story goes - The 1st spaceship to Venus crashes into the sea off the coast of Sicily. Its only 2 survivors are its pilot and a fast-growing Venusian monster who doesn't hesitate to fight back when frightened.With an intelligent, fast-paced script - This Creature Feature's wild climax takes place at a showdown between monster and man in the Colosseum in Rome.20 Million Miles To Earth's running time is only 82 minutes.

gavin6942 The first United States spaceship to Venus crash-lands off the coast of Sicily on its return trip. A dangerous, lizard-like creature comes with it and quickly grows gigantic.This is a great film. Although judging by the plot and acting it may seem just like any other 1950s science fiction film, it is (20 million) miles ahead of its peers because of Ray Harryhausen. The stop-motion animation used in this film is as good or better than anything being used today (2015). The creature is completely believable when it interacts with its surroundings.An odd thing, though, is the film's abuse of women. The lead actor develops a romance with the female lead, which is pretty normal, but he pursues her after berating her, scolding her, cutting her off and dismissing her as "almost a doctor". Why is she even interested in a guy who is so disrespectful?

Coventry 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. The Sci-Fi treasures coming from this golden era usually revolved on either gigantic (whether or not mutated) creatures or malevolent aliens invading the earth. And guess what! The incredibly amusing semi-classic "20 Million Miles to Earth" is a combination of both. The first – and failed – US spaceship to the planet Venus crashes into the sea near a small Sicilian fishing village and its astonished inhabitants. Seemingly just one person of the 18-headed crew survived the disaster, but young Pépé discovers another living creature inside a sort of cocoon. The annoying brat sells it for 200 Lire (back in the fifties this must have been the equivalent of two pennies or something) to a local zoologist, even though the surviving astronaut and the entire NASA are looking for it. A reptilian type of little monster comes out of the cocoon and rapidly grows to enormous proportions due to the different kind of oxygen it is forced to breathe on planet earth. The creature – Ymir – doesn't seem all that violent, but naturally the humans hunt it down and electrocute it for their own scientific pleasure. When experimented upon in the zoo of London, Ymir escapes and goes on a bit of a rampage! "20 Million Miles to Earth" is particularly famous and appreciated for Ray Harryhausen's impressive and utterly cool creature design, but it has several other things going for it as well. The pacing, for example, is excellent and contrary to a lot of other Sci-Fi/horror movies from the same period, "20 Millions etc…" never becomes tedious or overlong. I'm also thankful that they moved the action from the Sicilian village to Rome quite quickly, because the stereotypical dim-witted villagers and – especially – the irritating little Pépé would have gotten on everybody's nerves eventually. There's a reasonable amount of action and good dialogs during the middle section, so even the obligatory romance (between the astronaut and the stubborn doctor) is tolerable. The final act is, of course, the most memorable and entertaining part of the whole film. There are powerful mass-hysteria sequences during the breakout of the monster, a tense animal battle to the death and a climax that is reminiscent to both Godzilla and King Kong, with the tourist attractions in Rome playing crucial roles. Please, check out this adorable movie, as well as some of the other science fiction titles of the underrated director Nathan Juran (like "First Men in the Moon" and "The Brain from Planet Arous").