- Directed by: Nathan Juran
- Written by: Robert Creighton Williams, Christopher Knopf, Charlott Knight
- Stars: William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Thomas Browne Henry
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 22 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg0huIZxYso
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The first manned expedition to Venus crash lands when it returns to Earth. A collected specimen starts small and grows into a gigantic creature that runs amok to terrify the world. The effects are quite good, considering the year, with a stop-action creature. The cast is good, the script has a decent story. It’s all around a fun 1950s creature feature.
Spoilery Synopsis
We’re told about the way scientific advances just seem to jump up on us, like atomic power and now… space travel! Credits roll.
Italian fishermen complain about catching cows in Texas. Suddenly, they stop and look up– it’s a space rocket! It crashes right next to the fishing boats. They spot a hole in the side and check it out. Two men climb inside the huge rocket and go down deep inside and find several dead Air Force men, along with two survivors. Just as they exit the ship, it sinks below the sea.
Later, at the Pentagon, General McIntosh and Dr. Uhl don’t know where the ship crashed down, but they’ve had sightings. They get the report that the ship has been found.
Back in Sicily, Pepe, the little boy from the boat, finds a device, “Project 5” and hides it in a cave. He opens the tube, and inside is a small, slimy lump. The Italians bring Dr. Leonardo, a vacationing American scientist, and his daughter Marisa to investigate. Pepe takes the thing he found to Leonardo to sell it for 200 Lira.
Colonel Robert Carter, one of the astronauts, wakes up and wants to know what’s going on. The other man, Dr. Sharman, has something growing on his face, and Carter knows it’s terminal. Sharman wants to know what happened to his sample, and they assume it went down with the ship. Then Sharman dies.
The gooey blob hatches into a little lizard-man in the professor’s trailer, and Marisa and Leonardo see it. They put it in a cage, but the next morning, the thing is much bigger.
General McIntosh and Dr. Uhl arrive in Sicily and meet Bob Carter. They explain the whole Venus expedition to the Italian Consul, Contino. The ship was hit by a meteor on the way back. Several members of the expedition died from some contagion they caught on the surface. They brought back, but lost, a sample of the lifeforms of Venus.
Colonel Bob offers Pepe money to tell him about the sample container and tells them about Professor Leonardo, who is on the way to Rome.
On the road, the creature, even bigger now, breaks out of the cage and runs off. Shortly after, the Americans catch up and hear the story. It shouldn’t have grown so fast or so large, but maybe there’s something on Earth that’s affecting it.
The creature comes upon a farm and eats from a bag of sulfur; it also wounds the farm dog. Bob and the others show, and they all have it cornered in the barn. They try and fail to force it into a cage, but when the farmer hits it with a pitchfork, it attacks him. Bullets don’t seem to have much effect on it.
The Italians insist now that the creature must be destroyed. They start searching the hills, as the Americans search with helicopters. Bob and Dr. Uhl fly over the creature and capture it in an electrified net.
The general gives a press conference, where he explains everything again. The creature’s being held at the zoo, and he’s gotten way bigger. They keep it asleep with a constant flow of electricity. They’re studying how the creature breathes on Venus and adapting that for humans. This gives Bob and Marisa plenty of time to flirt.
Suddenly, the power goes out and the creature wakes up. It breaks loose and attacks an elephant. The two go back and forth through the streets of Rome, crushing cars and people all along the way past several landmarks. The elephant eventually loses the battle, but the creature keeps on going.
The creature disappears into the river for a few hours, and when it comes out, it’s even bigger. It hides inside the Coliseum, where Bob shoots it with a rocket launcher and it falls to its death.
Brian’s Commentary
The creature is another of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion designs, and it’s really well done. This was also his last black-and-white film, as well as his last film set in the modern age. The “Italians” in the film are stereotypes and I doubt they’re even remotely Italian.
It’s pretty standard stuff for a 50’s giant monster film, but it stands out mostly for the effects, which were great for the time. We get a lot of creature action in this one.
Kevin’s Commentary
It’s 1957, so they didn’t know yet there wasn’t any advanced life on Venus and they wouldn’t be landing people there. There weren’t probes until the 1960s.
The special effects look good, if obvious and dated, and they get the job done. I thought it was good storytelling and interesting to start it out with the rocket crash on Earth.
It’s a good one from the era.
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