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A classic Harryhausen fantasy, "20 Million Miles to
Earth" was impressive when first released in the 50's with
its location photography of a creature brought back by an
astronaut (William Hopper best known for "Perry Mason")from
the planet Venus that grows to gigantic proportions due
to Earth's atmosphere terrorizing Italy. Much of the film
was shot on location in Italy and Harryhausen used his most
advanced compositing techniques to integrate the creature
called the Ymir into real locations including an impressive
looking fight between the creature and a stop motion animated
Elephant. This new colorized version (supervised by Harryhausen
himself) might appeal to the idiotic crowds that won't watch
something because it is in black & white (and there are
those out there) but even long time fans might be impressed
with the use of color here to enhance the film. The good
news for fans that want to pick this up for the supplements
or who haven't purchased it already is that the film can
be viewed in either the colorized version or black & white.
***
This was Harryhausen's attempt to create a truly epic
fantasy like "King Kong" the film with visual effects by
his mentor and idol Willis O'Brien. While color doesn't
improve the films flaws, it does add texture and some nice
contrast to the film without diminishing it (although the
Ymir does occasionally look more like a miniature to me
for some reason with its green scaly body). Although I don't
believe in colorizing films the fact that Harryhausen supervised
the colorizing himself may take some of the sting out of
this "alteration" of the film. Certainly Harryhausen would
probably have shot this in color if he had been given a
budget generous enough to do so (the follow up to this "The
7th Voyage of Sinbad" was shot in color and Harryhausen
made maximum use of the addition creating visual effects
that were stunning). ***
While the film doesn't quite reflect the majesty and
power of "Kong" (the difference between the two films is
the difference between a deluxe Hollywood A budget film
and a high quality B movie both due to the budget, acting
and scripting), it's an impressive monster movie that Harryhausen
surpassed with both "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" and "Jason
and The Argonauts" with his groundbreaking combination of
action and visual effects. Director Nathan Juran (who would
later helm "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" for Harryhausen and
the "Sinbad" clone "Jack the Giant Killer") does a capable
job with the action and working with the actors given the
limitations of the script. "20 Million Miles to Earth" is
an enjoyable science fiction/fantasy that does an impressive
job of holding its own against films that had far larger
budgets ("War of the Worlds") and is superior to some of
them ("This Island Earth"). ---
Image & Sound:
"20 Million Miles to Earth" looks impressive in this
color edition. Contrast is improved with the use of color
and while the colors aren't as impressive or vivid as a
film shot in the 50's on color stock, it looks quite a bit
better than the smeared colors of early attempts that Ted
Turner did with his library of films. I've often thought
that colorized films look like a very coordinated child
broke out their crayons and colored in black and white images.
That impression still stands although "20 Million Miles
to Earth" doesn't look as offensive as previous attempts
with other films. If anything colorized films resemble early
2 strip Technicolor films much more than the rich, vibrant
colors of 3 color Technicolor ("Gone with the Wind" would
be a brilliant example of this with its rich almost surreally
bright colors) or even modern color films which tend to
look more natural. ***
Audio sounds fine in its original mono presentation.
I'm surprised that there wasn't an attempt to reprocess
the original soundtrack for stereo or 5.1 presentation as
well.
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