Reviews by JxSxPx

Some of the dopiest material ever committed to celluloid is found in One Million Years BC. There’s the gaggle of seductive cave woman, all big 60s mod hairstyles and fur bikinis without a speck of dirt or sweat upon their bodies, and the images of men outrunning gigantic iguanas and land roaming sea turtles. There’s a moment in a ritual where one of these cave dwelling honeys starts to go-go dance, honest to god, she starts gyrating like it’s an episode of Shindig!

What does it all add up to? Nothing much as it is merely a 90-minute kitsch fest with Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion dinosaurs and Raquel Welch wandering around like the hottest babe on the volcanic planet. Perhaps that climatic volcanic explosion is merely the earth’s natural reaction to seeing her panting and all wet. None of that matters in this ahistorical bit of schlock.

After directing the career-high for Harryhausen with Jason and the Argonauts, Don Chaffey returns but without the sustained sense of tone and pace that made their prior collaboration such a classic. We’re treated to the never-ending sights of mankind fighting dinosaurs and dinosaur-like creatures, many of which have been thrown together despite appearing across vast differences of time, yet none of our characters speak beyond rudimentary babble and grunts. If you’re going to ask us to buy into something as ridiculous as Raquel Welch fighting dinosaurs in a fur bikini, then couldn’t you also allow the characters to speak in normal English? After all, if you’re in for a penny with this absurdity then go in for a pound and completely dismantle any sense of plausibility in your tale.

One Million Years BC wants to be both a completely ludicrous bit of cheesecake, and a pseudo-complex tale of mankind surviving in harsh terrain with its series of power struggles, betrayals, romances, and reconciliations. This makes for stretches of the movie being near interminable as you wait for the next attack scene to drop you back into good ol’ fashioned camp territory. Harryhausen’s dinosaurs exhibit far more personality than just about any of the human players, exemplified in the battle between a Triceratops and a Ceratosaurus that has more rooting interest than any other action scene. This prehistoric hokum is passable as entertainment merely for Harryhausen’s efforts and the erotic allure of Welch. This is one is mildly entertaining without ever approaching the realm of good.  

After the artistic high of Jason and the Argonauts, First Men in the Moon is a drastic comedown. Here is a Ray Harryhausen movie where the limited budget shows, and instead of a cornucopia of tangibly strange stop-motion critters we’re treated to men in rubber suits. This Harryhausen film takes over an hour to give you what you came here for. Consider that the first cinematic sin against it.

Another H.G. Wells adaptation that plays fast-and-loose with the source material, First Men in the Moon takes kernels of good ideas and does nothing with them. It takes too long to get going, waiting roughly forty-five minutes to plop us on the moon to then spend another forty-five minutes doing a slow build that fizzles out long before the climax. The thudding humor, pounding the same vaudevillian key strokes over and over again, dominates too much of the narrative and proves more cumbersome than welcome. Consider these more cinematic sins.

There are highly imaginative and interesting visual concepts at play here, like the crystalline and stone cavern palace of the moon’s alien race. The three Harryhausen creations appear here, with two of them potentially hinting at a caste system within the alien race. A ruler with a gigantic head and a researcher are the only stop-motion aliens, standing in stark contrast with their lithe bodies and imposing height. The vast majority of the aliens are drones that are squatter and walk as if they’re folding in half. If this was supposed to purposefully state something about their society, we never get a square answer with the time spent on the moon rushed and muddled.

Also during this sojourn through the alien’s palatial quarters, our heroes run into the caterpillar-like creature that thrashes about. The sight of the caterpillar-thing and the aliens fighting is the dopey highlight of this clumsy film. Call me crazy, but if we had truncated the first half, spent more time on the moon exploration, completely removed the flashback structure, and spent more time on these ludicrous moments of pure spectacle, First Men in the Moon would have been a far better bit of B-movie schlock. Then there’s the persistent problem of Martha Hyer’s forced character which boils down to a waste of a highly talented actress. Try as Hyer might to bring something valuable to this character, she frequently grinds things to a halt or proves more unnecessary than anything else.

I’ve lost count of just how many cinematic sins we’ve piled up, but there’s not enough good here to tilt the scales towards enjoyably silly. The otherworldly moments come too late in the film to undo some of your wandering interest. If you’re a fan of Harryhausen like I am, you can wait to visit this film. There’s just not much of his magic or imprint here to really give a hearty recommendation in spite of its problems.

Ray Harryhausen regarded this as his all-time best film, and it was a moment of an artist correctly appraising their own work. This is not only the greatest film in his canon, but one of the greatest films of all-time. No, it’s not some deep, cerebral viewing experience, but this is what a piece of great entertainment looks like. This is what a transportive, highly imaginative action-fantasy-epic should feel like.

In a career filled with memorable and unique monstrous creations, Jason and the Argonauts is the definitive piece of an artistic master. The various stop-motion creations are doled out in a steady drip here, beginning with imposing Talos and ending with the one-two punch of the snapping hydra and the band of marauding skeletons. These creatures terrorize various characters and Greek cities that only exist in the fervid imagination of Harryhausen. Sure, Jason, Hercules, Medea, and the Greek gods appear in mythology, but not quite like this. They have been refracted through Harryhausen’s distinct cinematic prism, and it is a warm, artisanal point-of-view.

The obvious highlight of the still impressive effects work is how technically complicated all of it is. Talos, a gigantic metallic statue come to life, is something that Harryhausen had done before in the Cyclops attack during the earliest scenes of The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Aside from that one sequence all of the others are technical feats that prove he was operating at the height of his artistry. The harpies fly and thrash under a net, the Hydra is a seven-headed nightmare of snapping mouths and a slithering tail, and the bravura battle with the skeletons all fire the synapses and linger in the mind. The minute attention to detail is so ornate that if you look close enough you’ll notice the shields on the skeletons contain prior Harryhausen creations like Ymir and the cephalopod from It Came from Beneath the Sea.

While there is no question that Ray Harryhausen is true auteur of his films, certain directors knew how to whip the sinewy material between his effects money shots into pleasing foreplay. Don Chaffy is a prime example of this, as he keeps you interested even when there’s no mythological monstrosities on display. His directing is energetic and buoyant, creating a series of memorable images in the absence of Harryhausen’s effects. Look no further than the tension filled sequence where the Argo travels between the Clashing Rocks where still waters are merely a prelude to a terrifying fate. Or how about the view of Olympus as a sterile white palace where the gods play with our fates like chess pieces on  large map and view their work through a reflecting pool. I’m sure that Harryhausen had a hand in these decisions, but Chaffey’s camera is what makes such absurdities into the stuff of dreams.

It is precisely this tangible quality of the effects, a series of matte shots, trick photography, stop-motion animation, that give Jason and the Argonauts the impressions and dream-like quality that makes it so memorable. Compare it to the recent CGI-behemoths like Jurassic World where the various dinosaurs look like close approximations of the real thing, and the wonderment in Jason and the Argonauts hits you harder. These are the ideas of what these creatures are, to repurpose the argument that Roger Ebert made in favor and defense of King Kong’s rudimentary imagery. This tactile quality imprints itself more so than all of the slick CGI can. If I asked you to describe to me the skeleton attack or Talos’ stiff movements in detail, you probably could. If I asked you to describe to me Medusa in the Clash of the Titans remake, could you?  

I have spent a great deal of time defending, describing, and engaging with the effects work and outlandish imagery of the film and very little how it uses Greek mythology, the acting, or the score. This is both a correct decision given how effective that specific quality is, and a wrong one at the expense of everything else. So let’s correct these oversights. Todd Armstrong as Jason is a bit bland, but he’s appropriately handsome and stolid. While Nancy Kovack is delightfully mysterious and vampy as Medea (in heavily truncated form), Nigel Green as a hearty and experienced Hercules, while Honor Blackman and Niall MacGinnis bring a certain overwrought-yet-classy Britishness to Hera and Zeus managing to sell the drollery and finicky nature of the gods.

