THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953)

Operation Experiment (five screenwriters, three of them uncredited, couldn't come up with a better name?) is a secret Arctic expedition engaging in nuclear testing. After one atomic explosion is set off, the men at the base see something unusual on the radar but it vanishes quickly. While making observations near the site just before a blizzard approaches, George sees a huge dinosaur-like creature which creates an avalanche that buries him in snow. Tom (Paul Christian) goes looking for him, sees the creature, and barely escapes death. When he tells his story at a hospital back in the States, he is assumed to have been hallucinating—until a "sea serpent" is sighted off the coast of Nova Scotia, destroying a fishing boat. More sightings follow until the creature comes on shore and destroys a lighthouse in Maine. Paleontologist Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway) determines that the monster is indeed a prehistoric dinosaur, a rhedosaurus. The theory is that the atom blasts have awakened the creature from hibernation and sent it on a rampage. Can a committed band of scientists and soldiers figure out how to stop the beast before it lays waste to New York City?

Though Godzilla is often thought of as the first atomic-age giant creature, this was released a year before the Japanese film and probably deserves to be called the grandfather of all such 'There’s a monster on the loose in the streets' movies. The plot is fairly threadbare—and would be copied slavishly for years—and the acting is just as good as it needs to be, but the special effects by Ray Harryhausen (his first credited work—as creator of technical effects—on a feature film) are spectacular, impressive even today. Indeed, having re-watched some of Harryhausen’s later movies recently, I'd say this stands with his very best. Paul Christian makes for a fairly boring hero; he left Hollywood soon after this and forged a lengthy career in Europe under his birth name, Paul Hubschmid. Paula Raymond is similarly wasted as the heroine, but supporting players such as Cecil Kellaway, Kenneth Tobey (who faced a different kind of Arctic monster in THE THING two years earlier), King Donovan and Donald Woods keep things bubbling. It was fun to see James Best (Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazzard) and Alvin Greenman (the young janitor at Macy's who is befriended by Kris Kingle in MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET) in small roles in the beginning as the radar men. Ray Bradbury gets a credit for original story, but only one short sequence—at the lighthouse—comes from him. More expensive effects and more explicit destruction followed in later years, but this is still well worth a viewing. [DVD]