I rented "20 Million Miles from Earth" because it was one of the few Ray Harryhausen films I'd never seen. Overall, the movie is a pretty average 50's grade B sci-fi film. What makes it worth watching is the character of the Ymir, the creature from Venus. In later years, Ray Harryhausen remarked on the innocence of this creature and its final resort to violence only when it had been tormented to its breaking point. If you watch the performance of the Ymir (the best in the movie!), you can really see that it's essentially a non-violent creature that's highly confused and just looking for it's home (and some food!).
I think a scene that really captures this is when the rapidly-growing Ymir breaks out of its first cage. Although the professor and his daughter are standing 5 feet away from it, and the professor has placed it in the cage in the first place, the Ymir doesn't attack them. It paces back and forth, then turns to them and gives them a quick roar, as if to say "Why did you do that!?" If you watch the creature closely, most of the time it's scared and just trying to get the humans to leave it alone. A very good piece of work.
Overall, the movie is very silly and pretty stupid. People are constantly screaming about the monster's great danger,then they go after it, poke it with a big stick, and wonder why the thing's ticked off! Nobody ever get's the "V-8" moment and says, "Hey, why don't we just feed this thing, it's probably starving!" The reason, of course, is that you don't get to blow up the Coliseum if you're just having a nice picnic!
I think a scene that really captures this is when the rapidly-growing Ymir breaks out of its first cage. Although the professor and his daughter are standing 5 feet away from it, and the professor has placed it in the cage in the first place, the Ymir doesn't attack them. It paces back and forth, then turns to them and gives them a quick roar, as if to say "Why did you do that!?" If you watch the creature closely, most of the time it's scared and just trying to get the humans to leave it alone. A very good piece of work.
Overall, the movie is very silly and pretty stupid. People are constantly screaming about the monster's great danger,then they go after it, poke it with a big stick, and wonder why the thing's ticked off! Nobody ever get's the "V-8" moment and says, "Hey, why don't we just feed this thing, it's probably starving!" The reason, of course, is that you don't get to blow up the Coliseum if you're just having a nice picnic!