Never go to Hollywood for a straight interpretation of Greek mythology, but Jason and the Argonauts makes a few interesting changes to the myth that work well for the medium. There’s no Hydra in the original, the honor of battling that demonic creature goes to Hercules while he completes his twelve labors. The original features a dragon that Medea uses magic to lull to sleep, and that’s just not cinematic. The decision to change it from a dragon to the Hydra and avoid a comparison to The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was a very smart one. The Spartoi, the monsters that spring up from the teeth of the dragon/Hydra, were tricked into battling each other instead of Jason and the Argonauts. That’s just not terribly cinematic or thrilling, and making it a thrilling climactic battle is just good movie-making. And any lover of Greek mythology will notice that the film ends mid-way through the myth, completely removing the eventual revenge of Medea and betrayal by Jason, leaving us with a happy-ish ending. This works since the final words are given to Zeus and Hera who decide that they’ve had enough of playing with the lives and fates of mortals for now and will resume their games with Jason eventually. 

Then there's Bernard Hermann's score with its surges and underlining bombast of the action scenes and light romance. It ranks right up there, possibly even above his wonderful work in their prior films, most obviously Mysterious Island and Sinbad. All of these elements combine to make Jason and the Argonauts still feel alive and vital despite the fifty-odd years since its release. No film is a purer distillation of the magic of Ray Harryhausen, merging the penchant for absurdities and creativity that informs his best work. This film is the great light from which his legacy and legend grows, from which the special-effects industry grew by leaps and bounds.

If you’re wondering why Ray Harryhausen was brought on a Jules Verne adaptation, look no further than two then-recent live-action adaptations from Disney. In 1954, they brought about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a still beloved piece of nostalgia that made piles of money and brought home two Oscars, and in 1960 they released Swiss Family Robinson, which also made piles upon piles of money. Columbia had the bright idea of taking a Jules Verne property, rushing it into production, and adding in Ray Harryhausen for good measure, despite the source material completely lacking in gigantic monsters.

It’s a good thing they decided to enliven the proceedings with Harryhausen’s stop-motion creatures, because otherwise there’s very little going on here to keep your interest. This is one of more anemic entries in Verne’s bibliography, and it bears little resemblance to the popular ideas about what its contents are. In fact, this film is probably the one that popularized the notion of the island being filled with humongous crabs, bees, prehistoric birds, and bits of mordant humor. For instance, after managing to knock the gigantic crab into a boiling geyser we’re treated to them lounging around the carcass discussing how tasty the meat was. A similar joke happens after the Phorusrhacos attack leads to a vaguely Thanksgiving looking scenario.

Not to say that there isn’t some art to be found in this breezy, goofy matinee picture. Harryhausen’s effects are consummate, with the Phorusrhacos and giant bee attacks being typically thrilling and fun pieces of pop entertainment from the master. These sequences, like so many others in Harryhausen’s filmography, is aided by a strong score from Bernard Hermann. Hermann translates the adventure, danger, excitement and whimsy of any given moment into his orchestrations. Just remember whenever the plot doesn’t make any sense (and it often doesn’t, but that’s practically beside the point) or when the acting waivers, there’s always another stop-motion creation around the corner and Hermann’s underscoring to entertain you.

Or there’s the handsome faces of Michael Craig and Michael Callan to stare at, the loveliness of Beth Rogan, and the solidly matinee turns from Gary Merrill and Joan Greenwood. Greenwood is especially good here, using her clipped posh tones to create bits of humor and bothering to give her caricature a bit of a personality. This all leads towards the surprise appearance from Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo, the benefactor of our marooned heroes. The film was never concerned with the numerous mysteries of the island, in spite of being dubbed Mysterious Island, so the revelation that Nemo was behind, well, everything is a bit muted. So it comes as a shock just how idiosyncratic and unique a performance he gives in the role, turning Nemo into a cracked humanist with questionable methods.

Naturally, Mysterious Island ends in a fiery volcanic explosion, because of the Chekov’s gun principle. Why else would you introduce a bubbling volcano in the first moments on the island if you didn’t plan on having it blow by the end? While not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, Mysterious Island is goofy formula done right. Perhaps a bit weaker than a few other films in the Harryhausen canon, but still worth a cursory glance. I mean, our heroes escape Nemo’s ship, an active volcano, and a rampaging cephalopod in the final act. There’s a certain time and place for this kind of well-made lunacy, and it’s on a lazy weekend afternoon curled up on the couch.

Praise be to the comic book gods, because Marvel finally made a film that embraces the entirety of cinema’s possibilities. Prior entries, and by that I mean practically all of them, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe lazily drifted towards a basic televisual style. These films are basically entertaining enough, although unfortunately drifting towards a sameness, but often free of idiosyncratic personalities and vibrancy. Doctor Strange does not entirely shake free the script problems and lack of diversity that the entire franchise is burden with, but at least it will distract you with outré visuals and a fun sense kookiness.

Another movie in the Marvel series, another origin story about a douchebag white dude that needs to be humbled before he can become a great hero. Thankfully we blow through these early portions of the film and focus more on his training in the mystic arts. What does this mean? It means we spend a lot more time bouncing between realities, soaking in various psychedelic landscapes and eye-gouging colors that frequently disorientate you in the best of ways.

Doctor Strange shows it hand early with the opening battle scene between the under-cooked villain (a problem they’ve never managed to shake off) and the wise elder with deep ties to journeys of both the hero and villain. As these two powerful sorcerers meet, they engage in a battle that turns London’s buildings and streets into a living Escher drawing, or maybe a series of eternally moving clockwork parts. This one breaks free from any grounding in reality right out the gate, and thank the cinematic gods for this. (Say what you want about DC’s cinematic universe, it is half-baked narratively and tonally, but it came roaring out the gate with beautiful, painterly images that linger in the mind more so than any Marvel movie until this one.)

It’s not that all that Doctor Strange has is a series of increasingly wild, weird, and vibrant images and locations, but this is the strongest selling point. The cast is uniformly strong, and how could it not be when it’s top-lined by three Oscar nominees (Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams), an Oscar winner (Tilda Swinton), and one of our great underrated actors (Mads Mikkelsen) breathing life into these characters. Despite all of that great talent on display, Doctor Strange continues on with Marvel’s female problem, with only two characters given names, dialog, and anything to play. It’s a shame that McAdams is wasted in the “girlfriend” role, but she brings a pleasing seriousness and smarts to the undercooked role.

Even worse is how Marvel has taken a franchise that leans heavily on Eastern mysticism and failed to give any Asian actors but Benedict Wong something to do. Diversity is not the strongest selling point for the MCU, and Strange had several chances to shake things up in this regard but failed to do so. Once again, any and all characters of color are regulated to supporting players and sidekick roles. Would it truly have changed the character of Stephen Strange to cast an Asian actor? I’ll give them props for thinking outside the box in gender-flipping the Ancient One and race-bending Mordo, but not enough to overcome making them merely the supporting, training players to the hero.

At least Doctor Strange takes the final act, normally a series of ever-increasing collateral damage and rubble, and literally uses magic to undo it. Instead of a gigantic, scenery-destroying battle between Strange and the demonic Dormammu, this film has them stuck in a time warp replaying the same moments over and over again. It’s humorous to watch the various ways Dormammu kills Strange before giving up and agreeing to bargain with the sorcerer. This isn’t the only memorable fight sequence in the film, but it’s refreshing how it swerves right on the typical Marvel formula when all signs are pointing towards another sequence of massive property destruction with debris falling from the sky.

Despite my criticisms, Doctor Strange is the first entry in this particular subsection of the wider franchise, and I look forward to where his further adventures will take him. The mid and end-credits teasers give us plenty of clues, and I look forward to them. This film is finally a Marvel product that embraces the insanity of the comics in a more profound way than many of the others have up to this point. This is more of what I’ve wanted from Marvel films. Now if they could just fix their female and racial diversity problems.

The best thing going in Sicario is Roger Deakins’ masterful use of light. Deakins is such a high-level artist in his field that he can transform the most mundane and muddled of scripts into top-flight entertainments. He uses his consummate skills to make Sicario a beautifully murky, tension filled action-crime-thriller and elevates the weakly written material into something much better. It’s this persistent conflict between top-shelf technique by all involved smashing into a poor script that keeps Sicario in some strange state, locked in-between a serious triste on the War on Drugs and a popcorn entertainment.

I lean harder towards thinking of this as a popcorn entertainment with A-level craftsmanship. The longer the film goes on, the more director Denis Villeneuve’s technique brings more attention to itself. He never coheres the script into a whole, but he makes individual set pieces thrilling and memorable, palpable with enough tension that a trip wire in your mind could cause chaos to ensue for the characters on the screen. Shame that so much feels more like Grand Guignol horror sutured to escalations of violence and existential terror in the face of an unwinnable war.

If the film dips into overwrought, although spectacular, artistry, your senses never entirely hit mass saturation due to a series of anchoring performances that try to keep the film grounded even as it dips into melodramatics. Emily Blunt’s character is an improbable creation on the page, seemingly too naïve for the work she’s dedicated her life to and consistently finding herself in situations which strain credulity, is given more depth by the actress’ great work. Just as solid is Josh Brolin as a government contractor who recruits her for a shadowy mission and Daniel Kaluuya as her partner, both of whom are forced to deliver trite dialog like it is brand new information. They both succeed.

Towering above all, or maybe it’s quietly lurking in the shadows is Benicio del Toro’s supporting work. He’s withheld for much of the film, keeping a low profile and stalking in the background with only a few brief moments of violent outbursts to reveal the depths of his true character. He’s starred in several movies about cartels and the drug wars before, so he’s clearly in familiar terrain but he never repeats his work in Traffic or Savages here. The final scenes, which transition from Blunt’s heroine to his morally questionable avenger, are the crescendos as we submerge into the despair and horror that Sicario has merely flirted with thanks to del Toro’s impressively cruel work.

In the end, Sicario reveals itself as yet another violent film and not a film about violence. The script holds our hand too much, stymying any message and deeply felt atmospherics on display. Perhaps we should take a clue from the script and best not ask too many questions, just sit back and enjoy the ride. Sicario isn’t about moral complexity, it’s about Roger Deakin’s gorgeously twisted cinematography lingering over Emily Blunt’s facial reactions and exquisitely photographed gun battles between undercover agents and the cartel’s soldiers. 

One of the least known entries in Ray Harryhausen’s canon, The Three Worlds of Gulliver keeps a lot of the sarcasm while spinning out an “all ages” piece of fluffy entertainment. It’s relatively light on the stop-motion maestro’s creature creations, but heavy on the glossy fantasy spectacle with loads of scenes of Gulliver interacting with the denizens of Lilliput and Brobdingnag. It’s a damn shame that this film wastes his talents, but there’s other reasons to watch and enjoy.

The Three Worlds of Gulliver is an incredible example of matte work done right, with scene after scene of Lemuel Gulliver (Kerwin Mathews) either towering over five-inch tall Lilliput citizens or being dwarfed by the giants in Brobdingnag. Either way, Harryhausen was in charge of all the effects on his major films, and one can be forgiven for composite work not immediately defaulting into your mind when you hear his name. While Gulliver only gives him two creatures to animate, a gigantic squirrel and a miniature alligator, they are exceptionally done, with the sixties being the decade during which Harryhausen’s artistry was at its peak.

Chiefly a matinee movie for a bored afternoon, Gulliver has several solid actors giving the material a wealth of pedigree and weight that it wouldn’t otherwise hold. This mainly rings true for Basil Sydney, Grégoire Aslan, Charles Lloyd-Pack, and Mary Ellis, while June Thorburn is wasted and awkward as the love interest. For all the scenery chewing of the British character actors, Kerwin Mathews is a bit too staid and a bit too self-righteous in a few scenes. He’s more good than bad, but while his bland handsomeness worked effectively for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad because he was merely a cipher for the succession of monsters, it doesn’t work as well in delivering this snappy dialog or monologues about knowledge and civility.

The script is stronger than many of Harryhausen’s other works, mainly thanks to that literary pedigree. There are bigger character developments at play here, with clearer goals in mind and strongest personalities. There’s also a strong sarcastic streak, borrowed over from Jonathan Swift’s original work and missing none of the political allegories or swipes at English culture. The ending is a bit of a heavy-handed let down though, as it involves Gulliver telling his love Elizabeth that inside of all of us is the capacity for pettiness and arrogance. After so much airy, colorful, humorous, special-effects heavy film making, we’re smacked with social messaging and our lovers running off into the sunset. The Three Worlds of Gulliver is a charming throwaway that is smarter than it has any right to be, while still perhaps justifiably left in the lower-tier of Harryhausen’s work.

There’s a liberating sense of wonderment and child-like awe in this adventure yarn, picking up with his story on a return home voyage with a fiancé and a promise of peace between kingdoms. This simplistic framework is the perfect vessel for Ray Harryhausen’s stellar effects work and imaginatively designed creatures. The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is a non-stop spectacle of exotic sets, strange creatures, magical curses, a beautiful princess, and a handsome sailor. It’s the stuff of warmly nostalgic movie matinee memories.

If the prior films in Ray Harryhausen’s canon were fairly breakneck in their pacing, populated with a few wooden actors and far more memorable monsters, then The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is the first in a series of triumphs that bring in better actors, better scripts, and more monsters. Harryhausen’s films are best when they focus in on mythology and folklore, his science fiction films were fine and entertaining, but these films based on legendary characters are something truly special. Prior films featured maybe one or two creatures, but The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad would be the first to parade several in front of the camera.

We don’t focus on any one particular event for too long before we’re off to the next one, and this densely packed narrative is all the better for it. Think of it like the original King Kong, we fire through extraordinary set piece after another in the name of entertainment. There’s more going on in this film’s slim 90-odd minutes than in a vast majority of modern day blockbusters. After all, we have encounters with a raging Cyclops, a cobra-woman, a fire-breathing dragon, a skeleton with a sword and shield, the two-headed roc bird, and those are just the ones that Harryhausen created.

If that list sounds exhausting or somehow overburdened, then you’ll be surprised just how fleet and nimble Sinbad is. Much of that credit needs to go to director Nathan Juran and the stars Kerwin Mathews and Torin Thatcher. Juran knows that the spectacle is the main attraction here, and provides ample amounts of it including the impressive sight of a Cyclops wading into the ocean to hurl rocks at an escaping Sinbad. Or the off-kilter way he imagines the inside of the genie’s lamp. Juran’s aided immeasurably by Mathews as Sinbad, knowing he’s a swashbuckling hero, a swoon-worthy matinee idol, and second-fiddle to the extravagance on display, he creates a stoic and appropriately heroic Sinbad. While Torin Thatcher slowly boils his performance from even-keeled and into straight-up theatrical hysterics as the magician Sokurah, who begins the film as an ally before becoming petty and spiteful over losing the magical lamp.

The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is the first truly pleasing Arabian Nights fantasy since the 1940 remake of The Thief of Bagdad. While it cannot compete with the perfection of that creation, it holds its own a lower-tier piece of whimsy and a bumper-crop of bang-for-your-buck entertainment. Look past leading lady Kathryn Grant’s stiff performance, ignore the fact that the film is light plot but heavy on ostentation, in fact, indulge in the fact that there’s a lightness of plotting and a heaviness of action-spectacle. It is all the grander and more engrossing for its simplicity, rightly stepping aside to make way for a series of Harryhausen creations that belong to the ages.

Despite being made of a wire armature and a clay exterior, the creature from 20 million miles away is the most expressive and unique performer in this routine science fiction adventure story. Strength of story and acting are not the primary reasons anyone watches these Ray Harryhausen films, but even by the permissive standards of these pulp works the story and acting in 20 Million Miles to Earth are mundane and perfunctory. Harryhausen has stated that he preferred making movies based upon mythological stories in romantic pasts over his earlier science fiction amusements, and it shows in how anemic everything but the Venus-born reptilian monster are.

Make no mistake, it never mattered what name appeared in the directorial or screenwriting slots, these films all had one true auteur and that was Harryhausen. Granted, some directors knew better how to cover over the weaknesses in the scripts or populate the cast with theatrical character actors who could either earnestly play this material or spin it off into grand heights. Nathan Juran, director here, brings back Joan Taylor as the leading lady, and creates some memorable details, but knows its best to just stand back and let Harryhausen unleash. While this one is a bit of a mess, their next collaboration, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, would bring out the best in both men.

Truthfully, the script problems are no more egregious or noticeable than the ones in any of the prior films, it’s just that William Hopper is possibly the worst leading man in any of these vehicles up to this point. He’s a charismatic vacuum and a steep comedown from Hugh Marlowe’s grounding, earnest work in Earth vs the Flying Saucers. Joan Taylor’s once again a smart, tough cookie, but quickly and unfairly sidelined through too much of the film AND sacked with a chemistry-less, totally unnecessary romantic subplot. Her earliest scenes have her calling out casual sexism, proving her smarts as she patches up wounded soldiers, and is the first person to run into the freshly hatched monster. If 20 Million Miles had proceeded to follow her around it would only improve as a film, but we’re sacked with the personality-free G.I. Joe instead.

So that brings us back to the whole point of this ridiculously overheated B-movie, the monster. Ymir, although never named properly in the film, exhibits the most personality and growth (both literally and figuratively) throughout the film. He emerges from a gelatinous cocoon about twenty minutes in, then continues to grow increasingly larger and destroy more and more property. Many of the images echo Mighty Joe Young and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, with the final scene being a direct lift from King Kong but without the deep empathy and air of tragedy that film invested into its fabric. Yet Harryhausen still creates a most impressive creature, capable of wagging its tail, breathing, thrashing under a net and exuding more natural charisma than many of the interchangeable human players.

In light of Mars Attacks! it’s a bit difficult to watch Earth vs the Flying Saucers with a straight face, since Tim Burton’s homage/parody hybrid used it as the most obvious foundational subject. Still, once you get past that first batch of giggles, buckle up for a briskly paced piece of pulp science fiction in which death rays destroy D.C. and loads of military men. Please don’t come around here looking for brainy, politically-loaded science fiction around here, Earth vs the Flying Saucers merely wants to entertain and titillate with its steroidal B-movie charms.

While smarter contemporaries like Invasion of the Body Snatchers took Cold War paranoia (and good ol’ fashioned McCarthyism, which is making a disturbing resurgence of late) as a building block for a heavily symbolic nightmarish thrill-ride, Earth vs the Flying Saucers looks at that paranoia and imagines it ending in a parade of explosions and destruction. Rocket ships intended to collect information about the earth keep being knocked out of the atmosphere, and numerous locations around the world are reporting the appearance of UFOs hovering in the sky. Mounting dread and questions of “what if” lurk over these appearances as they’re quickly proven accurate and not the fevered imaginings of a hysterical public.

While prior Ray Harryhausen features played flirtatious with their monsters, keeping them hidden away until the money shots in the final reels, Earth vs the Flying Saucers lives up to its title by trotting them out within the opening minutes and routinely thereafter. From the knee-jerk military’s shoot-first reactions to the national monuments-go-boom finale, the flying saucers and aliens rain down death, destruction, and charm with their herky-jerky whirligig movements. The blueprints for future UFO invasion films like Independence Day is right here, although Harryhausen’s simplistic designs and creations are more memorable than many of those special-effects extravaganzas.