Stop poking me!

[Andrew]

At long last I was able to watch my "20 Million Miles to Earth" DVD.  The print is awesome for such a movie.  It also made me sad for the poor Ymir.  It just wanted to be left alone, but every few minutes a human was either prodding it or shooting it.  No wonder it went on a rampage.  The other Marine watching and I kept yelling, "Stop poking me!" at the various humans.  Even the elephant was told to conduct "no pokage."

[Chris K.]

I have fond memories of 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH. I still enjoy this flick for it's effective acting, original storyline, great locations, and best of all fantastic special effects from Ray Harryhausen. Can you believe that Harryhausen was one of the original dudes to inspire effects related features (Yet, filmmakers today use the theme of effects-related features way to often. In a Harryhausen film the storyline would stay in place and show the monster when it needed to be shown, not the other way around). The Dynamation effects are still quite solid and well done. How Harryhausen pulled it off is really quite a feat, and I applaud him. Ray Harryhausen certainly belongs next to the effects masters Eiji Tsuburaya, Willis O'Brien, Jim Danforth, and David Allen.

Also, Harryhausen is quite confused by the creature being called "Ymir" by his fans even though the monster has no name in the film (and never had a name in the original script treatment)! I guess fandom creates the names themselves.

[Haze]

This is one of the better stop motion movies, although, I like Beast From 20,000 fathoms better, this is still loads of fun for me.

"I am a master of quack-fu"

[Ken Begg]

Fans of Harryhausen should watch out for Mysterious Island, one of Harryhausen's best movies, when it comes to DVD this fall.  That giant crab is one of his shining moments.

Unfortunately, Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is owned (I think) by Warner Brothers, who are notoriously stingy with DVD releases, especially in terms of older genre stuff.  The best thing you can do to push this along is to buy the recently released Them! disc == which is positively smashing, by the way -- and show them that classic sci-fi sells.  In fact, just buy the Them! DVD for its own sake.

[Flangepart]

Love it, for the same reasons, Andrew. Poor monster! Dude just wants to eat sulfer and be left alone. Hey...if he eats sulfer...do his farts smell like roses? Alien biology, anythings possable! This film has a kenny in it...but, thank all thats Holy, he don't stay for the whole run!