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From Venus to Sicily, tragedy of the cosmic visitor hatched and toppled. "Fascinating. Horrible, but fascinating." An enormous rocketship crashes into the Mediterranean Sea, stout fishermen venture into the wreckage for survivors, a boy helps himself to the top-secret cylinder that washes ashore. (He hopes to sell it and purchase a cowboy hat from the exotic land of Texas, "eh, those American movies...") The old geologist (Frank Puglia) examines the contents, a petrified hunk of jelly that pulsates and cracks to reveal the extraterrestrial reptile whose growth is accelerated by Earth's atmosphere. Into the wild it escapes, with the medical student (Joan Taylor) and the military pilot (William Hopper) right behind. "I've had nightmares in my time, but I've never dreamed of anything like this." Nathan Juran smartly makes the creature the principal point of interest, as befits an ingenious Ray Harryhausen creation—scaly jowls, torso of a quarterback, expressive tail, echoing whoop, just a bewildered Venusian trying to make sense of the landscape. Not ferocious unless provoked, warns the pilot, so naturally locals poke at it with poles and pitchforks when it's cornered in a barn. It snacks on sulfur, is stunned by electricity, goes toe to toe with a bull elephant at the Roman zoo. (A doctor from Tokyo is included in the scientific crew, possibly a tip of the hat to concurrent Toho rampages.) The helicopter hunt in the woods predicts Lonely Are the Brave, the climax at the Colosseum passes from Samson and Delilah to King Kong. The fallen beast receives a properly ponderous eulogy: "Why is it always, always so costly for man to move from the present to the future?" With John Zaremba, Thomas B. Henry, and Tito Vuolo. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |